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 :. | Capri | Lake in the Rockies | The Wolf River, Kansas | Cathedral Rock, Yosemite Valley, California | Departure of an Indian War Party |
Related Artists:
Harold Gilman
(11 February 1876 - 12 February 1919) was a painter of interiors, portraits and landscapes, and a founder-member of the Camden Town Group. Though born in Rode, Somerset, Gilman spent his early years at Snargate Rectory, in the Romney Marshes in Kent, where his father was the Rector. He was educated in Kent at Abingdon, Rochester and Tonbridge schools, and for one year at Brasenose College in Oxford University. Although he developed an interest in art during a childhood convalescence period, Gilman did not begin his artistic training until after his non-collegiate year at Oxford University (cut short by ill health) and after working in the Ukraine as a tutor to a British family in Odessa (1895). In 1896 he entered the Hastings School of Art to study painting, but in 1897 transferred to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he remained from 1897 to 1901, and where he met Spencer Gore. In 1904 he went to Spain and spent over a year studying Spanish masters (Velezquez and Goya as well as Whistler were major early influences). At this time he met and married the American painter Grace Cornelia Canedy. The couple settled in London (apart from a visit to her family in Chicago, when Gilman ducked pressure to join the Canedy family business). They had two daughters (one in London, one in Chicago).
Anton von Werner
Germany (1843- 1915 ) - Painter
ZUCCHI, Jacopo
Italian Painter, ca.1540-1596. Jacopo Zucchi was an Italian painter of the Florentine school. Italian painter and draughtsman. He was trained in the studio of Vasari, whom he assisted in the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, as early as 1557. He accompanied Vasari to Pisa in 1561, from when dates his earliest known drawing, Aesculapius (London, BM). Between 1563 and 1565 he was again in Florence and is documented working with Vasari, Joannes Stradanus and Giovan Battista Naldini on the ceiling of the Sala Grande (Salone dei Cinquecento) in the Palazzo Vecchio; a drawing of an Allegory of Pistoia (Florence, Uffizi) is related to the ceiling allegories of Tuscan cities. In 1564 Zucchi entered the Accademia del Disegno and contributed to the decorations erected for the funeral of Michelangelo. He travelled to Rome with Vasari and was his chief assistant on decorations in the Vatican in 1567 and 1572,