Liberal Arts Blog — Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) “The Rocky Mountains; Lander’s Peak (1863),”View From Nassau,” “The Emerald Pool” (1870),
Liberal Arts Blog: Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Design, Film, Fashion, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) “The Rocky Mountains; Lander’s Peak (1863),”View from Nassau,” “The Emerald Pool” (1870),
Last time, Frederick Edwin Church (1826–1900) with a focus on three paintings — “The Heart of the Andes,” “Icebergs,” and “Niagara.” Today, another member of the “Hudson River School” who is also classified as belonging to the “Rocky Mountain School” but he also painted scenes from Europe, the Bahamas, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
“Like his contemporaries, Church and Moran, Bierstadt gained renown for his willingness to trek vast distances, often over dangerous rugged terrain, in search of the most spectacular scenery. Taking his stylistic lead from the Düsseldorf School of landscapists, and inspired thematically by his own tour of Alpine regions of Switzerland and Italy, he produced a romanticized and finely detailed version of the American West which he composed from a choice of his own sketches and photographs.”
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS: LANDER’S PEAK” — this is the version in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There is a version in the Fogg at Harvard, but it lacks the Shoshone encampment in the foreground of this one.
1. “In early 1859, he accompanied a government survey expedition, headed by Frederick W. Lander, to the Nebraska Territory. By summer, the party had reached the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains in present-day Wyoming.”
2. “Painted in New York after Bierstadt’s return from these travels, this work advertise the landscape as a frontier destined to be claimed by White settlers, according to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.”
3. The Shoshone are depicted in the foreground. “The manners and the customs of the Indians are still as they were hundreds of years ago and now is the time to paint them for they are rapidly passing away and soon will be known only in history. I think the artist ought to tell his portion of their history, as well as the writer, a combination of both will assuredly render it more complete.” (Bierstadt)
NB: “Publicly exhibited to great acclaim, this monumental painting established Bierstadt as a. key competitor of the preeminent landscape painter, Frederick Edwin Church…It was purchased in 1865 for the then-astounding sum of $25,000 by James McHenry, an American living in London. Bierstadt later bought in back and gave or sold it to his brother Edward.” The painting was bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1907.
“VIEW OF NASSAU” (1880s) — one of many paintings of the Bahamas
1. “When Bierstadt’s wife Rosalie was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1876, she was advised by doctors to spend the colder months in a warmer climate and so the couple spent the winter months in Nassau where Bierstadt discovered a new sort of landscape to inspire him.”
2. “Though somewhat reminiscent of Bierstadt’s oil sketches of Southern Italy and the beach at Capri painted in the late 1850s, [his Bahamian] pictures otherwise differ substantially from most of the rest of [his] works. In place of a concern with the natural sublime, Bierstadt investigated and captured the appearance of the town and landscape of Nassau and the lively activities of the local inhabitants, recorded in brilliant colors and suffused in warm sunlight.”
THE EMERALD POOL (1870) — Peabody River in the White Mountains of New Hampshire
1.”I never had a more difficult painting to paint and my artist friends think it is my best picture and so do I.” (Bierstadt)
2. “Based on some 200 sketches and three painted studies that he produced between 1852 and 1869.”
3. “We have seen no painting that came nearer our ideal of the best landscape art, combining perfect truth with freedom, largeness, and sentiment.” (San Francisco Bulletin, 1871)
NB: The painting is now in the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Have you ever been? I had no idea that it existed until this morning. See last link below.
FOOTNOTE — Biographical notes
1. Born in Prussia in 1830 but moved with his parents to New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1831. His father was a cooper.
2. Returned to Germany in 1853 to study painting in Dusseldorf. Back in the USA in 1857,
3. “His older brothers were prominent stereo view photographers Edward Bierstadt and Charles Bierstadt.”
NB: He was drafted in 1863 during the Civil War, but hired a substitute.
“Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime.”
Albert Bierstadt Paintings, Bio, Ideas
Albert Bierstadt | The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak | American | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Nancy Siegel on Albert Bierstadt’s White Mountain Scenery and The Emerald Pool
Hudson River School — Wikipedia
Chrysler Museum of Art — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IP5ATbqCWPv0WKC4dCDgAiidbFVOaqR_
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned recently or ever related to art, sculpture, design, architecture, film, or anything visual.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And to cement in your own memory something cool or important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that is close to your heart.
