Art Gallery

Bierstadt, Albert (1830 - 1902), born in Germany, Dusseldorf, in 1830 Bierstadt emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1832. After his early works were exhibited in Boston, he traveled (1853) to Germany to study painting for three years at the Dusseldorf Akademie. Educated in art in the rigorous academic tradition of the Düsseldorf Academy, Bierstadt showed an early passion for spectacular landscapes while sketching vistas in the Alps as a student. Upon his return to New England and an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself in his hometown, Bierstadt joined an expedition west along the Old Oregon Trail.

In 1857 he returned to the United States and painted throughout the northeast; in 1858 he made the first of several trips to the West.

Bierstadt spent the summer of 1859 on a government wagon road survey from Fort Laramie, Wyoming to the Rocky Mountains, sketching on canvas his experiences along the way. Throughout the 1860’s, he traveled west documenting the natural wonders of Yosemite and the Cascades, romantic panoramas that captured the nation’s attention. During these years, Bierstadt was considered America’s premier landscape painter. His large landscape paintings were enormously popular and earned record prices for the period. When his Irvington, NY studio burned in 1882, he moved to New York City and continued to paint his famous mountain landscapes.

From sketches and oil studies done from nature (admirable works in themselves), he painted in his New York studio the huge, carefully detailed panoramic views of Western scenery that made him one of America's most admired painters in the 1860s and '70s.

By the time of his death in 1902 the Impressionist style had eclipsed his popularity and his fame had faded. Bierstadt’s work was “rediscovered” in the 1960’s and has since regained popularity, as the world remains captivated by the lure of the Rocky Mountain West.