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 :. | Seals on the Rocks, Farallon Islands | The Marina Piccola | Sunset on the Coast | Albert Bierstadt Looking Down Yosemite Valley | Estes Park |
Related Artists:
Jan Josef Horemans the Elder
1682-1759 Dutch Jan Josef Horemans Galleries He was a pupil of the sculptor Michiel van der Voort I and then of the Dutch painter Jan van Pee (before 1640-1710), who was active in Antwerp. Horemans joined the Guild of St Luke in 1706-7. He appears to have followed in the footsteps of the 17th-century Flemish genre painters, executing a few portraits and a large number of small anecdotal pictures that were highly prized on the market. In paintings such as the Village School and the Cobbler's Shop (both 1712; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), the Musical Company (1715; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.) and the Card-players (Florence, Uffizi) he represented scenes from contemporary everyday life that combine observation with a certain degree of stiffness. Most of his paintings are signed. In 1746, together with his son Jan Josef Horemans II, he painted the Abbot of St Michel Visiting the Order of the Fencing Oath (Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.).
William Turner of Oxford
British, 1789-1862 He probably received his earliest training from William Delamotte, in Oxford. In 1804 he went to London and became a pupil of John Varley, possibly being formally apprenticed. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807; in January 1808 he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and in November of that year became its youngest full member. He exhibited there annually from 1808 until his death, sending 455 works in all. His passionate, technically complex youthful work was highly acclaimed, yet its promise remained unfulfilled; around 1811 he returned to Oxfordshire and soon established himself as a drawing-master in Oxford.
BARTOLOMEO VENETO
Italian Painter, ca.1470-1531 Italian painter. He worked in Venice, the Veneto and Lombardy in the early decades of the 16th century. Knowledge of him is based largely on the signatures, dates and inscriptions on his works. His early paintings are small devotional pictures; later he became a fashionable portraitist. His earliest dated painting, a Virgin and Child (1502; Venice, priv. col., see Berenson, i, pl. 537), is signed 'Bartolomeo half-Venetian and half-Cremonese'. The inscription probably refers to his parentage, but it also suggests the eclectic nature of his development. This painting is clearly dependent on similar works by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, but in a slightly later Virgin and Child (1505; Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Cararra) the sharp modelling of the Virgin's headdress and the insistent linear accents in the landscape indicate Bartolomeo's early divergence from Giovanni's depiction of light and space. An inscription on his Virgin and Child of 1510 (Milan, Ercolani Col.) states that he was a pupil of Gentile Bellini, an assertion supported by the tightness and flatness of his early style. The influence of Giovanni is still apparent in the composition of the Circumcision (1506; Paris, Louvre), although the persistent stress on surface patterns and the linear treatment of drapery and outline is closer to Gentile. Bartolomeo's experience as a painter at the Este court in Ferrara (1505-8) probably encouraged the decorative emphasis of his style. In the half-length Portrait of a Man (c. 1510; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam) the flattened form of the fashionably dressed sitter is picked out against a deep red curtain so that the impression of material richness extends across the entire picture surface.