Albert Bierstadt is the foremost painter of the American frontier during the 19th century. When Albert Bierstadt was two years old, his family moved from Germany to New Bedford, Massachusetts. He returned to Germany between 1853 and 1857 to study painting. While abroad, Bierstadt traveled along the Rhine, in the Alps and Italy. On his return to the United States, he organized an exhibition in New Bedford of 150 paintings, including artwork of all the major artists of his day. In December, 1857 the Boston Athenaeum bought one of his works, thus assuring his career.

In April of 1859, he joined the expedition along the Overland Trail, led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander, a trip that would soon give rise to the most productive and important phase of his art career. Armed with sketches and stereographs, he returned to New York City in 1859, establishing his studio in the Tenth Street Building. There he produced the first of the panoramic western landscapes that established his reputation on an international level and during the mid-1860s, made him a rival of Frederick Church for the position of America's preeminent painter.

Because much of the continent remained still relatively unexplored at that time, Bierstadt's monumental renderings of mountains and waterfalls created romantic visions in the minds of Easterners. His first public exhibition of these works in 1859 was a resounding success. He exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum from 1859 to 1864, at the Brooklyn Art Association from 1861 to 1879, and at the Boston Art Club from 1873 to 1880. He was a member of the National Academy of Design from 1860 to 1902.

Paintings such as The Oregon Trail and the Yosemite Valley (1866) made him one of the most popular American artists.

Albert Bierstadt was elected a full Academician of the National Academy of Design in 1860. In the same year, he made several painting trips to the White Mountains as well as to the southern United States. He made a second trip to the West in 1863 which was followed by another visit to Europe in 1867. In 1871, he moved to California where he played an active role in San Francisco art life. In 1873, he returned to New York. During the 1870s, Bierstadt executed a mural for the U.S. Capitol and in conjunction with the declining health of his wife, made the first of many trips to the Bahamas. He made a third trip to Europe in 1883. During 1889, he painted in both Alaska and British Columbia. He continued to produce landscape oil paintings throughout the 1890s. He also became involved in the promotion of various inventions, including his own designs for the improvement of railroad cars.

He made large-scale, panoramic oil painting landscapes with dramatic, almost sublime light effects. His works can be found in major public and private collections throughout North America and Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, making him one of the worlds artist. In a career spanning the entire second half of the 19th century, he emerged as the first sophisticated artist to travel to the Far West and produce paintings powerful in their nationalistic and religious symbolism. Executed in his studio, they are immense in scale and grandiose in effect. Bierstadt freely altered details of landscape to create the effect of awe and grandeur. His colors were applied more according to a formula than from observation, luscious green vegetation, ice-blue water and pale atmospheric blue-green mountains. The progression from foreground to background was often a dramatic one without the softness and subtlety of a middle distance.

Bierstadt became internationally renowned for his beautiful and enormous oil paintings which sold at staggeringly high prices for his time. His popularity and wealth rose to tremendous heights only to fade as interest in impressionism turned public taste away from his landscapes suffused with golden light. By 1895 he declared himself bankrupt.

	The Oregon Trail	Yosemite Valley	Florida Scene	Kern's River Valley, California	Tropical Landscape

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