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 :. | An Indian Encampment | Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains | Farallon Islands, off San Francisco in the Pacific, Northern California | Valley_in_Kings_Canyon, in the Sierra Nevada, California | Last of the Buffalo |
Related Artists:
Carl Friedrich Deiker
(1836-1892 ) - Painter
Gillis Mostraert
Hulst 1534-Antwerp after 1598
Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro
(Lisbon, 21 November 1857 - Lisbon, 6 November 1929), who is usually referred to as Columbano, was a Portuguese Realist painter. Usually considered the greatest Portuguese painter of the 19th century, he has been compared to the likes of Wilhelm Leibl and Thomas Eakins. Columbano was the son of a mediocre romantic painter, Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro, and the younger brother of the great caricaturist, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro. He became the leading painter of his generation and the master of realism in Portuguese painting, specializing in portraiture. He was disciple of his father, of the painter Miguel Ângelo Lupi and the sculptor Simões de Almeida. After attempting twice for a bursar to study abroad finally in 1881 the countess of Edla, second wife of D.Fernando would finance his study in France. There he studied the work of French naturalist, realist and impressionist painters, like Courbet, Manet and Degas without losing his distinctive style which is often gloomy and intimist. He joined the "Grupo do Leão" (The Lion's Group), a usual meeting of artists, writers and intellectuals in a Lisbon downtown restaurant called "Leão de Ouro" (The Golden Lion) in order to discuss aesthetic issues and proclaim Naturalism against the academic art of the time. The group also included Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, Antenio da Silva Porto, Marques de Oliveira and Jose Malhoa. He painted portraits of some of the greatest names of Portuguese society and culture of his time like Jose Maria de Eça de Queiroz, Teefilo Braga, Raul Brandão and had great psychological accuracy in defining the personality of those depicted. His most famous portrait was that of the poet Antero de Quental in 1889. In this haunting work Columbano seems to have anticipated Antero's suicide. Columbano was a well known Republican, so it wasn't surprising that after the Republic proclamation, in 1910, he was invited to design the flag of the new regime and was nominated director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, currently the Chiado Museum, in Lisbon, of which he was in charge from 1914 to 1927. The best collection of his paintings is in the Chiado Museum, in Lisbon. He's also represented in some of the finest Portuguese museums, like the National Museum Soares dos Reis, in Porto.