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 :. | On the Plains | Hetch Hetchy Valley | Four Indians | Guerrilla_Warfare (Picket Duty In Virginia) | Rhone Valley |
Related Artists:
Giovanni Battista Castagneto
painted Seascape in 1851 - 1900
Arkady Rylov
(Russian: 29 January 1870 - June 22, 1939) was a Russian and Soviet Symbolist painter. Rylov was born in the village Istobenskoye, Vyatka gubernia. He was brought in the family of his stepfather, a notary (Rylov's father had a psychiatric illness). He moved to Saint Petersburg and studied at the Technical Design School of Baron Schtiglitz (1888-1891), then at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Arkhip Kuindzhi (1894-1897). Rylov was a member of the Mir iskusstva movement and its spin-off Union of Russian Artists also a member of the Association of Artists of the Revolutionary Russia. He was a chairman of the Kuindzhi Society. He started as a historical painter (his graduation work in the Imperial Academy of Arts was Assault of Pechenegs on a Slav village but became a predominately landscape painter. Still many of his paintings have some allusions with Russian history. Many of his landscapes painted after the October Revolution were seen as symbols of the revolutionary Freedom. At that time he also painted some typical Socialist Realism compositions like Lenin in Razliv. He taught in the Academy of Arts. In his studio he created almost a small nature reserve. There lived squirrels, rabbits, monkey Manka and many wild birds (without cages) and two anthills. According to Mikhail Nesterov wild animals and birds loved Rylov and often came to his studio.
George Loring Brown
American Hudson River School Painter, 1814-1889,American painter and illustrator. He was apprenticed at about 14 to the Boston wood-engraver Alonzo Hartwell and had produced scores of illustrations by 1832, when he turned to painting and sailed to Europe for further training. After brief stays in Antwerp and London, he settled in Paris, where he was admitted to the atelier of Eugene Isabey. Returning to America in 1834, Brown produced illustrations, portraits and landscapes. He travelled throughout the north-eastern USA, sketching in watercolour and in oil.