The Oregon Trail II
by Albert Bierstadt
Title
The Oregon Trail II
Artist
Albert Bierstadt
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
The Oregon Trail by Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was the last of the older generation of American romantic landscape painters.
Albert Bierstadt, born in Solingen, near Düsseldorf, Germany, on Jan. 7, 1830, was brought to New Bedford, Mass., as a baby. At the age of 21 he determined to be a painter, and in 1853 he went to Düsseldorf to study. Bierstadt was trained to use a light, meticulous technique and drab coloring; as a result, his painting always tended to be rather stiff and dry. He returned to New Bedford in 1857, and the following year he went west on a surveying expedition. There Bierstadt first saw the scenic grandeur which would become the chief subject matter of his paintings.
With the opening of the West there was enormous popular interest in the romantic splendor of the mountain scenery, and Bierstadt came along at just the right time to make the most of the situation. He executed numerous small sketches on the spot, which he combined and rearranged in his studio to produce panoramas of large scale.
In his early paintings, such as the Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Bierstadt worked in a clear, luminous style which lent enchantment to the scene. His early sketches of the West, with their silvery light and poetic mood, marked the final flowering of the romantic style in American painting. His large canvases were ponderous and dry and too melodramatic. His colors became raw and the work lacked spontaneity. Yet in one canvas, Hetch Hetchy Canyon, done in the mid-1870s, he managed to combine the feeling of grandeur with a poetic mood and a magical light. He was tempted too often to overextend himself and, not being a painter of much intensity of feeling, was unable to sustain vitality when working on large scale. He loved publicity and was carried away by the uncritical enthusiasm of the general public rather than heeding the more carefully considered criticism of those who were better informed.
Although Bierstadt's sketches are fresher and more spontaneous, his huge canvases were eagerly sought and commanded prices from $5,000 to $35,000. His painting of Estes Park, Colo., executed for the 4th Earl of Dunraven, a noted game hunter in the Rockies, started a Bierstadt fad in Great Britain.
During his lifetime Bierstadt received many honors, and Congress purchased two of his paintings for the Capitol in Washington, D.C. He was decorated in Germany and Austria, and in France he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1860.
Bierstadt's considerable wealth enabled him to build a mansion at Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he lived in great style. Although he was honored as America's most successful painter, other artists resented him. In the 1880s new styles in painting caught the public's fancy, and Bierstadt lost popularity. His house burned down, his fortune had been expended, and his work was regarded as old-fashioned and outdated. In the 1940s, after 50 years of oblivion, his work began to regain popularity as interest in American romantic painting revived. His smaller works, especially the earlier sketches, are now greatly admired, and he has been restored to the position he deserves.
Over the top of the Rockies at South Pass in central Wyoming.
The Wagner Perspective
A Brief History
In 1800, America's western border reached only as far as the Mississippi River. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 the country nearly doubled in size and pushed its western edge past the Rocky Mountains. Yet the wilderness known as Oregon Country (which included present-day Oregon, Washington and part of Idaho) still belonged to the British, a fact that made many Americans eager to settle the region and claim it for the United States.
American Indians had traversed this country for many years, but for European Americans it was unknown territory. Lewis and Clark's secretly funded expedition in 1803 was part of a U.S. Government plan to open Oregon Country to settlement. However, the hazardous route blazed by this party was not feasible for families traveling by wagon. An easier trail was needed.
Robert Stuart of the Astorians (a group of fur traders who established Fort Astoria on the Columbia River in western Oregon) became the first white man to use what later became known as the Oregon Trail. Stuart's 2,000-mile journey from Fort Astoria to St. Louis in 1810 took 10 months to complete; still, it was a much less rugged trail than Lewis and Clark's route.
It wasn't until 1836 that the first wagons were used on the trek from Missouri to Oregon. A missionary party headed by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman bravely set out to reach the Willamette Valley. Though the Whitmans were forced to abandon their wagons 200 miles short of Oregon, they proved that families could go west by wheeled travel.
In the spring of 1843, a wagon train of nearly 1,000 people organized at Independence, Missouri with plans to reach Oregon Country. Amidst an overwhelming chorus of naysayers who doubted their success, the so-called "Great Migration" made it safely to Oregon. Crucial to their success was the use of South Pass, a 12-mile wide valley that was virtually the sole place between the plains and Oregon where wagons could cross the formidable Rocky Mountains.
By 1846, thousands of emigrants who were drawn west by cheap land, patriotism or the promise of a better life found their way to Oregon Country. With so many Americans settling the region, it became obvious to the British that Oregon was no longer theirs. They ceded Oregon Country to the United States that year.
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September 18th, 2018
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