His oil paintings, many of them huge, were the ultimate expression of the popular 19th-century Romanticism. But his reputation diminished when public taste in art changed dramatically and when transcontinental railway travel revealed that the West looked nothing like his idealized paintings.

Bierstadt was born in Solingen, near Dusseldorf, Germany, and sailed as a baby with his family who settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  Unlike many of his successful peers, as a child, he showed only casual interest in and talent for art, and he had no encouragement from his family.

In 1853, he returned to Dusseldorf where he studied at the Royal Academy with landscape painters Andreas Aschenbach and Karl Friedman Lessing.  Some of his fellow students were Emmanuel Leutze and Worthington Whittredge, and they all learned much attention to detail, respect for composition and skilled drawing.  During this period, he traveled extensively in Europe and completed many picturesque Old World scenes in the style that later became his trademark.

In 1857, he returned to the United States and painted the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and in 1858, exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in New York.

But it was a year later that he found the subject matter that set the course of his career.  He joined a western military expedition led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander to survey wagon routes in the Rocky Mountains and Wyoming.  From sketches, he later painted in his Tenth Street Studio in New York landscapes, Indians, and wildlife in the traditional style he had learned in Europe.

In 1863, he went by stage coach to California with writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow and became much lauded in San Francisco society where he lived for six months. He traveled to Yosemite where he did many paintings that were such a sensation that he became immediately famous. In 1871, he returned to California and stayed for three years, exhibiting in local galleries and with the San Francisco Art Association. He also returned in 1893 after the death of his wife.

In 1865, he built a thirty-five room home on the Hudson River near New York City. He named the place "Malkasten," which was German for paint box, but he seldom worked there, preferring his New York studio. In 1882, his Hudson River home and many of his paintings were destroyed by fire.

In the 1860s and 70s, he earned the highest prices ever achieved by an American painter, and the US Congress allotted $20,000 for one of his paintings. In 1867, he had a grand tour of Europe and England including a special audience with Queen Victoria. His painting, "Among the Sierra Mountains, California," was exhibited at the Royal Academy with mixed reactions as some thought it overtaxed the viewers' minds and imaginations. He received the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III and the Order of the Stanislaus from the Czar of the Russias.

However, toward the end of the century, his career had major setbacks with the increasing influence of the Barbizon and Impressionist styles from Europe, and his work was increasingly considered old fashioned.  In 1895, he declared bankruptcy and died seven years later, largely forgotten in the public mind. But he has been rediscovered in the late 20th century, is credited as the founder of the western school of landscape painting.

Several of his paintings are on display in the former private residence of Laurence and Mary Rockefeller at Marsh-Billings Rockefeller National Historic Park in Woodstock, Vermont.

Source:
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940

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