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 :. | Buffalo Bill Historical Center | Valley of the Yosemite | San Francisco Bay | Sailboats on the Hudson at Irvington | Western_Trail_the_Rockies |
Related Artists:
Metcalf, Willard Leroy
American Impressionist Painter, 1858-1925 American painter and illustrator. His formal education was limited, and at 17 he was apprenticed to the painter George Loring Brown of Boston. He was one of the first scholarship students admitted to the school of art sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and took classes there in 1877 and 1878. After spending several years illustrating magazine articles on the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, he decided to study abroad and in 1883 left for Paris. There he studied at the Acad?mie Julian under Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. During the five years he spent in France he became intimately acquainted with the countryside around the villages of Grez-sur-Loing and Giverny. He returned to America in 1888
Anne Vallayer-Coster
French Rococo Era Painter, 1744-1818,was an eighteenth-century French painter. Known as a prodigy artist at a young age, she achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Royal Academy in 1770, at the age of twenty-six. Despite the negative reputation that still-life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster??s highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists. Her precocious talent and the rave reviews?? earned her the attention of the court, where Marie Antoinette took a particular interest in Vallayer-Coster's paintings. Regardless of her closeness to the ancient regime and France's hated monarch she survived the bloodshed of the French Revolution. However, the fall of the French monarchy, which were her primary patrons, caused her banishment into the shadows. Anne Vallayer-Coster was a woman in a man??s world. It is unknown what she thought of contemporaries who admitted her to the confraternity, and made her an honorary ??man??. Her life was determinedly private, dignified and hard-working. Occasionally she attempted other genres, but for the usual reasons her success at figure painting was limited
Denis Dighton
1792?C1827