Albert Bierstadt [1830-1902]
Looking Down Yosemite
Valley,
California, c.1865
• Albert Bierstadt was the first artist to take
as his subject the vastness of the
mountains of western North America.
• In a time when few Americans had
ventured west of the Mississippi, Looking
Down Yosemite Valley, California offered a
welcome view of one of the natural
wonders on the far side of the continent.
• After his first trip to the American West in
1859, Albert Bierstadt produced a
sequence of landscape paintings that
proved so popular with East Coast
audiences that he was eager to return to
paint more.
• Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 February 18, 1902) was a GermanAmerican painter best known for his large
landscapes of the American West.
• In obtaining the subject matter for these
works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of
the Westward Expansion.
• Though not the first artist to record these
sites, Bierstadt was the foremost painter of
these scenes for the remainder of the 19th
century.
• Albert Bierstadt, was born in Solingen,
Germany. He was only about two years
old when his family moved from Germany
to New Bedford in Massachusetts.
• In 1853, he returned to Germany to study
in Dusseldorf, where he refined his
technical abilities by painting Alpine
landscapes.
• Four years later in 1857, Albert Bierstadt
oil paintings had developed a consistent
style which was painstakingly detailed
while simultaneously very light infused and
became an early example of the American
Romantic movement in art. (Thomas
Kincaid)
• The paintings of Bierstadt became very
popular until roughly the 1880’s when the
now considered “old-fashioned” Romantic
style of Albert Bierstadt’s artwork began to
fall out of favor.
• Bierstadt was part of the Hudson River
School, not an institution but rather an
informal group of like-minded painters.
• The Hudson River School style involved
carefully detailed paintings with romantic,
almost glowing lighting, sometimes called
luminism.
• Thomas Cole was part of the Hudson
River School. (The Oxbow painting)
• After he returned to America in 1857, he
joined an overland survey expedition
which allowed him to travel westward
across the country.
• Along the route, he took countless
photographs and made sketches of the
majestic mountain ranges and dramatic
rock formations which became the studies
for his massive canvasses painted in his
New York studio.
• From sketches and oil studies done from
nature, 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.
• In December 1857, The Boston
Athenaeum bought one of his works, The
Portico of Octavia Rome, thus assuring his
career.
• Remember George Washington’s
Athenaeum painting that is now on the
one-dollar bill.
• He exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum from
1859 to 1864,
• at the Brooklyn Art Association from 1861 to
1879, and
• at the Boston Art Club from 1873 to 1880.
• A member of the National Academy of Design
from 1860 to 1902,
• he kept a studio in the 10th Street Studio
Building, New York City from 1861 to 1879.
• He was a member of the Century Association
from 1862 to 1902.
• The artist's rugged, romanticized
landscapes of the West, painted on a
grand scale with an abundance of detail
and dramatic lighting, captured the
imagination of 19th-century art collectors
and their interest catapulted Bierstadt to
the top of the American art market.
• His paintings brought record prices and in
his lifetime, Bierstadt enjoyed tremendous
success and recognition.
• Bierstadt became internationally renowned for
his beautiful and enormous paintings of the
newly accessible American west,
• His works found their way into public and private
collections at staggeringly high prices for his
time.
• His popularity and wealth rose to tremendous
heights only to fade as the interest in the
Boston School and impressionism turned
public taste away from his highly detailed
landscapes suffused with golden light.
• By 1895 he declared himself bankrupt.
• In 1867 he married, and he and his new
bride went to London.
• There he met with Queen Victoria.
• His wife, Rosalie, needed to live in a warm
climate for health reasons, so the couple
lived in Nassau, and Bierstadt began to
paint the tropics of Nassau as a result of
his stays there.
Bahama Cove
Bahamian
View
• He died suddenly in 1902 and people
seemed to forget his work until the 1960's.
• People became more interested in
preserving the national lands of the USA,
and his paintings began to be shown
again.
• Nonetheless, his paintings remain popular.
• He was a prolific artist, having completed
over 500 (possibly as many as 4000)
paintings during his lifetime, most of which
have survived.
• Many are scattered through museums
around the United States.
• Prints are available commercially for
many.
• Original paintings themselves do
occasionally come up for sale, at ever
increasing prices.
Legacy
• Because of Bierstadt's interest in mountain
landscapes, Mount Bierstadt in
Colorado is named in his honor.
• Another Colorado mountain was originally
named Mount Rosa, after Bierstadt's wife,
but it was later renamed Mount Evans
after Colorado governor John Evans.
Mount Bierstadt
Monte Rosa
Lake Bierstadt
Long’s Peak, Estes Park, Co
• In 1998, the United States Postal Service
issued a set of 20 commemorative stamps
entitled "Four Centuries of American Art",
one of which featured Albert Bierstadt's
The Last of the Buffalo.
• The onset of the Civil War postponed his
trip, but in 1863 Bierstadt set off from
Philadelphia to make the transcontinental
journey by train, by stagecoach, and on
horseback.
• When he finally reached California, the
landscape surpassed his expectations.
Born and educated in Germany,
Bierstadt was well-acquainted with the
beauty of the Alps; but nowhere in Europe,
he maintained, “is there scenery whose
grandeur can for one moment be held
comparable with that of the Sierra
Nevada in the Yosemite District.”
• Looking Down Yosemite Valley supports
that nationalistic claim and expresses the
artist’s own sense of wonder at his first
sight of the majestic mountain landscape.
Looking down Yosemite Valley
• Bierstadt’s exceptionally large canvas (five
by eight feet) and panoramic view down
the valley (twenty to thirty miles) were
calculated to draw the viewers into the
picture to enjoy the spectacle themselves.
• Some contemporary critics of Bierstadts’
objected to these sensational devices,
arguing that Bierstadt’s methods made the
picture look more like stage scenery than
fine art—but this may in fact have been
the desired effect.
• Bierstadt introduces no actors into his
scene—not a single traveler, trapper,
settler, or American Indian—
• At the center of the composition, where we
expect to find a dramatic climax to the
action, there is only vacant space bathed
in a golden light that breaks through the
clouds.
• In Bierstadt’s scenario, the viewer takes
the artist’s point of view and discovers that
before so magnificent a landscape, human
beings dwindle to insignificance.
• Yosemite had been isolated by its
geography until just before mid-century,
when the 1848 California Gold Rush
brought a surge of non-indigenous people
to the Sierras and the valley was
“discovered.”
• Americans were intrigued by the longhidden valley, and Bierstadt satisfied their
curiosity by documenting its major
landmarks—the exposed granite block of
El Capitán on the north side (the right of
the canvas), opposite the spire of
Sentinel Rock and masses of Cathedral
Rocks—yet he exaggerates even their
imposing proportions.
• The golden haze that Bierstadt used to
soften the edges of the magnificent cliffs
may be meant to excuse his creative
manipulation of the truth.
• As one San Francisco critic observed in
1865, “It looks as if it was painted in an El
Dorado, in a distant land of gold; heard of
in song and story; dreamed of but never
seen.”
• Bierstadt possessed an uncanny
understanding of what Americans in his
time wanted to believe was waiting for
them on the western frontier:
• A Garden of Eden blessed by God,
untouched by Civil War, and holding the
promise of a new beginning.
• His romantic paintings embody the
collective hope that a remote landscape
could heal a nation’s wounds.
• What national event was America
recovering from in 1865, when this scene
was painted?
• A scene like this offered hope to
Americans.
• Not only was it peaceful to look at, but it
also reminded them of the Western
frontier, spacious, beautiful country waiting
to be settled.
• Many saw the West as the promise of a
new beginning.
• The preservationist (and Sierra Club
founder) John Muir, Bierstadt’s nearcontemporary, affirmed the idea that the
Yosemite Valley could refresh the spirit:
“The winds will blow their own freshness
into you, and the storms their energy,”
he promised prospective tourists,
“while cares will drop off like autumn
leaves.”
• Did anyone see the Ken Burns special on
the National Parks?
• Over the Christmas holidays, it would be a
wonderful series to check out from the
library.
• Looking Down Yosemite Valley would
have been underway in Bierstadt’s New
York studio in 1864, when Abraham
Lincoln set the territory aside as a state
park.
• This was the first time the federal
government had saved a tract of scenic
land from development.
When the Transcontinental Railroad was
completed five years later, the region was
flooded with tourists who wanted to see for
themselves the wondrous places they
knew only from paintings and
photographs.
Returning to Yosemite in 1872, Bierstadt
lamented the loss of the unspoiled
wilderness he had portrayed only a few
years earlier.
Let’s take a closer look….
• Where do you see trees reflected in
water?
• Describe the texture of the rocks.
• Write three or four words that you think of
when they first see this painting.
• If a person were standing in the middle of
this scene, about how large would he or
she seem?
• Compare a six-foot tall person to one of
the trees; imagine how this person would
feel in comparison to these mountains.
• How might he or she describe this scene?
• How has Bierstadt created an illusion of
great distance or depth?
• What do you see first when you look at
this painting?
• How does this light add to the drama of
this scene?
Yosemite Valley
• Cathedral Spires and Sentinel Rock are on
the left and El Capitán is on the right.
• Compare photographs of Yosemite Valley
with Bierstadt’s painting to understand
how he exaggerated the size of the rock
formations.
• Consider if the sun in the painting is rising
or setting.
• Bierstadt painted some of the rock
formations in this painting taller than they
really were.
• Do you think this exaggeration was
dishonest?
• Explain why you do or do not believe that
it is all right for an artist to exaggerate
features in a scene like this.
• In addition to exaggerating the size of the
rocks, how else did Bierstadt make the
West seem even grander than it was?
• Explain the role Bierstadt’s paintings
played in the development of tourism to
the West.
• When people in the East saw Bierstadt’s
grand interpretation of western scenery,
they wanted to see it for themselves.
• Within a few years, with the introduction of
the railroad into this area, great numbers
of tourists were able to visit Yosemite.
A View from Sacramento
Sierra Nevada in California
Seal Rock
Essay Question 1
• How did Albert Bierstadt’s painting
influence eastern American’s in the last
half of the 19th century?
• Include what had happened in the country
that the nation was recovering from as well
as comment on his art (his style and the
emotion that it produced).
Essay Question 2
• Explain the role Bierstadt’s paintings
played in the development of tourism to
the West.
• Also explain the transportation
advancements that were going on in the
country at that time.
Essay Question 3
• Bierstadt painted some of the rock
formations in this painting taller than they
really were. Do you think this exaggeration
was dishonest?
• Explain why you do or do not believe that
it is all right for an artist to exaggerate
features in a scene like this.
Essay Question 4
• In addition to exaggerating the size of the
rocks, how else did Bierstadt make the
West seem even grander than it was?
Essay Question 5
• Explain the role Bierstadt’s paintings
played in the development of tourism to
the West.