Iceberg

1853–1857 · Formazione

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

1857

Back in New Bedford: teaching, then painting

After several years in Düsseldorf studying with members of its informal school of painting, Bierstadt returned to New Bedford, briefly taught drawing and painting, and then devoted himself to painting full-time.

1858

A Swiss landscape at the National Academy of Design

A large Swiss landscape shown at the National Academy of Design won favourable reviews and made Bierstadt an honorary member of the Academy. He then began painting New England and upstate New York, including the Hudson River Valley.

1859

First journey west, with Frederick Lander

With the government land surveyor Frederick W. Lander, Bierstadt travelled into the Colorado and Wyoming territories, and the trip turned his art towards the American West. He returned with sketches to his studio in New York's Tenth Street Studio Building and worked them up into numerous paintings.

1863

West again, with the writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Bierstadt's companion was the writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he later married; the two spent seven weeks in the Yosemite Valley. Studies from the trip fed his huge exhibition canvases through the 1860s, which made him the pre-eminent painter of the American West.