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拍品專文
The present work may depict a vista from the Princess Louisa Inlet on the coast of British Columbia in western Canada. In the summer of 1889, Albert Bierstadt was commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railroad to paint the glorious mountain vistas along the railway line. After his cross-country trip, Bierstadt boarded the Ancon, a coastal steamer, from Victoria, Canada, to Northern British Columbia and Southern Alaska. On August 30, the Ancon crashed into a reef on Revillagigedo Island in Loring Bay, Alaska. Bierstadt documented this accident in his Wreck of the "Ancon" in Loring Bay, Alaska of 1889 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts). In a letter to his wife, Bierstadt wrote: "...poor Ancon, it was a narrow escape. The steamer brought us back after 5 days living in Indian huts and salmon canneries. I was busy all the time and have 60 studies in color and two books full of drawings of Alaska." (N. Anderson, L. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise, New York, 1990, p. 263) It is from the these studies that Bierstadt is thought to have painted Island in the Lake.
The present work epitomizes Bierstadt's dramatic celebration of an unspoiled wilderness and his mastery of light. His clear admiration for the resplendent beauty of the Pacific Northwest is indisputable, as evidenced in some of his best works such as Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) in the Seattle Art Museum. Here, a divine light descends through the clouds, casting reflections on the still, clear body of water and the reverent Indians along its shore. The small group of Indians are the only suggestions of human life in the painting, and they become dwarfed by the awe-inspiring rock formation, majestic waterfall and low-lying clouds. The light, the stillness and the warmth surrounding the majestic mountains project a spiritual silence. Bierstadt's earlier artistic training in Düsseldorf provided him with the necessary skill and technique, but the grandeur of the West provided him with the monumental vistas which would become his trademark.
A contemporary critic, James Jackson Jarvis, praised Bierstadt's scientific expression of nature: "He seeks to depict the absolute qualities and forms of things. The botanist and geologist can find work in his rocks and vegetation. He seizes upon natural phenomena with naturalistic eyes. In the quality of American light, clear, transparent, and sharp in outlines, he is unsurpassed." (as quoted in G. Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West, New York, 1974, p. 144) In Island in the Lake, the level of detail in the Indians, the rock formation, the island, the waterfall and the powerful rays of light attest to the artist's communion with nature.
Bierstadt's synthesis of the broadly monumental and the finely detailed, of grand scale and intimate moments, places his work among the most successful expressions of the many paradoxes of nature. As seen in Island in the Lake, Bierstadt's attention to detail and evocation of light harmoniously brings together the spiritual and natural world in his masterful compositions.
The present work epitomizes Bierstadt's dramatic celebration of an unspoiled wilderness and his mastery of light. His clear admiration for the resplendent beauty of the Pacific Northwest is indisputable, as evidenced in some of his best works such as Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) in the Seattle Art Museum. Here, a divine light descends through the clouds, casting reflections on the still, clear body of water and the reverent Indians along its shore. The small group of Indians are the only suggestions of human life in the painting, and they become dwarfed by the awe-inspiring rock formation, majestic waterfall and low-lying clouds. The light, the stillness and the warmth surrounding the majestic mountains project a spiritual silence. Bierstadt's earlier artistic training in Düsseldorf provided him with the necessary skill and technique, but the grandeur of the West provided him with the monumental vistas which would become his trademark.
A contemporary critic, James Jackson Jarvis, praised Bierstadt's scientific expression of nature: "He seeks to depict the absolute qualities and forms of things. The botanist and geologist can find work in his rocks and vegetation. He seizes upon natural phenomena with naturalistic eyes. In the quality of American light, clear, transparent, and sharp in outlines, he is unsurpassed." (as quoted in G. Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West, New York, 1974, p. 144) In Island in the Lake, the level of detail in the Indians, the rock formation, the island, the waterfall and the powerful rays of light attest to the artist's communion with nature.
Bierstadt's synthesis of the broadly monumental and the finely detailed, of grand scale and intimate moments, places his work among the most successful expressions of the many paradoxes of nature. As seen in Island in the Lake, Bierstadt's attention to detail and evocation of light harmoniously brings together the spiritual and natural world in his masterful compositions.