Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), American painter of landscapes that emphasized the grandeur of the American West. Born in Solingen, Germany, Bierstadt immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1831. He grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. After deciding to become a painter he returned to Germany in 1853 to study at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and to visit art collections in other European cities.

After returning to the United States, Bierstadt made his first trip to the American West in 1859, traveling with a team of surveyors to the Wyoming Territory. He made many sketches on which he based the large-scale canvases of Western scenes that he later painted in his studio in New York City. These large, majestic panoramas depicted the forests, pristine lakes, and towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains. A number of the paintings include Native American camps or hunting parties at the base of the mountains. Bierstadt made a second trip west in 1863, this time reaching the Pacific Ocean and spending time in Yosemite Valley.

Bierstadt’s paintings of the West were exhibited in the United States and Europe, drawing large audiences and commanding high prices. By the 1880s, however, his reputation had declined, largely as a result of changing tastes. His grandiose landscapes had begun to seem overdone. His paintings remained out of favor until a reawakening of interest during the late 20th century in landscape painters of the Hudson River School. Although Bierstadt may have exaggerated the monumentality of the scenes before him, such paintings as Rocky Mountains (1863) and Merced River, Yosemite Valley (1866), both in New York’s Metropolitan Museum, made the spectacular scenery of the American West visible to an eager audience in the East.