Albert Bierstadt

Among the Sierra Nevada — the American sublime

The painter who revealed the American West to the East Coast and to Europe. His enormous canvases of the Rockies, Yosemite, and the Sierra Nevada — bathed in a golden, almost supernatural light — are the visual equivalent of Manifest Destiny: landscape as national mythology. A German immigrant who studied in Dusseldorf, he brought the European sublime tradition to a subject that dwarfed anything the Alps could offer.

Key works

• Among the Sierra Nevada, California1868— The American West as paradise — 6 by 10 feet of luminous grandeur
  Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
• The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak1863— The painting that made the West famous
  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Looking Down Yosemite Valley1865— Cathedral light in a cathedral of stone
  Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama

Connections

External