Albert Bierstadt: Landscape Painting on a Grand Scale

If you have decided you need a framed landscape to decorate your wall, you might want to condider the work of Albert Bierstadt, a master known for his paintings of the American West.
Born in Germany, Albert Bierstadt (1830 – 1902) is best known for documenting the beauty of American West’s scenery while on several expeditions of the Western Expansion. He founded the Rocky Mountain School of Landscape. Painting through his precise, natural and light-drenched artworks. Bierstadt painted huge, dramatic images of the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite with the hope of recreating their splendor for Easterners.
Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany. His family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1833. He early developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth. In 1851, he began to paint in oils. He studied painting with the members of the Düsseldorf School in Düsseldorf, Germany from 1853 to 1857. He taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself to painting.

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"The magnificent beauty of the natural world is a manifestation of the mysterious natural laws that will be forever obscured from us." ~ Albert Bierstadt

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Bierstadt began making paintings in New England and upstate New York. In 1859, he traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander, 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.

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Truly all is remarkable and a wellspring of amazement and wonder. Man is so fortunate to dwell in this American Garden of Eden." ~ Albert Bierstadt

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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 was the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc.¹

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¹ wikipedia

Spotlight On Hiroshige, Lynch, Pollock, Johns and Klee

The number of artists featured at AcesWebWorld.com just increased by a five-spot. Check out our pages dedicated to Hiroshige, Brent Lynch, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and Paul Klee.

Artist Brent Lynch in renown for his passionate imagery and fearless originality create the fascinating mystery woman in “Evening Lounge.” A powerful figurative and landscape artist, Lynch defies convention with bold strokes of deep reds, blacks and grays cast in shadows and light. His vivid technique weaves a smoldering storyline around his subject. Pairs intriguingly with its sister painting, “Cigar Bar.


Famous Japanese Ukiyo-e artist, Ando Hiroshige (1797 – 1858) is known for his poetic interpretations of ordinary landscapes. Assuming his father’s firefighting job when he was orphaned at age 12, Hiroshige was inspired to become an artist when he saw the works of the rennowned Hokusai. Starting out as a protrait artist, he ultimately achieved fame for his landscapes. His artwork, including his masterpiece, “Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido,” used unique perspectives, bold colors and realistic depth. When tourism boomed, Hiroshige was inspired by his own travels to create an incredible 5,400 prints.


Abstract Expressionist pioneer Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956) poured and dripped paint onto canvases, challenging the traditional use of an easel and brush. Deceptively childlike, Pollock’s work was actually astoundingly complex and sophisticated. Compelled by inner turmoil, Pollock used dramatic movement to pour, drip and hurl paint onto huge canvases attached to the floor. Pollock, who was influenced by Picasso, Miró and the Surrealists, expressed subconscious thoughts through his motions, and revolutionized a style of painting in which the work has no identifiable parts or focal point.


Jasper Johns was an important 20th century artist instrumental in the development of Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and numerous other movements in Europe and the US. Though a series of flag and target images that outraged the art world, Johns transformed ordinary objects into fine art. Johns, who began his career in commercial art, challenged and altered the basic principles of painting, and has explored countless unconventional art forms. He often repeats the same subjects with different techniques to examine the relationship between an image and its medium.


Paul Klee (1879 – 1940) was an ingenious modern art master with an extensive stylistic range. Klee created small, delicate works, filling them with traces of dreams, music, poetry, and stylistically blended primitive art, Surrealism, Cubism and children’s art. Klee’s initial pen-and-ink drawings were transformed after he visited Tunisia and became smitten with the color and light he found there. Fusing abstraction with reality, Klee fills his work with complex symbols derived from the unconscious. Klee’s work and innovations profoundly influenced 20th century Surrealism, Abstract and Nonobjective art.