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 :. | Estes Park | the conflagration | Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mount Rosalie | California Sunset | Lake in the Rockies |
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Mashkov, Ilya
Russian Painter, 1881-1944 was a Russian artist, one of the most significant and at the same time most characteristic painters of the circle of "Jack of Diamonds" He was born in the cossack village Mikhailovskaya-on-Don (near Volgograd) 29 July [O.S. 17 July] 1881 in a peasant family. After arriving at Moscow in 1900 he attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, whose teachers included Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov. In 1909 he was expelled from the school because of his artistic free thinking. He traveled much as a student, visiting a number of the countries of West Europe, and also Turkey and Egypt. He was the member of associations "Mir iskusstva"
BOL, Ferdinand
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1616-1680 Ferdinand was born in Dordrecht as the son of a surgeon, Balthasar Bol.[2] Ferdinand Bol was first an apprentice of Jacob Cuyp in his hometown and/or of Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht. After 1630 he studied with Rembrandt, living in his house in Sint Antoniesbreestraat, then a fashionable street and area for painters, jewellers, architects, and many Flemish and Jewish immigrants.[3] In 1641 Bol started his own studio. In 1652 he became a burgher of Amsterdam, and in 1653 he married Elisabeth Dell, whose father held positions with the Admiralty of Amsterdam and the wine merchants' guild, both institutions that later gave commissions to the artist. Within a few years (1655) he became the head of the guild and received orders to deliver two chimney pieces for rooms in the new town hall designed by Jacob van Campen, and four more for the Admiralty of Amsterdam. Portrait of a Woman Dressed as a Huntress by Ferdinand Bol, courtesy Figge Art MuseumBy this time Bol was a popular and successful painter. His palette had lightened, his figures possessed greater elegance, and by the middle of the decade he was receiving more official commissions than any other artist in Amsterdam.[4] Godfrey Kneller was his pupil.[5] Bol delivered four paintings for the two mansions of the brothers Trip, originally also from Dordrecht.[6] Bol's first wife died 1660. In 1669 Bol married for the second time to Anna van Arckel, widow of the treasurer of the Admiralty, and apparently retired from painting at that point in his life.[7]In 1672 the couple moved to Keizersgracht 472, then a newly designed part of the city, and now the Museum van Loon. Bol served as a governor in a Home for Lepers. Bol died a few weeks after his wife, on Herengracht, where his son, a lawyer, lived. Probably his best known painting is a portrait of Elisabeth Bas, the wife of the naval officer Joachim Swartenhondt and an innkeeper near the Dam square. This and many other of his paintings would in the 19th century be falsely attributed to Rembrandt.
Thomas Guest
British artist 1754-1818