Albert Bierstadt
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 :. | The Yosemite Fall | Ferns_and_Rocks_on_an_Embankment | Merced River in Yosemite | By_a_Mountain_Lake | Seal Rock | Related Artists: Weeks Lord-Edwin189-1903
American artist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1849. He was a pupil of Leon Bonnat and of Jean-Leon Gerome, at Paris. He made many voyages to the East, and was distinguished as a painter of oriental scenes. In 1895 he wrote and illustrated a book of travels, From the Black Sea through Persia and India, and two years later he published Episodes of Mountaineering. He died in November 1903. He was a member of the Legion d'honneur, France, an officer of the Order of St. Michael, Germany, and a member of the Secession, Munich. LA FOSSE, Charles deFrench Baroque Era Painter, 1636-1716
French painter and draughtsman. He was the most important decorative painter in France in the generation after Charles Le Brun and in this capacity contributed to many of the major official and private building projects from the 1670s to the 1710s, including the D?me des Invalides in Paris and the chapel at the ch?teau of Versailles. His colourist's temperament, his early study of the Venetian painters of the 16th century and his interest in the work of Peter Paul Rubens contributed to the triumph of the party that championed colour over line and put him in the vanguard of the new tendency in French painting in the later 17th century. His work, with its rich and changing colours, combines the strength of the 17th century Cornelis BisschopIn ca. 1650 he was a student of Ferdinand Bol in Amsterdam. In 1653 he was back in Dordrecht, where he got married. According to Houbraken he was the first to paint carved trompe l'oeil wooden panels in such an ingenious way that they became quite popular. He painted historical allegories, portraits, still lifes, and genre-works. He was asked to paint for the Danish court, but he died unexpectedly, leaving his wife and eleven children. Of these children, two sons (Abraham (1660-1700) & Jacobus Bisschop (1658-1698)) and three daughters became painters. These had been his students when he died, and Margaretha van Godewijk studied with his daughters. She wrote an emblem about his self-portrait with a curtain, which illustrates the legend of Zeuxis.
His son Jacobus later became a student of Augustinus Terwesten in the Confrerie Pictura
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