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 :. | Dogwood by Albert Bierstadt | A View in the Bahamas | Wreck of the Ancon in Loring Bay, Alaska | Yosemite Valley | Multnomah Falls |
Related Artists:
Monsu Bernardo
1624 - 1687
Rafal Hadziewicz
(13 October 1803 - 7 September 1883) was a Polish historical painter. Born in Zamch, Hadziewicz attended art school from 1816 to 1822. In 1822 he studied at Warsaw University under Antoni Brodowski. After getting a scholarship he traveled to Dresden in 1829 and later to Paris, where he studied at a prominent French School of Painting. In 1831 he continued his studies in Rome. He stayed in Rome in 1833 for self-study of the masters. At this time he created many well-received sketches. In 1834 he went to Krakew and painted icons for several Orthodox churches there. In 1839 he left for Moscow, where he served in the Department of Fine Art and Mathematics until 1844. In 1844 he moved back to Warsaw, where he served as a professor in the Warsaw School of Art. In 1871, near the end of his life, he was transferred to a university in Kielce, where he died. Hadziewicz painted many religious paintings and portraits but was best known for historic compositions, which were often compared to art of the Italian Renaissance and European Baroque.
Levitsky, Dmitry
Russian Painter, 1735-1822 .Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. Together with Fyodor Rokotov and Vladimir Borovikovsky, he ranks foremost among 18th-century Russian portrait painters. He received his first lessons in painting from his father, Grigory Levitsky-Nos (1697-1769), a priest, engraver and painter. He also studied under Aleksey Antropov, who had come to Kiev to decorate St Andrew's church (1752-5). In the late 1750s Levitsky went with Antropov to St Petersburg, where he stayed until 1764; he continued with lessons from Antropov to whom, it appears, he owed the objectivity that was to characterize his work. It is probable that he also studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, attending classes under Louis Lagren?e. Levitsky worked with Antropov on the decoration of triumphal arches in Moscow for Catherine II's coronation in 1762. His first known portraits are rather formal, for example that of the architect Aleksandr Kokorinov (1769; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), which won Levitsky the title of Academician in 1770. In such works he made successful use of a compositional structure typical of formal European portrait painting, intended to emphasize the importance of the sitter.