Albert Bierstadt: The Landscape Master
June 23, 2016Today, Albert Bierstadt is rightly remembered as perhaps the premier painter of the vast landscapes of the American West. He was a gifted artist, a captivating wayfarer and a pioneering globetrotter. His adventures took him through sweeping landscapes, majestic mountain ranges, rugged coast lines and stormy seas. These travels would ultimately make him one of America’s best known artists. Recording perviously uncharted territories in beautiful and inspiring oil paintings, Albert Bierstadt did it all well before the advent of high tech climbing equipment, mobile phones and GPS. Instead he relied on his own intuition and innate sense of direction.
His work continues to beguile explorers, mountaineers, trekkers, campers and anyone who loves enchanting landscapes and wild, open spaces. Adventurers will recognise many of the places depicted in his paintings, including the Rocky Mountains, the Redwood Forests, the Great Plains, Niagara Falls, Alaska, and California and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Later Bierstadt also travelled through Switzerland, Bavaria, Italy and Belgium.
Bierstadt's primary purpose as an artist was to stimulate interest in mountains, coastal waters, shore lines, vast plains and the indigenous wildlife of both America and Europe. He brought America’s majestic lands to people who would otherwise never have the opportunity to experience the vistas he enjoyed. His creations in oil between 1856 and 1900 became so sought after that he made a very good living as a painter.
Born in Germany but brought to the United States at the age of one, Bierstadt honed his drawing skills as a teenager, something Renaissance artists both north and south of the Italian Alps insisted on. In 1853 at the age of 23 he returned to Germany to be trained in the fine arts. Although training at the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf was informal, his knowledge and use of Renaissance methods is evident.
Returning to the states in 1857, Bierstadt set his sights westward. The drawings and sketches he made on his travels would become the large and splendid paintings we know and love today. Bierstadt’s work certainly paid homage to ‘manifest destiny’ – the widely held belief that the United States was destined for coast-to-coast expansion and settlement. Although this would come at the expense of Native Americans, his paintings depicting them in situ delighted his audience.
Training techniques varied very little from academy to academy. Drawing was well-established as basic training practice in art academies, as was the copying of early masterpieces as practical exercises for handling light and shade, juxtaposition, prospective and overall proportions of the content (the 'rule of three'). It is evident through his work that Bierstadt was an expert in these technical methods and able to arrive at a flowing seductive whole in his landscapes.
The Shore of the Turquoise Sea includes contrasting, juxtaposition, perspective and the 'rule of three' techniques. The canvas is divided into three sections: 1) Foreground, 2) Detail and perspective lines in the middle section, and 3) Sky and horizon. Bierstadt uses this format, juxtaposition and contrast with perspective time and again; it conveys the drama and emotion of vastness – of seas, plains and mountains.
Images: 1-4: Public domain; 5, 6: Wikipedia; 7-10: Public domain