Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt was a German American artist who lived from 1830 to 1902. He was part of the Hudson River as well as the Rocky Mountain School of art. His paintings imbue the luminism art style through the soft, warm glow of infusing light he was able to paint with his brush.
Bierstadt was German born and moved to the US at 2 years of age. As a child he drew with crayons and at 20 years old, he started painting with oils. During this period, he was a self-taught artist. In 1853, Albert Bierstadt returned to Germany for four years where he studied landscape painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. After school, he traveled around Europe painting landscapes. He returned home to the United States and displayed his European landscapes at the National Academy of Design.
In 1859, Bierstadt joined a survey expedition with a friend and made his first trip out west. This was a journey that he would make multiple times throughout his life. He was enamored by the dramatic mountains, the rolling plains, the Native Americans, and the wildlife. His paintings of Yosemite Valley were so well-received, that most every explorer during the great westward expansion requested his companionship (for his ability to document their adventures).
Albert Bierstadt’s paintings of the American West captured the public’s imagination and made him quite popular and successful in his day. Once impressionism took hold, Bierstadt’s work fell out of the public eye and didn’t reemerge until the 1960s with the renewed interest in the national parks. Due to his beautiful mountainscapes, a mountain in Colorado was named after him, Mount Bierstadt.
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