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 :. | Harbor_Scene | Forest_Stream | A Native of the Woods | Seal Rock | Staubbach Falls, Near Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland |
Related Artists:
Jacob More
1740-93 Scottish painter, active in Italy. The son of an Edinburgh merchant, he was first apprenticed to a goldsmith and then, from 1766, to the Norie family of house-painters. In the 1760s he produced numerous sketches of the Scottish Lowlands (examples Edinburgh, N.G.), and in 1769 he designed and executed stage sets at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, for the first productions after the legalizing of the theatre in Scotland. More's Edinburgh period culminated in a series of oil paintings of the Falls of the River Clyde, three of which are in public collections: Corra Linn (Edinburgh, N.G.), Stonebyres Linn (London, Tate) and Bonnington Linn (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam). These paintings are regarded as the first serious artistic interpretations of the Scottish landscape, depictions by previous artists having been essentially topographical in character. More took a set of three of them to the Society of Artists Exhibition in London in 1771, at which he gained widespread recognition and the personal encouragement of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guerin
(March 25, 1783 - January 19, 1855), French painter, was born at Toulon, of poor parents. As a young man, he learned his father's trade of locksmithing, whilst at the same time he followed the classes of the free school of art. Having sold some copies to a local amateur, Guerin started for Paris, where he came under the notice of Vincent, whose counsels were of material service. In 1810 Guerin made his first appearance at the Salon with some portraits, which had a certain success. In 1812 he exhibited "Cain after the murder of Abel" (formerly in Luxembourg), and, on the return of the Bourbons, was much employed in works of restoration and decoration at Versailles.
Morbelli, Angelo
Italian, 1853-1919 Italian painter. He received his first lessons in drawing in Alessandria, and in 1867 he travelled on a local study grant to Milan, where he was based for the rest of his life. He enrolled at the Accademia di Brera and from 1867 to 1876 studied drawing and painting there under Raffaele Casnedi and Giuseppe Bertini, whose influence is seen in both the subject-matter and technique of his early works. These include perspectival views, anecdotal genre scenes and history paintings. In the Dying Goethe (1880; Alessandria, Pin. Civ.) the theatrical setting, enriched by a sophisticated execution and a well-modulated use of colour, derives from the teaching of Casnedi and Bertini, while the historic-romantic quality of this painting also recalls the style of Francesco Hayez. In the years that followed, Morbelli began to concentrate more on themes such as labour and the life of the poor, influenced perhaps by Realist painters of the 1880s such as Achille D'Orsi, Francesco Paolo Michetti and Teofilo Patini. Morbelli's Return to the Stable