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 Island | Canoes | View of Donner Lake, California | A Rocky Mountain Sheep, Ovis, Montana | The Golden Gate |
Related Artists:
Lucien Levy-Dhurmer
French Art Nouveau Painter, 1865-1953,was a French Symbolist/Art Nouveau painter and potter. He was born Lucien Levy to a Jewish family in Algiers. In 1879 he began studying drawing and sculpture in Paris. In 1887 Levy began making his living in southern France, overseeing the decoration of ceramics. His own tastes in pottery decoration were influenced by Islamic Art. In 1895 he left for Paris to begin a career in painting; around this time he visited Italy and was further influenced by art of the Renaissance. In 1896 he exhibited his first pastels and paintings under the name Lucien Levy-Dhurmer; he'd added the last two syllables of his mother's maiden name (Goldhurmer), likely to differentiate himself from other people named Levy. His paintings soon became popular with the public and among fellow artists as well. He earned high praise for the academic attention to detail with which he captured figures lost in a Pre-Raphaelite haze of melancholy, contrasted with bright Impressionist colouration. His portrait of writer Georges Rodenbach is perhaps the most striking example of this strange and extraordinary synergy.
Robert Alexander Hillingford
(1825-1904) was an English painter. He specialized in historical pictures, often battle scenes. Contents He was born in London on January 28, 1828, and studied in Desseldorf in 1841 for five years and before traveling to Munich, Rome, Florence and Naples, where he married and worked for several years, producing paintings of Italian life. One painting from this period entitled The Last Evening of the Carnival was exhibited at St. Petersburg in 1859. He returned to London in 1864, and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1866; it was at this time that he began to work on historical subjects, especially of the Napoleonic Wars. He was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, British Institution and at other galleries. While he was attracted to costume pieces such as An incident in the early life of Louis XIV and During the wanderings of Charles Edward Stuart', he also included some contemporary military scenes including his 1901 RA painting South Africa, 1901 - The Dawn of Peace. Wellington at Waterloo Lord Hill invites the last remnants of the French Imperial Guard to surrenderThe original paintings often come up at auction, and, with a large amount of the collection dispersed in 1998, the original paintings are widely scattered.
George Washington