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Bierstadt paintings in the Haggin Museum - Haggin Museum, Stockton, California

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1999 by Alfred C. Jr. Harrison

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One remarkable aspect of these works is that they have no known exhibition history before 1931. Despite the exhaustive research into Bierstadt's work that has been done over the last three decades, no one has given any clear idea of when either of these exhibition-sized works was unveiled to the public. One of Bierstadt's paintings at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 was entitled Yosemite, but as it was not described in the press, we do not know which painting was shown. It is hard to imagine, however, that either of the Haggin views was the target of the critical judgment expressed by John Ferguson Weir (18411926) in his report on the American paintings at the Centennial Exhibition: "[Bierstadt's] pictures...indicate a lapse into sensational and meretricious effects....They are vast illustrations of scenery, carelessly and crudely executed."(13)

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In the Yosemite Valley (Pl. V) shows that Bierstadt occasionally modified his style in the direction of the prevailing Barbizon aesthetic. Although there is no documentary evidence that this painting dates from his late period, Bierstadt did visit Yosemite in August 1885,(14) and the style of the work is similar to the Canadian scenes in Plates VI and VII, which can be dated to Bierstadt's trip to British Columbia in the summer of 1889. All three paintings are in nearly identical frames characteristic of the 1880s and 1890s (see Pls. VIIIa-c). All three demonstrate a rougher, broader elaboration of the foreground rocks and foliage than early works, a diminished degree of idealization in their overall appearance, and a naturalistically rendered sunset, without any of the exaggeration that evoked words like "meretricious" from critics. These works come as close to the Barbizon aesthetic as any in Bierstadt's oeuvre.

All the works discussed above were done in the artist's studio based on studies made in the field. Hundreds of these oil-on-paper field studies have survived and make an argument for the proposition that Bierstadt was the best plein-air painter of his generation. Cloud Effect, Estes Park, Colorado (Pl. IX) is a superior example of the artist's field work. Bierstadt traveled to Estes Park in the summer of 1877 with Windham Thomas Wyndam-Quin, earl of Dunraven (18411926), who had bought thousands of acres in this scenic part of the West with the intention of building a resort hotel. Bierstadt used this and several other oil-on-paper studies as the basis for his huge melodramatic Rocky Mountains, Longs Peak of 1877 (now in the Denver Public Library). Bierstadt's instinct for the charm of a locality was so strong that considerable poetry is present in Cloud Effect and other field studies that were undertaken only to capture the lineaments of a real place. Bierstadt got into trouble when he consciously attempted to enhance the poetry inherent in his sketches when creating larger works. The resulting atmospheric pyrotechnics and exaggerations of topography vitiated any sense of local character and opened Bierstadt to the disdain of critics like Weir. But of course it was the large oil paintings and not the field studies that Bierstadt sent before the public.

Bierstadt paintings in the Haggin Museum - Haggin Museum, Stockton, California

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1999 by Alfred C. Jr. Harrison

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