Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt immigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts, with his family when he was two years old. In 1853, Bierstadt returned to Germany to study at the renowned Dusseldorf School. There he learned the fundamentals of drawing, detail, and compositional design methods found in the depictions of romanticized landscapes for which he is best known. He returned to the United States in 1857.

Bierstadt spent the summer of 1859 on a government wagon road survey from Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to the Rocky Mountains, sketching on canvas his experiences along the way. Throughout the 1860s, he traveled West documenting the natural wonders of Yosemite and the Cascades, painting romantic panoramas that captured the nation's attention. During these years, Bierstadt was considered America's premier landscape painter. His large paintings were enormously popular and earned record prices for the period. When his Irvington, New York, studio burned in 1882, he moved to New York City and continued to paint his famous mountain landscapes. By the time of his death in 1902, the Impressionist style had eclipsed his popularity and his fame had faded. Bierstadt's work was "rediscovered" in the 1960s and has since regained popularity as the world remains captivated by the lure of the Rocky Mountain West.