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 :. | Forest_Stream | Buffalo Bill Historical Center | Wooded Hillside | Mount Washington | The Open Glen, New England |
Related Artists:
Henryk Siemiradzki
(1843-1902) was a Polish Academic painter. He was particularly known for his depictions of scenes from the ancient Graeco-Roman world and the New Testament. Siemiradzki was born to a Polish szlachta family of a military physician in the village of Novobelgorod (now Pechenegi) near Kharkov, Ukraine. He studied at Kharkov Gymnasium where he learned painting under a scion of Karl Briullov, D. I. Besperchy. He entered the Physics-Mathematics School of Kharkov University but continued his painting lessons from Bespechy. After graduating from the University with the degree of Kandidat he abandoned his scientific career and moved to Saint Petersburg to study painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts in the years 1864-1870. Upon his graduation he was awarded a gold medal. In 1870-1871 he studied under Karl von Piloty in Munich on a grant from the Academy.
Cornelis Bisschop
In ca. 1650 he was a student of Ferdinand Bol in Amsterdam. In 1653 he was back in Dordrecht, where he got married. According to Houbraken he was the first to paint carved trompe l'oeil wooden panels in such an ingenious way that they became quite popular. He painted historical allegories, portraits, still lifes, and genre-works. He was asked to paint for the Danish court, but he died unexpectedly, leaving his wife and eleven children. Of these children, two sons (Abraham (1660-1700) & Jacobus Bisschop (1658-1698)) and three daughters became painters. These had been his students when he died, and Margaretha van Godewijk studied with his daughters. She wrote an emblem about his self-portrait with a curtain, which illustrates the legend of Zeuxis. His son Jacobus later became a student of Augustinus Terwesten in the Confrerie Pictura
Jean-Francois Millet
Jean-François Millet (October 4, 1814 - January 20, 1875) was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the naturalism and realism movements.