Existing comment:
After nearly three years in Dusseldorf, Bierstadt joined Whittredge on an extended sketching tour through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Following a winter in Rome and a sketching tour to Naples and Capri, Bierstadt returned to New Bedford in the fall of 1857. Described as a "timid, awkward, unpolished specimen of a Yankee" when he arrived in Dusseldorf in 1853, Bierstadt returned to New Bedford four years later a socially poised and technically mature painter.
In the spring of 1858 he made his New York debut when he contributed a large painting of Lake Lucerne and the Swiss Alps to the annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Critics were dazzled by Bierstadt's technical expertise; within weeks he was elected an honorary member of the academy.
Bierstadt's European apprenticeship served him well the following spring when he journeyed west for the first time, joining Frederick W. Lander's survey party bound for the Rocky Mountains. Though not the first artist to see or even paint the Rockies, Bierstadt was the first who brought with him superior technical skills and considerable experience painting European alpine peaks. For Americans eager to finally see the mountains a generation of travelers had described as "America's alps," Bierstadt's credentials were near perfect.
By late September 1859 Bierstadt had returned to New Bedford laden with field sketches, stereo photographs, and Indian artifacts. Within three months he had moved to New York, established himself in the Tenth Street Studio Building, and begun to exhibit the western paintings that would soon make his reputation. He completed the most important of these, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (Metropolitan Museum, New York), in the spring of 1863 just weeks before he set off on his second journey west. |