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 :. | Rocky Mountains | Sailboats on the Hudson at Irvington | Indian_Camp | Passing Storm over the Sierra Nevada | Storm in the Rocky Mountains Mt Rosalie |
Related Artists:
Kerstiaen de Keuninck
1560-1635 Flemish Kerstiaen de Keuninck Gallery Flemish painter. Although from Courtrai, from an early age he lived in Antwerp. He was listed in 1577 as one of the recipients of the Poor-box (armenbus) of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, where he was received as master in 1580. He married in 1585. De Keuninck took on Carel de Ferrara as an apprentice in 1599. His son Kerstiaen de Keuninck the younger (d 1642-3) became a master in 1613. In 1629 Engel Ergo started an apprenticeship with a Kerstiaen de Keuninck: it is not clear whether this refers to father or son.
George Marks
fl.1876-1922
David Klocker Ehrenstrahl
German, 1629-1698,Swedish nobleman and portrait painter who in 1652, at twenty-four years of age, at the request of Carl Gustaf Wrangel, moved to Skokloster Castle, from his art studies in the Netherlands. Between 1654 and 1661 he studied in Italy and visited the courts of both France and England. On his return he became entitled Court painter. He was raised to the nobility in 1674 and became court indendant in 1690. Mikael Dahl and David von Krafft as well as his daughter Anna Maria (born 1666) can be found among his pupils. The allegoric great hall ceiling fresco, named The Great Deeds of The Swedish Kings, in the Swedish House of Knights, made between 1670 and 1675, is considered to be his greatest work. A second version was made in Drottningholm Palace, the home of the Swedish Royal Family, in 1695. The Drottningholm fresco, also became the motive of the 1000th and ever largest postage stamp by Czeslaw Slania, the Polish