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 :. | Cathedral Rock, Yosemite Valley, California | Wooded Landscape | Departure of an Indian War Party | Sunset in the Yosemite Valley | Thunderstorm in the Rocky Mountains |
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James Lynwood Palmer
British artist , 1868 - 1941
Bartholomaus Strobel
(Breslau 1591-1647 Thorn) was a German baroque painter from Silesia who worked in Poland. He studied art in the studio of his father. He spent time in Vienna and in Prague. In 1633 he settled in Gdansk and in 1637 operated in Elbing, and thereafter in Torun. According to Houbraken he received the Dutch painter Gillis Schagen in Elbing in 1637. Strobel was court painter to the emperor at that time, and later became court painter to Władysław IV Vasa, King of Poland.Schagen painted a portrait of the King of Poland to "prove his mastership of the art" for him. According to the RKD he worked mostly in Prague. He produced royal court paintings and paintings for the chapel of St.. Kaźmirza in Vilna, (1636-37), and religious paintings in Torue in 1634.
Otto Muller
1874-1930 was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Br??cke expressionist movement. Otto Mueller was born in Liebau (now Lubawka, Kamienna G??ra County), Kreis Landeshut, German Silesia. Between 1890-1892 he was trained in lithography in Görlitz and Breslau. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and continued his study in Munich 1898. He left Munich's academy after Franz von Stuck classified him as untalented. His early works are influenced by impressionism, Jugendstil and symbolism. When he settled to Berlin in 1908, he turned more and more to the expressionism. During this time there were meetings with Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Rainer Maria Rilke and Erich Heckel. In 1910, he joined 'Die Br??cke', a Dresden-based group of Expressionist artists. He was member of the group until it disbanded in 1913 due to artistic differences. At the same time Mueller also had contact with the artists group of the 'Blaue Reiter'. During the World War I he fought as a German soldier in France and Russia. After the war he became professor at the academy of arts (Akademie der Bildenden Kunste) in Breslau where he taught until his death on September 24, 1930. Johnny Friedlaender and Isidor Ascheim were among his pupils there. Altogether his printmaking amounted to 172 prints, in woodcut, etching and lithography. In 1937 the Nazis seized 357 of his works from German museums, since the pictures were considered as degenerate art. Mueller was one of the most lyrical of German expressionist painters. The central topic in Mueller's works is the unity of humans and nature, whereas his paintings are focused on a harmonious simplification of form, colour and contours.