ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)
Mount Brewer (4,138 m - 13,576 ft)
United States of America (California)
In Mount Brewer from King's River Canyon, 1872, oil on canvas, Private Collection Texas
The mountain
Mount Brewer (4,138 m - 13,576 ft) is on the Great Western Divide, a sub-range of the Sierra Nevada in California. It is located in Kings Canyon National Park. The peak was named for William Henry Brewer who worked on the first California Geological Survey and was the first Chair of Agriculture at Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School. He was chief of the field party that explored the central High Sierra in 1864.
The painter
Albert Bierstadt was a German-born American painter. In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along this scenic river. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.
In 1858 he exhibited a large painting of a Swiss landscape at the National Academy of Design, which gained him positive critical reception and honorary membership in the Academy. At this time Bierstadt began painting scenes in New England and upstate New York, including in the Hudson River valley. A group of artists known as the Hudson River School portrayed its majestic landscapes and craggy areas, as well as the light affected by the changing waters.
In 1859, Bierstadt traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor for the U.S. government, to see those landscapes. He continued to visit the American West throughout his career.
During the American Civil War, Bierstadt paid for a substitute to serve in his place when he was drafted in 1863. He completed one Civil War painting Guerrilla Warfare, Civil War in 1862, based on his brief experiences with soldiers stationed at Camp Cameron in 1861.
Bierstadt's painting was based on a stereoscopic photograph taken by his brother Edward Bierstadt, who operated a photography studio at Langley's Tavern in Virginia. Bierstadt's painting received a positive review when it was exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1861. Curator Eleanor Jones Harvey observes that Bierstadt's painting, created from photographs, "is quintessentially that of a voyeur, privy to the stories and unblemished by the violence and brutality of first-hand combat experience."
In 1860, he was elected a member of the National Academy; he received medals in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, and Germany. In 1867 he traveled to London, where he exhibited two landscape paintings in a private reception with Queen Victoria. He traveled through Europe for two years, cultivating social and business contacts to sustain the market for his work overseas.
Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choices of subject and his use of light was felt to be excessive.
Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime. Many of these are held by museums across the United States.