Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

Mountainous Landscape near Estes Park, Colorado

19 by 14 inches, oil/paper/canvas

Signed lower left, exhibition labels verso

Provenance:

            Estate of the Artist, NY, NY, 1902
            Kennedy Galleries, NY
            Adams Davidson Galleries Washington, DC label verso
            Sothebys, May 1990
            Private Collection, Mississippi
            Godel & Co. Fine Art
            Questroyal Fine Art
            Private Collection, Greenwich, CT

            Born in what became Germany, Bierstadt immigrated with his family to the United States as a young child where they settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Displaying art talents as a young age he was encouraged to study painting and by the early 1850’s he returned to Germany where he studied in Dusseldorf along other American artists that included Sanford Robinson Gifford, Eastman Johnson, Emanuel Leutze, William Haseltine and Worthington Whittredge. Under the tutelage of Andreas Achenbach Bierstadt learned how to choreograph his subject matter in the grand scale, and by the time his studies in Europe were done he was working on six by ten foot canvases, one of which resurfaced in Rhode Island about eighteen years ago, a View of Lake Lucerne, which now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

            On his return to the States, Bierstadt quickly ascended the strata of the American Art world becoming with Frederic E. Church one of the two leading American painters during the 1860’s with their artistic entries to group exhibitions often jostling for prime position and being sold for the top dollar. Bierstadt cemented his hold on the American public by heading west during the Civil War and his canvases served as an admirable distraction from that bloody conflict since the size, scope and scale of the landscape out west served as a beacon of hope of the amazing riches that lay just around the corner. In short Bierstadt was the first European trained artist who depicted the American west and as such occupies an extraordinary position of having documented the frontier while still open and being documented. Indeed along with Moran, Bierstadt can be credited with having helped create the National park System as Congress never went west and only knew of such magnificent landscapes through the works of Bierstadt and Moran. His large canvases are in museums around the country and provide a cornerstone to many institutional collections.

            This painting, being on paper, dates from the late 1870's and was likely done in the Estes Park area of what became Rocky Mountain National Park. A close friend of Bierstadt was the Earl of Dunraven, one of the driving forces behind the RMNP’s creation.

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