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 :. | A River Estuary | Moat Mountain Intervale New Hampshire | Buffalo Head | Mariposa Indian Encampment, Yosemite Valley, California | Ein Sturm in den RockY Mountains,Mount Rosalie |
Related Artists:
George Loring Brown
American Hudson River School Painter, 1814-1889,American painter and illustrator. He was apprenticed at about 14 to the Boston wood-engraver Alonzo Hartwell and had produced scores of illustrations by 1832, when he turned to painting and sailed to Europe for further training. After brief stays in Antwerp and London, he settled in Paris, where he was admitted to the atelier of Eugene Isabey. Returning to America in 1834, Brown produced illustrations, portraits and landscapes. He travelled throughout the north-eastern USA, sketching in watercolour and in oil.
Giacinto Gigante
(1806-1876) was an Italian painter. Gigante was introduced to painting by his father Gaetano Gigante. His brothers Achille Gigante and Ercole Gigante also became landscape artists. He trained in the style of Hackert and was influenced by the technical drawing carried out at the Naples Royal Institute of Fine Arts. Along with Achille Vianellihe was to be strongly influenced by a large colony of foreign painters then present in Naples including Huber and Pitloo. From Wolfgang Huber Gigante learnt watercolour technique and the use of the panoramic ?-amera lucidae method. Via Huber he met the Dutch artist Anton Sminck van Pitloo, who became his teacher for a few years. In 1823 Gigante won the Naples Royal Institute of Fine Arts drawing competition. In 1826 he displayed four works at the first Esposizione di Belle Arti. Reportedly though Gigante did not fit in well with the life of the Naples Royal Institute of Fine Arts and left. Around 1826 he was living in Naples in Vicoletto del Vasto 15, with Van Pitloo, Carl Götzloff and Teodoro Duclere. He is considered the foremost exponent of the 19th-century Neapolitan "Posillipo School" of painting.
Carl Schweninger
a genre, Animal and Landscape painter. Austrian,1818-1887