Bierstadt was the great recorder of the American western landscape. He was the first artist with both the technique and the talent to convey the powerful visual impact of western space and to capture the scale of America's mountains. This magnificent volume provides a full appreciation of his talent as an artist.

As one of America's most prominent nineteenth-century painters, Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is justly renowned for his majestic paintings of the western landscape. Yet Bierstadt was also a painter of history, and his figural works, replete with images of Plains Indians and the American bison, are an important part of his legacy as well. This splendid full-color volume highlights his achievements in chronicling a rapidly changing American West. Born in Germany, Bierstadt rose to prominence as an American artist in the late 1850s and enjoyed nearly two decades of critical success. His paintings propelled him to the forefront of the American art scene, but they also met with reproach from his peers and critics in the press who viewed his painting style as outmoded. Bierstadt's star has both risen and fallen as modern art historians have reconsidered his complex oeuvre. This volume takes a major step in reappraising Bierstadt's contributions by reexamining the artist through a new lens. It shows how Bierstadt conveyed moral messages through his paintings, often to preserve the dignity of Native peoples and call attention to the tragic slaughter of the American bison. More broadly, the book reconsiders the artist's engagement with contemporary political and social debates surrounding wildlife conservation in America, the creation and perpetuation of national parks, and the prospects for the West's indigenous peoples. Bierstadt's final history paintings, including his dual masterworks titled The Last of the Buffalo--a special focus of this volume--stand out as elegiac odes to an earlier era, giving voice to concerns about the intertwined fates of Native peoples and endangered wildlife, especially bison. Along with its rich sampling of Bierstadt's diverse artwork, Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West features informative essays by noted curators, scholars of art history, and historians of the American West.

Each of these handsome volumes contains 32 large color plates reproduced with superb fidelity on special paper. The informative text and detailed captions will provide inspiration and fresh insight for all who admire great painting. Using huge canvases befitting his subjects, Bierstadt was the first artist to capture the monumentality of the American wilderness. These beautiful paintings represent a distinct part of America's heritage.

This extraordinarily comprehensive, well-documented, biographical dictionary of some 1,500 photographers (and workers engaged in photographically related pursuits) active in western North America before 1865 is enriched by some 250 illustrations. Far from being simply a reference tool, the book provides a rich trove of fascinating narratives that cover both the professional and personal lives of a colorful cast of characters.

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) took his first trip West early in 1859 with Frederic Lander. He was chosen to be a civilian artist on a government expedition which set out to improve the wagon roads of the South Pass from Fort Kearny to the eastern border of California. By the middle of the year, Bierstadt was following the same steps taken by Alfred Jacob Miller twenty-two years earlier, on the Oregon Trail. Along the way he met and sketched thousands of discouraged gold seekers and immigrants. In late summer he returned east and began turning his sketches into huge canvases. Included among some of these earlier scenes were Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie and Laramie Park .Bierstadt's second trip, this time to the far West, took place in 1863. He traveled with his friend Fitz Ludlow. They spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley beyond the Sierra Nevada, eventually traveling up into Oregon. By 1864, scarcely five years after painting his first Rocky Mountain picture, Bierstadt was the most highly acclaimed American painter, rivaling even Frederick Church. As an artist, Bierstadt was concerned more with communicating his image of the West to the American public than with following changing styles in the art world. For him, the immensity of the Rocky Mountains could find appropriate expression only on large canvases. Despite their size, and the immensity of terrain represented, he also managed to include a lavish amount of detail, particularly in his foregrounds. As a consequence, he was often criticized in later years for overstatement, for combining several paintings into one canvas, sometimes from different perspectives. When he did not lose sight of the whole in his efforts to combine large vistas and accurate amounts of detail, the impact of his work could be universalizing.

This biographical dictionary of some 3,000 photographers (and workers in related trades), active in a vast area of North America before 1866, is based on extensive research and enhanced by some 240 illustrations, most of which are published here for the first time. The territory covered extends from central Canada through Mexico and includes the United States from the Mississippi River west to, but not including, the Rocky Mountain states. Together, this volume and its predecessor, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, comprise an exhaustive survey of early photographers in North America and Central America, excluding the eastern United States and eastern Canada. This work is distinguished by the large number of entries, by the appealing narratives that cover both professional and private lives of the subjects, and by the painstaking documentation. It will be an essential reference work for historians, libraries, and museums, as well as for collectors of and dealers in early American photography. In addition to photographers, the book includes photographic printers, retouchers, and colorists, and manufacturers and sellers of photographic apparatus and stock. Because creators of moving panoramas and optical amusements such as dioramas and magic lantern performances often fashioned their works after photographs, the people behind those exhibitions are also discussed.

The Rockies and the Alps: Bierstadt, Calame, and the Romance of the MountainsKatherine Manthorne and Tricia Laughlin BloomWith contributions by Patricia Mainardi and James M. SaslowInspired by the grandeur of the Rockies and the Alps, American and European artists strove to capture their power in paint. Landscapes of soaring peaks and spectacular vistas became increasingly popular in the mid-nineteenth century, when photographers, scientists, and armchair travelers were awakening to these wonders. Artistic interests coincided with the rise of tourism, as improved transportation and accommodations made mountains and glaciers more accessible. This richly illustrated volume brings together dazzling depictions of the Rockies and the Alps, while examining the dialogue between artists who visited and recorded these geographically distant ranges. Two key figures highlighted are Swiss painter Alexandre Calame (1810¿1864), frequently identified with Alpine views of torrents, glaciers, and gorges, and Albert Bierstadt (1830¿1902), whose impressive canvases often provided American audiences with their first glimpse of the Rockies and the western frontier. Their contemporaries included J.M.W. Turner, John Ruskin, painters of the Hudson River School Thomas Cole, Worthington Whittredge, and John F. Kensett, and photographers Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge.The Rockies and the Alps features contributions by four outstanding scholars who investigate how geology, flora and fauna, and social and literary contexts relate to the rise of alpine landscape painting. Each essay explores the close connections among these artists and diverse layers of symbolism these mountain images carried, revealing how the same landscape paintings that became archetypal symbols of American identity were in fact the product of a dialogue between American and European artists.

A breathtaking selection of works from the largest and finest collection of Hudson River paintings in the world Hudson River School paintings are among America's most admired and well-loved artworks. Such artists as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt left a powerful legacy to American art, embodying in their epic works the reverence for nature and the national idealism that prevailed during the middle of the nineteenth century. This book features fifty-seven major Hudson River School paintings from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, recognized as the most extensive and finest in the world. Gorgeously and amply illustrated, the book includes paintings by all the major figures of the Hudson River School. Each work is beautifully reproduced in full color and is accompanied by a concise description of its significance and historical background. The book also includes artists' biographies and a brief introduction to American nineteenth-century landscape painting and the Wadsworth Atheneum's unique role in collecting Hudson River pictures.

Features the art collection of William B Ruger, the famed arms-maker, who passed away in June 2002. Christie's conducted a multi-million dollar auction in December 2002 of the paintings that appear in the book. The book includes approximately 20 paintings sold by Christies, NY and includes 83 colour photos of William B Ruger's private collection. The pieces depict the American West, hunting, wildlife, historical and classic art, and seascapes by artists such as Frederic S Remington, Maxfield Parrish, Albert Bierstadt, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait and many others. Seth Eastman's 'Winnebago Encampment', Alexander Phimister Proctor's 'The Indian Warrior', and Frank Tenney Johnson's 'Cowboy on Horseback' are examples.

The Painted Sketch is the first volume to focus on the sketches of major American artists of the period. Eleanor Jones Harvey, author and consulting curator of American Art for the Dallas Museum of Art, follows the artists from field to studio, examining the changing perception and growing public appreciation for these small works. Her study is based on much new research as well as on her close analysis of existing resources.