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 :. | Valley of the Yosemite | Sierra_Nevada_Mountains | Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California | Sunrise, Yosemite Valley | Thunderstorm in the Rocky Mountains |
Related Artists:
Losenko, Anton
Russian Painter, 1737-1773 Ukrainian painter, active in Russia. He trained (1753-8) under Ivan Argunov, and from 1758 he was a student at the recently founded Academy of Art in St Petersburg, where he later taught. From 1760 to 1769 he spent time in Paris, where he studied at the Acad?mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture under Jean Reteux (1692-1768) and Joseph-Marie Vien. He then studied in Rome.
Henriette Lorimier
(7 August 1775, Paris - 1 April 1854) was a popular portraitist in Paris at the beginning of Romanticism. She lived with the French diplomat and philhellene writer Francois Pouqueville (1770-1838). student of the history painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault, she soon exhibited fine portraits and genre paintings at the Paris' Salons from 1800 to 1806 and from 1810 to 1814. In 1805 Princess Caroline Murat-Bonaparte, a sister of the Emperor, purchased "La Chevre Nourriciere" a painting exhibited at the 1804 Salon and in 1806 Henriette Lorimier was awarded a First Class Medal for her painting of "Jeanne de Navarre" which was then purchased by the Empress Josephine de Beauharnais, consort of the Emperor Napoleon Ier.
Johann Jakob Biedermann
b Winterthur, 7 Oct 1763; d Aussersihl, Schwyz, 10 April 1830