Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the West

While his peers from the Hudson River Valley group of artists were painting landscapes of that part of New York, Albert Bierstadt went after views that were far more remote.Beginning in 1858, Bierstadt made a number of trips west to explore the beauty of America. He went with a federal surveying group to California and came across Yosemite. The drawings and paintings he made while he was there and, from sketches, when he returned home, gave Americans in the East their first glimpse of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Bierstadt painted a vision of harmony between man and nature, rather than an image of nature being a hostile force for man to conquer. While still dramatic, the picture is peaceful.

Bierstadt and other artists like Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell became known for their depictions of western lands and people and for documenting the Indian cultures, which would soon be nearly destroyed.