Sunset on the Plains, Albert Bierstadt

Exhibition Label: "This Land," Mar-2014, Kate Meyer Albert Bierstadt made six separate trips to the West from his New York studio between 1859 and 1870, producing sketches that would yield the oil paintings of the Rockies for which he is most known-as well as this pastoral view of a decidedly flatter landscape. His views provided eager Eastern audiences with visions of an idealized West, filled with magnificent vistas and inexhaustible resources Americans felt themselves destined to claim and enjoy. Exhibition Label: "Echoes of Human Migration in the Collection of the Spencer Museum of Art," Mar-2010 Albert Bierstadt immigrated with his family to America in 1831. Like many central Europeans of the 1830s and ‘40s, Bierstadt sought to escape the upheaval that swept the continent in the form of wars and revolutions. This influx of central European immigrants, many of whom settled in the Midwest, changed the cultural profile of America. While Bierstadt returned to Germany in 1853 for his artistic education, he is most well known for his paintings of the American West. Bierstadt’s work speaks to both the migration of central Europeans to the United States, and to the country’s westward expansion, which eventually led to the oppression and displacement of Native Americans. Exhibition Label: "A Kansas Arts Sampler," Oct-2004, Kate Meyer Albert Bierstadt made six separate trips to the west from his New York studio from 1859-1870, producing sketches that would yield the oil paintings of the Rockies for which he is most known, and this pastoral view of a decidedly flatter landscape. Bierstadt successfully translates the subtle topography of the prairie and the brilliance of the setting sun in this canvas. Archive Label 1999: This painting reflects Bierstadt's love of nature and close observation of atmospheric conditions. The glowing sunset fills the landscape with color and atmosphere that dissolve the forms of the trees in the distance. However, the details of the grasses and the study of the cows in the foreground are clear and distinct, as is typical in Bierstadt's work. Bierstadt embraces the interests of the luminist painters, whose paintings of American land and water were associated with the sublime of silence and space.