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 :. | Tyrolean Landscape | The Oregon Trail | Elk Grazing in the Wind River Country | Autumn in America, Oneida County | Indian Scout |
Related Artists:
Dyck, Anthony van
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1641 Flemish painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and England. He was the leading Flemish painter after Rubens in the first half of the 17th century and in the 18th century was often considered no less than his match. A number of van Dyck's studies in oil of characterful heads were included in Rubens's estate inventory in 1640, where they were distinguished neither in quality nor in purpose from those stocked by the older master. Although frustrated as a designer of tapestry and, with an almost solitary exception, as a deviser of palatial decoration, van Dyck succeeded brilliantly as an etcher. He was also skilled at organizing reproductive engravers in Antwerp to publish his works, in particular The Iconography (c. 1632-44), comprising scores of contemporary etched and engraved portraits, eventually numbering 100, by which election he revived the Renaissance tradition of promoting images of uomini illustri. His fame as a portrait painter in the cities of the southern Netherlands, as well as in London, Genoa, Rome and Palermo, has never been outshone; and from at least the early 18th century his full-length portraits were especially prized in Genoese, British and Flemish houses,
Heinrich Foelix
painted Kurfurst Clemens Wenzeslaus von Sachsen in ca. 1776
Benjamin Duterrau
1767 - 1851 , was an artist in England and in early colonial Australia. Duterrau was was born in London to parents of French descent. Duterrau was apprenticed to an engraver and in 1790 did two coloured stipple engravings after Morland, The Farmer's Door and The Squire's Door. Taking up painting, between 1817 and 1823 he exhibited six portraits at Royal Academy exhibitions, and he also exhibited three genre pieces at the British Institution about the same period. Duterrau emigrated to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), arriving in August 1832 with his daughter. He lived at the corner of Campbell and Patrick Streets in Hobart, and practised as a portrait painter. In 1835 he did some etchings of Indigenous Australians, the first examples of that craft to be done in Australia. His most famous painting The Conciliation is in the Hobart gallery with a self-portrait and other works, including some modelling in relief. A large landscape is in the Beattie collection at Launceston, and he is also represented in the Dixson collection at Sydney. Duterrau died at Hobart in 1851.