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 | A River Landscape, Westphalia | Wind River Mountains Nebraska Territory | Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains | Mount Hood, Oregon |
Related Artists:
Auguste Rodin
French Sculptor, 1840-1917 .French sculptor. Insolvent and repeatedly rejected by the École des Beaux-Arts, he earned his living by doing decorative stonework. Not until his late 30s, after a trip to Italy, did he develop a personal style free of academic restraints and establish his reputation as a sculptor with The Age of Bronze (exhibited 1878), whose realism was so great that he was accused of forming its mold on a living person. His Gates of Hell, a bronze door commissioned in 1880 for a proposed Musee des Arts Decoratifs, remained unfinished at his death, but two of its many figures were the bases of his most famous images, The Thinker (1880) and The Kiss (1886). His portraits include monumental figures of Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. Though these and many other works caused controversy for their unconventionality, he was successful enough that he could establish a workshop where he executed only molds, leaving the casting of bronze and the carving of marble to assistants. To his sculpture he added book illustrations, etchings, and numerous drawings, mostly of female nudes.
Michael Conrad Hirt
painted Portrait of Anna Rosina Tanck, wife of the mayor of Lubecker in1642
Cornelius Krieghoff
Dutch-born Canadian Painter, 1815-1872 Canadian painter of Dutch birth. He learnt the rudiments of music and painting from his father and about 1830 attended the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste in D?sseldorf. He moved to America c. 1835 and enlisted in the US army. In New York he met Louise Gauthier, a French-Canadian, and settled in Montreal with her in 1840, working as a painter and a musician. In 1842-3 he had a studio in Rochester, NY; in the following year he studied in Paris, making copies in the Louvre. Returning to Canada in 1845, he painted portraits in Toronto, and from 1845 to 1853 he lived in Longueuil and then in Montreal, where he produced genre paintings, landscapes and portraits. He exhibited in Montreal and Toronto, and a series of lithographs were published after his drawings. However, he found it difficult to sell his work in Montreal and had to resort more or less completely to sign-painting for a living. About 1853, at the instigation of the auctioneer John Budden, Krieghoff settled in Quebec City. He lived there for 11 years, making several trips to Europe. During this period of intensive production, he achieved popularity and prosperity and painted his best-known pictures, which were scenes depicting the local townspeople and the North American Indians, and views of Quebec City and the surrounding region. About 1858 he made panoramic paintings of Canada for the Provincial Parliament buildings in Quebec. From 1864 to 1867 he lived in Paris and Munich,