Albert Bierstadt`s Paintings of New York and New England

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Albert Bierstadt’s Paintings
of New York and New England
BY ANNETTE BLAUGRUND
GH
A
lbert Bierstadt! The name immediately conjures up monumental vistas of America’s Far West. Even in his 1902 obituary1, the only hint that this artist ever worked in the East was the title of
one painting, On the Saco, New Hampshire. Today, as in 1902, Bierstadt
is best remembered for his dramatic and atmospheric paintings of the
Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite, California, Wyoming,
and Colorado — pictures he marketed successfully to both American and
European collectors. Much has been written about these images of the
West, and about this artist’s extraordinary entrepreneurship.2 The focus
of this article, however, is on Bierstadt’s lesser-known landscape paintings
of New York and New England, his pioneering use of stereography, and
his initiation of the grand studio house in the U.S.
AN AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY
Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1830; two years later,
his family immigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts. From 1853 to
1857, he studied in Düsseldorf under two American artists, Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910) and Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868), and
was influenced further by two pre-eminent painters of the Düsseldorf
School, Andreas Achenbach (1815-1915) and Carl Friedrich Lessing
(1808-1880). A contemporary wrote that artists of this school “are often
excellent draughtsmen, expert, like all artistic Germans, in form and
composition, but in color frequently hard and dry.”3 Bierstadt remained
committed to this highly detailed, smoothly painted technique, which
initially brought him fame and fortune. But his subsequent inability,
or unwillingness, to adapt to changing tastes led to his eventual decline
(along with other artists of the Hudson River School), and ultimately to
his bankruptcy in 1895. Before then, however, he traveled extensively and
enjoyed an opulent lifestyle.
When 30-year-old Bierstadt moved to New York from New Bedford,
he settled into a ground-floor space in the Tenth Street Studio Building,
New York City’s most sought-after artists’ edifice during the second half
of the 19th century.4 Ultimately, he worked there for more than 15 years.
Designed by Richard Morris Hunt in 1857, this building (Fig. 1) was the
first in the U.S. or Europe to incorporate large, well-lighted, and heated
studios with an in-house gallery for exhibiting and selling art. Beyond its
important exhibition opportunities, the building brought Bierstadt into
close contact with the top artists of his day.
On several trips between 1859 and 1873, Bierstadt became the first
tenant in the building to explore the Far West in person, an experience
that enabled him to introduce its spectacular scenery to his patrons
via enormous paintings. He first traveled west with Col. Frederick W.
Lander’s expedition in 1859, then made a second trip in 1863 with the
Fig. 1
The Tenth Street Studio Building in New York, designed by Richard Morris Hunt
(1827-1895) in 1857 and demolished in 1956. Photo: Private collection
drug-addicted writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife, Rosalie, Bierstadt
would marry in 1866, soon after her divorce. In 1860, Bierstadt exhibited
a Rocky Mountain scene at the Tenth Street Studio Building, the largest
canvas in its gallery that season. He continued to show such oversized
masterpieces there, adding balconies and special lighting to its gallery
until he moved in 1877 to the Rensselaer Building at 1271 Broadway.
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013
Fig. 2
Malkasten at Irvington-on-Hudson, designed by J. Wrey Mould (1825-1886)
in 1866 and destroyed by fire in 1882. Artotype, Bierstadt Collection, Brooklyn
Museum Libraries, Special Collections.
By 1866, Bierstadt could afford to build an impressive country
home in Irvington-on-Hudson, 18 miles north of New York. Designed
by J. Wrey Mould, Malkasten (Fig. 2) contained a studio approximately
60 feet long and was a precursor of the extravagant artists’ studio-houses
that proliferated across the U.S. and Europe in the 1880s. For Bierstadt,
this abode was not just a place to escape the summer heat, but one where
he could commune with nature, entertain lavishly, and show off cultural
bric-a-brac that underscored his erudition (Fig. 3).
Here he could paint local scenery (on various scales) or enormous
Western panoramas. In 1876 the Art Journal noted:
A noble room—this studio comprises three stories in height, starting
from the second floor; on the same floor is a library, separated by doors
twenty feet high, one side of which is composed entirely of glass…a gallery
running across one end enables Mr. Bierstadt to gain distant views of his
own pictures…while above and below the romantic river winds its quiet
way through the narrowing valley to the blue mountains, fading into a soft
mist among the Catskills.5
Painted at Malkasten, one of Bierstadt’s small oil studies on millboard is titled On the Hudson River near Irvington (Fig. 4), the back of
which he inscribed, “sunset sketch from boudoir window.” The low horizon line in this composition allowed the artist to focus on the fleeting
effects of the setting sun and cloud formations, which he captured with
broad painterly brushstrokes.
For all its beauty, entertainment opportunities, and accessibility by train, Malkasten was decidedly out of the mainstream, so by the
1870s Bierstadt began to rent the house to others. Sadly, it burned to
the ground in 1882, destroying many studies of New Hampshire’s White
Mountains scenery, as well as some of his large paintings and artifacts
collected during his travels. Bierstadt continued using his studio in the
Rensselaer Building, and also the one his in-laws built for him much
further north, in Waterville, New York.
After Bierstadt married Rosalie Osborne Ludlow, they spent the
month of November 1866 in Waterville, and went there again during
the winter of 1873-74. Rosalie’s father renovated an adjoining house
for them, adding a two-story studio designed to his son-in-law’s specifications. In 1878, the industrious and persevering Bierstadt painted
Autumn View in Waterville, Oneida County, New York (Fig. 5), one of
several autumnal scenes in his oeuvre. This was probably the result of
sketches made earlier, since the artist was away from Waterville most of
that year. It may well have been among the seven or eight paintings he
sent nine years later to the 1887 American Exhibition of the Arts in London, one of which the London Morning Post singled out for the brilliant
reds and yellows in its trees, explaining that the colors were not exaggerated, but true to the “dazzling tints” seen in American forests.6
PHOTOGRAPHY’S CRUCIAL ROLE
In 1859, Bierstadt’s older brothers, Charles (1819-1903) and
Edward (1824-1906), opened their photography business in New Bedford. Albert assisted by selecting aesthetically appealing views for them
to photograph, especially in New Hampshire.7 Their trips to the White
Mountains in 1860 and 1861
resulted not only in various
individual stereographs and stereo books produced by Charles
and Edward, but also in fresh
vistas for Albert to paint.
Newly constructed railways, countless guidebooks, and
burgeoning hotels had made
the White Mountains accessible, attracting not only artists
and writers, but also tourists.
Bierstadt was particularly influenced by the book The White
Hills: Their Legends, Landscape,
Fig. 3
Charles Bierstadt (1819-1903)
Malkasten, studio interior facing
the library
c. 1875, Stereograph
Bierstadt Collection, Brooklyn
Museum Libraries, Special
Collections
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013
Fig. 4
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
On the Hudson River near Irvington
1866-70, Oil on mill­board, 7 x 10 in.
Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts
and Poetry, published in 1859 by his friend the Unitarian
minister Thomas Starr King. Just as Ralph Waldo Emerson
and William Cullen Bryant had inspired earlier Hudson
River School artists, so King underscored the spirituality
found in New Hampshire’s natural scenery. Likening the
sublimity and grandeur of nature to masterpieces of drawing8, King advised artists to celebrate America’s rich and
diverse landscapes in their paintings.
Stereographs reproduced binocular vision by fusing
two nearly identical images through special lenses (stereoscopes) to create the perception of depth. In 1862, Charles
and Edward published their first book, Stereoscopic Views
Fig. 5
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Autumn View in Waterville, Oneida County, New York
1878, Oil on canvas, 14 x 20 in.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. David Hollo
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013
Fig. 6
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Mt. Ascutney from Claremont, New Hampshire
1862, Oil on canvas, 40 1/2 x 70 1/2 in.
Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, Massachusetts
Fig. 7
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Connecticut River Valley, Claremont, New Hampshire
1868, Oil on canvas, 27 x 44 in.
Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massa­chusetts
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013
among the Hills of New Hampshire, which incorporated stereo lenses in the cover. Alas, the book
was unsuccessful due to faulty lenses and the high cost of reproducing the images. Three years
later, the two brothers produced a catalogue of their stereographic views, including those taken
during the Civil War. Another book, published in 1875, Gems of American Scenery, Consisting of
Stereoscopic Views among the White Mountains, provided improved stereoscopic lenses embedded in a foldout cover, along with clearer images. Gems also included three-dimensional views
of the Franconia Mountains, Mount Washington, Emerald Pool, North Conway, Glen Ellis Falls,
and many more of New Hampshire’s beautiful sites, some of which correspond to the titles of
Albert’s paintings.
By 1867, Charles and Edward had separated professionally. Charles worked as a photographer in Niagara Falls, while Edward set up a darkroom in the basement of the Tenth Street
Studio Building. Working closely with Albert, Edward introduced a new process developed by
Joseph Albert in Munich, for which he had obtained the patent rights. Together, Edward and
Fig. 8
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)
Albert Bierstadt’s Studio
1871, Stereograph
No. 1586 from “The Indians of California,” published by Bradley and Rulofson
Bancroft Library, Uni­versity of California, Berkeley
As he spent all of 1868 in Europe, Bierstadt must have used exactly
the same studies for that year’s Connecticut River Valley, Claremont, New
Hampshire (Fig. 7), which presents the same site at a closer vantage and
slightly to the right. Here the trees hide the mountain peak, and the foreground’s broken branches, cast in shadow, probably symbolize the state
of the country in the aftermath of the Civil War. They also emphasize
the tree stump, which recalls the storm-blasted trees of such Hudson
Albert established the Photo-Plate Printing Company for the photomechanical reproduction of images into prints.9 They had finally figured
out how to make their books more affordable by including stereo lenses
in the cover and by using the process of Albertype, which was similar to
collotype but less expensive to produce.
PAINTING OUTDOORS
Meanwhile, Albert was working en plein air to paint scenes of meadows,
mountains, falls, pools, lakes, and woodlands in oil on paper or millboard,
which he then finished in the studio or used as references for larger, highly
finished works. By 1862, he had produced several large oil paintings of New
Hampshire scenery, including Mt. Ascutney from Claremont, New Hampshire
(Fig. 6). Painted as the Civil War raged, this carefully arranged composition
depicts a bucolic foreground with a storm-blasted tree, animated by cows and
sheep grazing in the meadow. The cultivated farmland in the mid-ground
is set against a backdrop of the majestic mountain peak, which is actually
located in Vermont. In 1863, a New York newspaper noted that “nearly an
entire wall of Bierstadt’s studio is filled with studies and sketches from his
White Mountain sojourn.”10 These were amalgamated into realistic compositions like Mt. Ascutney, which are noticeably less theatrical than Bierstadt’s
paintings of the West. Their sense of distance and depth is heightened by
high-resolution details in the foreground, which replicate effects seen in some
of Charles and Edward’s stereographs.
Fig. 9
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
View near Glen House, White Mountains, N.H.
1869, Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 19 1/4 x 13 3/4 in.
Alexander Gallery, New York
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013
Fig. 10
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Niagara Falls from Prospect Point
1877, Oil on paper laid on board, 20 3/4 x 13 3/4 in.
Collection of Alice Pack Melly and L. Thomas Melly
had sketched in 1860. Eager to capitalize on visitors’ fascination with this
woodland pool of water, Bierstadt began work on the largest of his East
Coast paintings. He took many photographs there and made sketches
like White Mountains — Study of Ferns above Emerald Pool (Fig. 11), in
which brushstrokes are visible on the foreground rocks while the ferns
are delineated with botanical accuracy. Ultimately, Bierstadt combined
his visual notes from 1860 and 1869 into one painting measuring almost
10 feet long, The Emerald Pool (Fig. 12). Using the panoramic dimensions heretofore reserved for Western scenery, he detailed this wilderness scene in all its unspoiled glory. Monumental in size yet intimate
in sensibility, The Emerald Pool was exhibited in the Tenth Street Studio
Building by May 1870 and at New York’s National Academy of Design
the following winter.
River School forerunners as Thomas Cole (1801-1848), which signified
the encroachment of civilization. Both of these open-ended, domesticated landscapes with their heightened foreground details anticipate the
popularity of pastoral subjects in American art of the 1870s and ’80s.
Bierstadt’s method of painting outdoors is confirmed by stereographs
taken in 1871 by the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge
(1830-1904) in California (Fig. 8). Dressed in a smock and hat, seated
on a low folding stool with a box of paint tubes on his lap, Bierstadt
paints the Native American man posing for him on a log. Depending on
the weather or the time available, Bierstadt made quick studies in oil or
pencil. Outdoor sketches averaged 13 by 19 inches, a size that fit into the
cover of his sketch box.11 Some studies depicted local flora, geological
formations, atmospheric effects such as clouds, or animals (dead and
alive), while others featured local figures as portrayed in Muybridge’s stereograph. Certain sketches were intended for sale, and others for donation to various causes, or as gifts.
The immediacy captured in on-the-spot studies such as View Near
Glen House, White Mountains, N.H. (Fig. 9), in which a hunter seemingly fuses into the foreground, is the result of visible brushstrokes quite
different from the smoother surfaces of Bierstadt’s finished works. While
appreciated today, studies like this and the fresh, impressionistic Niagara Falls from Prospect Point (Fig. 10) were criticized by contemporary
reviewers because their “sense of paint is too strong.”12
In 1869, Bierstadt returned to the Emerald Pool, a popular tourist destination in the Pinkham Notch area of New Hampshire that he
Fig. 11
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
White Mountains — Study of Ferns above Emerald Pool
c. 1869, Oil on paper mounted on paperboard, 12 1/4 x 9 1/4 in.
Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013
DISAPPOINTMENT AND DECLINE
Alas, Bierstadt learned that Eastern scenery was not as compelling
a subject to collectors as the grandeur of Western mountains, canyons,
and geological formations. Although he admired the rugged beauty of
Eastern woodlands and waterways, for the sake of sales he continued
concentrating on his more popular Western vistas. He returned to the
White Mountains one last time in 1886.
A year after Rosalie died in 1893, Bierstadt married Mary Hicks
Stewart, widow of the wealthy New York banker David Stewart. In
order to clear his debts, he made serious attempts to sell his paintings
and belongings, but his work was little appreciated and no longer commanded the country’s highest prices. Thus Bierstadt died in virtual
obscurity at home in New York, aged 72. It was not until the 1960s that
Hudson River School painters like him were reassessed and revalued.
Fig. 12
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
The Emerald Pool
1870, Oil on canvas, 76 1/2 x 119 in.
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk
Not in this year’s exhibition
3.
4.
Prices subsequently increased to a level commensurate with, and ultimately greater than, those paid for his work in the 19th century.
The latest chapter in Bierstadt’s renaissance is the exhibition I have
guest-curated this year at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York: Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England pays tribute
to this master’s less familiar paintings and sketches of the East, revealing
another side of his idealistic, romantic vision of the “national historic landscape.”13 This exhibition closes at Catskill on November 3 and will then be
shown in an expanded version at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury,
Connecticut (December 8, 2013 through March 9, 2014). n
5.
6.
7.
Information: Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 218 Spring Street, Catskill, NY 12414,
518.943.7465, thomascole.org. Mattatuck Museum, 144 West Main Street, Waterbury, CT
06702, 203.753.0381, mattatuckmuseum.org. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully
illustrated catalogue ($8.95). On September 14, Bard College professor Laurie Dahlberg will
explain Bierstadt’s use of stereographs and then help participants make their own.
8.
ANNETTE BLAUGRUND, PH.D., has published and lectured widely on diverse subjects in American art. She directed New York City’s National Academy Museum and
School of Fine Arts from 1997 to 2007, and was previously Andrew W. Mellon Senior
Curator at the New-York Historical Society.
9.
Endnotes
10.
11.
1. New York Tribune, February 19, 1902, clipping in Bierstadt member file, Century
Association Archives Foundation, New York.
2. Nancy K. Anderson and Linda S. Ferber with a contribution by Helena E. Wright,
Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise (New York: Brooklyn Museum in association
12.
13.
with Hudson Hills Press, 1990); Matthew Baigell, Albert Bierstadt (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1981); Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American
West (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Amon Carter Museum
of Western Art, 1974).
Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867; repr., New York: James F. Carr,
1967), p. 392.
See Annette Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-Entrepreneurs
from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists (Southampton, NY:
Parrish Art Museum and University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1997), p. 26.
“The Homes of America,” Art Journal (1876), pp. 45-46, as quoted in Blaugrund,
The Tenth Street Studio Building (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1987),
pp. 426-27.
Unidentified newspaper clipping quoting the London Morning Post of 1887, Bierstadt Scrapbook, Brooklyn Museum Libraries, Special Collections.
Crayon (January 1861), pp. 22-23. In 1839, Samuel F. B. Morse (1826-1872) introduced photography to the U.S. in the form of daguerreotypes. Oliver Wendell
Holmes Sr. (1809-1894) lauded the stereographic process in his articles for Atlantic Monthly in 1859 and designed an effective handheld stereoscope the following
year, opening a new area of endeavor for Edward and Charles, who had accompanied Albert to the West in 1859.
Thomas Starr King, The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscapes, and Poetry
(Boston: Crosby and Nichols, 1860), as quoted in Nancy Siegel, “‘I never had so
difficult a picture to paint’: Albert Bierstadt’s White Mountain Scenery and the
Emerald Pool,” Nineteenth-Century Art World Wide (online journal), Vol. 4, No. 3
(Autumn 2005), p. 4.
Helena E. Wright “Bierstadt and the Business of Printmaking,” in Anderson and
Ferber, Albert Bierstadt, pp. 269, 274. This was only one of several businesses that
Bierstadt tried to augment his income.
Quoted in Siegel, “I never had so difficult a picture to paint,” p. 6.
Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature,
1800-1880 (Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, 1998), p. 26. For a discussion of Bierstadt’s oil studies, see Harvey, pp. 229-69.
New York Leader, April 18, 1863, cited in Anderson and Ferber, p. 193.
Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, p. 396.
FineArtConnoisseur.com | July/August 2013