Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt PDF

Author: Peter H. Hassrick

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780806160047

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As one of America's most prominent nineteenth-century painters, Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is justly renowned for his majestic paintings of the western landscape. Yet Bierstadt was also a painter of history, and his figural works, replete with images of Plains Indians and the American bison, are an important part of his legacy as well. This splendid full-color volume highlights his achievements in chronicling a rapidly changing American West. Born in Germany, Bierstadt rose to prominence as an American artist in the late 1850s and enjoyed nearly two decades of critical success. His paintings propelled him to the forefront of the American art scene, but they also met with reproach from his peers and critics in the press who viewed his painting style as outmoded. Bierstadt's star has both risen and fallen as modern art historians have reconsidered his complex oeuvre. This volume takes a major step in reappraising Bierstadt's contributions by reexamining the artist through a new lens. It shows how Bierstadt conveyed moral messages through his paintings, often to preserve the dignity of Native peoples and call attention to the tragic slaughter of the American bison. More broadly, the book reconsiders the artist's engagement with contemporary political and social debates surrounding wildlife conservation in America, the creation and perpetuation of national parks, and the prospects for the West's indigenous peoples. Bierstadt's final history paintings, including his dual masterworks titled The Last of the Buffalo--a special focus of this volume--stand out as elegiac odes to an earlier era, giving voice to concerns about the intertwined fates of Native peoples and endangered wildlife, especially bison. Along with its rich sampling of Bierstadt's diverse artwork, Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West features informative essays by noted curators, scholars of art history, and historians of the American West.

Pioneer Photographers of the Far West

Pioneer Photographers of the Far West PDF

Author: Peter E. Palmquist

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 716

ISBN-13: 9780804738835

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This extraordinarily comprehensive, well-documented, biographical dictionary of some 1,500 photographers (and workers engaged in photographically related pursuits) active in western North America before 1865 is enriched by some 250 illustrations. Far from being simply a reference tool, the book provides a rich trove of fascinating narratives that cover both the professional and personal lives of a colorful cast of characters.

Bierstadt's West

Bierstadt's West PDF

Author: Gerald L. Carr

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780935037906

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Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) took his first trip West early in 1859 with Frederic Lander. He was chosen to be a civilian artist on a government expedition which set out to improve the wagon roads of the South Pass from Fort Kearny to the eastern border of California. By the middle of the year, Bierstadt was following the same steps taken by Alfred Jacob Miller twenty-two years earlier, on the Oregon Trail. Along the way he met and sketched thousands of discouraged gold seekers and immigrants. In late summer he returned east and began turning his sketches into huge canvases. Included among some of these earlier scenes were Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie and Laramie Park .Bierstadt's second trip, this time to the far West, took place in 1863. He traveled with his friend Fitz Ludlow. They spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley beyond the Sierra Nevada, eventually traveling up into Oregon. By 1864, scarcely five years after painting his first Rocky Mountain picture, Bierstadt was the most highly acclaimed American painter, rivaling even Frederick Church. As an artist, Bierstadt was concerned more with communicating his image of the West to the American public than with following changing styles in the art world. For him, the immensity of the Rocky Mountains could find appropriate expression only on large canvases. Despite their size, and the immensity of terrain represented, he also managed to include a lavish amount of detail, particularly in his foregrounds. As a consequence, he was often criticized in later years for overstatement, for combining several paintings into one canvas, sometimes from different perspectives. When he did not lose sight of the whole in his efforts to combine large vistas and accurate amounts of detail, the impact of his work could be universalizing.

Reading the West

Reading the West PDF

Author: Michael Kowalewski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-02-23

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780521565592

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The American West of myth and legend has always exerted a strong hold on the popular imagination, and the essays in Reading the West examine some of the basis of that fascination. Reading the West, first published in 1996, is a collection of critical essays by writers, independent scholars and critics on the literature of the American West in the last two centuries. It showcases new ways of reading and understanding western writing. Arguing for the importance of 'place' in literature, these essays explore what makes representative literary works 'western'. They also explore the multicultural and ecological dimensions of western writing. This volume helps enrich our understanding of a distinguished body of literary work which has sometimes been unjustly ignored. It deals not only with literature but with the changing conception of the West in the American imagination.

Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt PDF

Author: Nancy K. Anderson

Publisher:

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9781555950590

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Bierstadt was the great recorder of the American western landscape. He was the first artist with both the technique and the talent to convey the powerful visual impact of western space and to capture the scale of America's mountains. This magnificent volume provides a full appreciation of his talent as an artist.

American Paradise

American Paradise PDF

Author: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0870994972

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Traces the history of the Hudson River School of American painters, shows works by Church, Cole, and Inness, and describes the background of each painting.

New Haven’s Sentinels

New Haven’s Sentinels PDF

Author: Jelle Zeilinga de Boer

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0819573752

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West Rock and East Rock are bold and beautiful features around New Haven, Connecticut. They resemble monumental gateways (or time-tried sentinels) and represent a moment in geologic time when the North American and African continents began to separate and volcanism affected much of Connecticut. The rocks attracted the attention of poets, painters, and naturalists when beliefs rose about the spiritual dimensions of nature in the early 19th century. More than two dozen artists, including Frederick Church, George Durrie, and John Weir, captured their magic and produced an assortment of classic American landscapes. In the same period, the science of geology evolved rapidly, triggered by the controversy between proponents and opponents of biblical explanations for the origin of rocks. Lavishly illustrated, featuring over sixty paintings and prints, this book is a perfect introduction to understanding the relationship of geology and art. It will delight those who appreciate landscape painting, and anyone who has seen the grandeur of East and West Rock.

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