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 :. | Wharf Scene with Ship at Dock | Yosemite Valley | The Sunset at Monterey Bay, the California Coast | Bears in the Wilderness | In the Forest |
Related Artists:
Panini, Giovanni Paolo
Italian Neoclassical Painter, ca.1691-1765 Italian painter, architect and stage designer. He was a highly prolific and versatile painter, best known for his numerous vedute of Rome, many of which focused on the remnants of the city's Classical past. Ceremonies and festivals often feature in his vedute, which thus constitute a lively documentation of contemporary topography, lifestyle and customs. In contrast to Bernardo Bellotto and Gaspar van Wittel, his treatment is picturesque rather than rigorous; he liked to enliven and animate his views by adding numerous figures. He worked exclusively in Rome and by the end of his career was the head of a thriving workshop that included the Frenchman Hubert Robert (in Rome from 1754) and Panini's son Francesco Panini (b 1738).
John Seymour Lucas
(21 December 1849 - 8 May 1923) was a Victorian English historical and portrait painter as well as an accomplished theatrical costume designer. He was born into an artistic London family, and originally trained as a woodcarver, but turned his attention to portrait painting and entered first the St. Martin's Lane Art School and later the Royal Academy Schools. Here he met his French wife, fellow artist Marie Cornelissen, whom he married in 1877. Lucase artistic education included extensive travels around Europe, particularly Holland and Spain, where he studied the Flemish and Spanish Masters. He first started exhibiting in 1872, was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy in 1876 and a full Royal Academician in 1898. John Seymour Lucas was first and foremost a historical genre painter with a particular talent for realism in the depiction of costumes and interiors. Inspired by van Dyck and particularly Diego Velezquez, he excelled in depicting scenes from the English 16th to 18th century Tudor and Stuart periods, including in particular the Spanish Armada, Preparing for the Voyage, the English Civil War and the Jacobite rebellions. His first major work to achieve widespread public acclaim was Rebel Hunting after Culloden, executed in 1884. It was praised not only for the obvious tension between the muscular blacksmiths and the redcoated forces of law and order (or repression) but for the extraordinary realism in the depiction of the rough smithy and glowing horsehoe on the anvil. In 1885 his next major work whas "Preparing for the Voyage". As his reputation grew, Lucas increasingly mixed in society circles, and became firm friends with the famous society portrait painter John Singer Sargent who was his almost exact contemporary. A portrait of Lucas executed by John Singer Sargent is displayed in Tate Britain. Towards the 1890s John Seymour Lucas executed a number of major works for prestigious public buildings or royal clients. These include: The Flight of the Five Members (Houses of Parliament), The Granting of the Charter of the City of London (Royal Exchange), Reception by HM King Edward VII of the Moorish Ambassador (Royal Collection), HRH the Prince of Wales in German Uniform (Royal Collection) Apart from executing over 100 major oil paintings and a host of drawings, Lucas was renowned as a set and costume designer for the historical dramas popular on the late Victorian and early Edwardian stages. One of his more unusual commissions was the "Duke of Normandy" costume for the ill-fated prince Alfred of Saxe Coburg-Gotha for the Devonshire House Ball in 1897. Lucas was also a prolific watercolour painter and was elected a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1877. During most of his artistic career, John Seymour Lucas lived in a purpose-built studio in South Hampstead, London, designed for him by his friend and fellow artist, architect Sydney Williams-Lee. He retired from painting towards the end of World War I, and moved to Blythburgh, Suffolk, where re-designed a house next to the church known as 'The Priory'. Lucas died in 1923 and is interred in Blythburgh church yard. His son, Sydney Seymour Lucas, was also an artist, and illustrator.
Thomas Waterman Wood
1823-1903 It may be that his reputation as an artist will rest upon his figure pictures, although his very numerous portrait paintings involved much of the effort of his life and are most certainly characterized but simple and strong composition, great technical execution and a masterful use of colors. It may also follow that he will yet achieve his most memorable honors from the interpretations which he has made of great paintings, but from the stand point of those whose minds and hearts are won by considerations of local history the highest interest will be assigned to works in which Wood included characters from his native place. As examples of his work in this direction the following may be mentioned: The Yankee Pedlar had for its model a tin peddler known as "Snapping Tucker", a resident of Calais, Vermont. When this work was sold for a large sum, Tucker promptly claimed his share upon the grounds of his intrinsic worth and natural capacity as a poser. The Village Post Office was taken from the interior of the old Ainsworth store in Williamstown, Vermont, but the figures were mostly taken from Montpelier people. Wood's uncle Zenas was the postmaster and the group around the store, Boyden, Whittier and Bullock, were old-time residents. Their clerk was Horace Scribner, long esteemed as a generous country musician and as the organist of Christ Church. This painting was bought by Mr. Charles Stewart Smith, ex-president of the New York Chamber of Commerce. The scene for the The Quack Doctor was located in front of the old arch which once spanned the head of State Street leading to East State. The old brick building, the home of Montpelier Book Bindery, still stands. This picture was bought by Mr. George I. Seneg for $2,000 and after his death was included in the sale of his entire collection. Another successful painting was The Country Doctor. The artist found the proper model for this work with the aid of the Secretary of State, Dr. George Nichols, in the person of an actual country doctor, then representing the town of Jamaica in the legislature. This doctor bore upon his face the impress of his beneficent labors for more than 40 years in a back country town. Wood himself told the writer, in speaking of this painting, that many a person had said to him, "That doctor is the exact image of my father, who was also a country doctor." This saying he regarded not so much as proof that he had achieved a concrete likeness but as an evidence of having successfully handed down the particular class idea of the old-fashioned country physician, as truly different in type from the city practitioner as was the country lawyer of former days from his brother in the city. In 1891, Wood exhibited at the Academy a picture entitled A Cogitation, for which one of his Montpelier friends, Mr. George Ripley, posed. The composition is extremely simple, a farmer in his barn, leaning upon his pitchfork, his countenance thoughtful. This picture was bought by Mr. Harper and published as a full-page engraving in Harper's Weekly during the Greeley campaign over the title "Is Greeley a Fool or a Knave?". The humorous side of this incident consists in the fact that Mr. Ripley was the model was an ardent supporter of Mr. Greeley in that campaign, while the artist himself, so far as we know, never dabbled in politics. These few examples sufficiently illustrate the influence which the place of his birth had upon Wood. He was not only a Vermonter but a great painter of Vermont ideas, conditions and character. Nor did foreign travel nor city residence nor any influence of professional connections ever tend to diminish the deep and abiding interest in his early home. The subjects of his works, his selection of characters, his yearly pilgrimage to Vermont, all demonstrate his filial loyalty and he gave to this sentiment of his heart its final expression in the establishment, as a gift to Montpelier, of its Gallery of Art. But, apart from this, the homes, offices and institutions of Montpelier and without are filled with the affectionate and great evidences of his work. The Vermont Historical Society possesses several excellent examples of his portraiture, all of great historic value and preserved in the Cedar Creek Reception Room at the Vermont State House: Samuel Prentiss (1881), United States Senator; Mrs. Samuel Prentiss (1895) and Dr. Edward Lamb (1895), gifts to the Society by the family of Mr. Prentiss. In 1896, the Society unveiled a life-size portrait of the distinguished publicist, the Hon. E. P. Walton, the gift of his wife and sister. Wood's personal donations include portraits of the Rev. William A. Lord, D.D. (1874), minister of Bethany Congregational Church of this city, Daniel Pierce Thompson (1880), novelist and author of "The Green Mountain Boys", and Justin S. Morrill, United States Senator, father of tariff legislation, promoter of agricultural colleges and chief up builder of the Library of Congress. One of the noblest paintings now existing in the state is the artist's beautiful translation of Bartolom?? Esteban Murillo's "La Madonna del Rosario". This work, submitting the original with infinite tenderness and feeling, was painted in 1896 in the Dulwich Gallery and was consecrated by Bishop de Goesbriand for the service of Saint Augustine's Church on July 26, 1897. The essential force of this sacred painting is its actual power to impress the beholder with a profound sense of the sacredness of motherhood and the worth and lasting values of purity and religious faith. In accepting this donation from Wood the Reverend Bishop said: "You have made a great Murillo of the seventeenth century our contemporary," an expression not only true of itself but one which defines the special value of the truly great copies of great paintings.