Albert Bierstadt

German-born American artist Albert Bierstadt was one of a group of 19th-century artists who helped shape a collective vision of the American West that still resonates today. Born in Solingen, Germany in 1830, Bierstadt and his family emigrated to the United States when he was just two years old, settling in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Bierstadt’s early interest in art led him back to Germany in 1853 to study at the Düsseldorf Academy. He further honed his technical skills painting alpine landscapes while on a sketching tour through Germany, Switzerland and Italy through the 1950s, before returning to the US.

In the spring of 1858, he contributed a painting of Lake Lucerne and the Swiss Alps to the National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition in New York, gaining instant critical attention — and an honorary membership into the academy just a few weeks later. The next year he made his first trip to the West, joining government surveyor Frederick W. Lander's team on a trip across the American Prairie to the Rocky Mountains. During this trip, Bierstadt made sketches of the dramatic landscapes from which he painted his most important works, including Indians Spear Fishing (1862). Christie’s sold this painting in 2008 in New York for a world auction record price of US$7,321,000.

Bierstadt was a member of the Hudson River School of painting, a loosely associated group of Romantic American landscape artists, whose ethereal treatment of light later prompted the term ‘luminism’. Bierstadt was renowned for his grand and luminous portrayals of the American West. His journeys to the Rocky Mountains, the Oregon Trail, the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite Valley provided him with the inspiration for his most famous works. Albert Bierstadt paintings are characterised by their meticulous detail, dramatic lighting, and vast, expansive compositions, capturing the awe-inspiring beauty of the American wilderness.

Bierstadt continued to paint until his death in 1902, leaving behind a legacy of works that capture the untamed beauty of the American West. His contributions to American art are celebrated in numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where his works continue to inspire awe and admiration.