German-born American Hudson River School Painter, 1830-1902 Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany. His family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1833. He studied painting with the members of the D??sseldorf School in D??sseldorf, Germany from 1853 to 1857. He taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself to painting. Bierstadt began making paintings in New England and upstate New York. In 1859, he traveled westward in the company of a Land Surveyor for the U.S. government, returning with sketches that would result in numerous finished paintings. In 1863 he returned west again, in the company of the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he would later marry. He continued to visit the American West throughout his career. Though his paintings sold for princely sums, Bierstadt was not held in particularly high esteem by critics of his day. His use of uncommonly large canvases was thought to be an egotistical indulgence, as his paintings would invariably dwarf those of his contemporaries when they were displayed together. The romanticism evident in his choices of subject and in his use of light was felt to be excessive by contemporary critics. His paintings emphasized atmospheric elements like fog, clouds and mist to accentuate and complement the feel of his work. Bierstadt sometimes changed details of the landscape to inspire awe. The colors he used are also not always true. He painted what he believed is the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc. The shift from foreground to background was very dramatic and there was almost no middle distance 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.  Related Paintings of Albert Bierstadt :. | Hetch Hetchy Valley | Mariposa Indian Encampment, Yosemite Valley, California | Cathedral Rock, Yosemite Valley | Home of the Rainbow, Horseshoe Falls, Niagara | Moat Mountain, Intervale, New Hampshire |
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w. holmberg

Serhii Vasylkivsky
(October 19, 1854, Izium e October 7, 1917, Kharkiv) was one of the most prolific Ukrainian artists of the pre-revolutionary period and an expert on Ukrainian ornamentation and folk art. Vasylkivsky grew up in an environment conducive to his development as an artist. He was born and spent his childhood in the picturesque surroundings of Izium, a city in the historical region of Sloboda Ukraine, and today's Kharkiv Oblast. The future painter had a chumak grandfather whose roots reached cossack ancestral lines. Vasylkivsky's father was a writer and taught his son the aesthetics of proper calligraphy. His mother, through her folk songs set the foundation which provided the inspiration for Vasylkivsky's art later in life. When he was seven years old, his parents moved to Kharkiv, which at the time was a significant cultural center of Sloboda Ukraine. Vasylkivsky's first art lessons were given at the Kharkiv gymnasium by Dmytro Bezperchy, a student of Karl Briullov. During the years of his study, Vasylkivsky was able to use the extensive book collection of his relative and poet, V. Alexandrov. Among these were the works by Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Taras Shevchenko, and Nikolai Gogol, which made a strong impression on the young artist. After five years of education at the gymnasium and at the demand of his father, Vasylkivsky began studies at the Kharkiv Veterinary School. This lasted until 1873, when Vasylkivsky left veterinary studies due to his parents inability to pay for tuition. For a while, he worked as a civil servant in Kharkiv.
John Macallan Swan
British Academic Painter, 1847-1910 was an English painter and sculptor. John Macallan Swan was born in Brentford, Middlesex in 1847. He received his art training first in England at the Worcester and Lambeth schools of art and the Royal Academy schools, and subsequently in Paris, in the studios of Jean-L??on G??rôme and Emmanuel Fr??miet. He began to exhibit at the Academy in 1878, and was elected associate in 1894 and academician in 1905. He was appointed a member of the Dutch Water-Colour Society in 1885; and associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1896 and full member in 1899. A master of the oil, water-colour and pastel mediums, an accomplished painter and a skilful draughtsman, he ranks also as a sculptor of distinguished ability. He has treated the human figure with notable power, but it is by his representations of the larger wild animals, mainly the felidae, that he chiefly established his reputation; in this branch of practice he has scarcely a rival. His picture "The Prodigal Son," bought for the Chantrey collection in 1889, is in the National Gallery of British Art.