Bierstadt, Albert

Bierstadt, Albert (1830-1902), American painter of grandiose scenes of the American West. Born in Solingen, Germany, Bierstadt spent his youth in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He studied (1853- 1857) painting in Düsseldorf, and Rome and thereafter worked chiefly in New York. His vast, majestic, studio panoramas of the Rocky Mountains, more realistic than the landscapes of the earlier Hudson River School, were based on sketches from nature. Many were the result of his trip to the West with a surveying team in 1859. His works, popular in their day and now the subject of revived interest, include Rocky Mountains (1863) and Merced River, Yosemite Valley (1866), both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.