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 :. | The Wolf River, Kansas | California Spring | Western Kansas | Oregon Trail, | The Grand Tetons |
Related Artists:
Master Of The Parrot
painted Mary Magdalen in between 1525(1525) and 1550(1550)
Solon H. Borglum
American Sculptor, 1868-1922,was an American sculptor. Born in Ogden, Utah, he was the younger brother of Gutzon Borglum and uncle of Lincoln Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame. The son of Danish immigrants who settled on the great plains, Solon Borglum spent his early years as a rancher in western Nebraska. Though he later lived in Paris and New York and achieved a reputation as one of America's best sculptors, it was his depiction of frontier life, and especially his experience with cowboys and native American peoples, on which his reputation was founded. Borglum studied under Louis Rebisso in Cleveland and in Paris. He specialized in depicting people and scenes of the American West. He moved to the Silvermine neighborhood of New Canaan, Connecticut, where he helped found the "Knockers Club" of artists. His brother, Gutzon, lived in nearby Stamford,
GRAMATICA, Antiveduto
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1571-1626 Italian painter. He was from a Sienese family. According to Baglione, his parents were journeying from Siena to Rome when his mother went into labour and gave birth to him at an inn, an inconvenience that had been foreseen ('antiveduto') by his father and led to his unusual name. For a brief period he was a pupil of Giandomenico Angelini ( fl 1550-1600), under whom he painted small-scale works, mainly on copper. His prolific production of devotional paintings, portraits and copies of portraits won him swift success; in 1593 he became a member of the Accademia di S Luca and in 1604 of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi. His early portraits have not been identified; they included highly popular copies of a series of Famous Men then at the Villa Medici, works that Caravaggio probably also copied when he worked for some months in his studio on his arrival in Rome in 1592