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_Fishing_Fleet | Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite Valley | Albert Bierstadt's art | Guerilla Warfare | Ein Sturm in den RockY Mountains,Mount Rosalie |
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Jaime Morera Galicia
Spanish , 1854-1927
Louis de Silvestre
(23 June 1675 - 11 April 1760) was a French portrait and history painter. He was court painter to King Augustus II of Poland, and director of the Royal Academy of Arts in Dresden. Sylvestre was born in Sceaux, south of Paris, the third son of Israel Silvestre, the notable engraver and drawing-master to the Dauphin himself. Louis was taught initially by his father, then trained under Charles Le Brun and Bon Boullogne; he completed his studies in Rome, where he met Carlo Maratta, whose work had a great influence on him. After his return to Paris, Sylvester entered the Royal Academy in 1702 and was appointed professor in 1706.
Francois Louis Francais
Plombieres 1814 - Paris 1897. was born at Plombi??res-les-bains (Vosges), and, on attaining the age of fifteen, was placed as office-boy with a bookseller. After a few years of hard struggle, during which he made a precarious living by drawing on stone and designing woodcut vignettes for book illustration, he studied painting under Gigoux, and subsequently under Corot, whose influence remained decisive upon Français's style of landscape painting. He generally found his subjects in the neighbourhood of Paris, and though he never rivalled his master in lightness of touch and in the lyric poetry which is the principal charm of Corot's work, he is still counted among the leading landscape painters of his country and period. He exhibited first at the Paris Salon in 1837 and was elected to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1890. Comparatively few of his pictures are to be found in public galleries, but his painting of "An Italian Sunset" is at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. Other works of importance are "Daphnis et Chloë" (1872),