Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Albert Bierstadt About this episode Albert Bierstadt’s story runs counter to the romanticized idea of a passionate starving artist. He was strategic in his career, selecting imagery that he knew would appeal to U. S. audiences, and monetizing his art outside of selling paintings.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:04 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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1:19 Tracy V. Wilson? down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get
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2:14 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:24 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
2:27 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:29 Holly Frey? Tracy, we're going crazy over here. We're gonna do this whole thing backwards this week. We're gonna do this episode backwards because we're gonna read listener mail first because this listener mail led to this episode. So this is from our listener who only signed their email with an L. I see their name in the return address, but I don't know if they would like it kept out of the, out of the show. So, uh, L writes, "Hi Holly and Tracy. I have my PhD in SMIHC. And over the years of enjoying your show, I have only ever liked the art-focused episodes because of the non-art stuff, the family drama, the historical event connections, et cetera.
3:11 Holly Frey? As an engineer from a family full of STEM people, I had only ever looked at art as something that took skill and that those weird creative people were obsessed with. My partner and I recently moved to the Denver area, partially for work, but also because we love the mountains and the outdoors. This past weekend, we went to the Denver Art Museum, mainly to enjoy the architecture and the museum vibes. As we wandered the exhibits, I saw a painting that stopped me in my tracks. I stared at it for a good 10 minutes before my partner found me and wondered if I was okay, because why would I want to look at a painting for so long? It was Wind River Country by Albert Bierstadt. The depth and the beauty and the way he so perfectly captured the way I feel when I'm in the outdoors took my breath away.
3:54 Holly Frey? I went on to find all his other works in that museum and became obsessed. I sat in front of Rocky Pool, New Hampshire and almost teared up from how much it felt like I was back in my childhood, playing in the woods and exploring my surroundings. All of that to say, I have a newfound appreciation for the way art impacts people, and I can no longer make fun of you, Holly, and everyone else that loves art, because now I do too. I couldn't find an episode on Bierstadt, so if you've covered him already, my apologies, but he seems like an interesting character for an episode." L attaches pet tax of their very sweet pups, Rosie and Bucket.
4:30 Holly Frey? Who are referred to as two dummies who love to fight over sticks and go on adventures with us. They look like perfect angels. They don't look like dummies at all. They look like perfect babies. Um, listen now, I love an art awakening and you managed to fall in love with the work of an artist whose story is pretty interesting because it runs counter to the romanticized idea we often have or is often portrayed in media of a passionate starving artist. Bierstadt was not naturally talented, although he clearly developed incredible skills to make just arresting imagery. And he was really, really unusually strategic in his career, selecting imagery that he knew was going to appeal
5:11 Holly Frey? widely to US audiences. And he also found ways to monetize his art outside of selling paintings and print. He is really, really interesting to me. So here's your episode. Uh, he became known for primarily painting the grandeur of the American landscape. But as we'll see, there's a lot more to his story.
5:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Albert Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany on January 7th, 1830. Sometimes he's described as being from nearby Dusseldorf, mostly because that's a larger and more recognizable city. His parents, Pendry and Christina, already had five children when Albert was born. Although he was born in Germany, he's often described as being an American artist, and that's because his family moved to the US in 1832, when Albert was just a two-year-old. The Bierstadt moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts for the whaling industry. Henry was a cooper, and whaling towns, of course, needed plenty of barrels.
6:13 Holly Frey? We don't have a whole lot of details about Albert's early years, other than the fact that he was interested in art from a young age. He did not formally study art as a kid. He just practiced a lot and he developed his own knowledge and skillset just through self-study. But though he hadn't ever learned art in a formal setting, he was apparently a natural at teaching it. Because when he was just 20, Beirstot had begun teaching painting to make money. Ads ran in the Boston Evening Transcript for his teaching services that read, quote, "Look at this monochromatic painting. Mr. Albert Beirstot commenced teaching the above art in this city with a few scholars
6:55 Holly Frey? and was so successful that the number soon reached 70. And although the promise that every scholar should, in six lessons of two hours each, make a picture worthy of a frame, we are not aware of any case in which he has not succeeded in redeeming that pledge. Although some of the scholars at the time they commenced knew nothing of drawing or perspective." So this ad is undersigned by a number of people, including people who list their professions and a couple of them are principals of local schools, they're booksellers, and they're other pupils of Beirstot. Also, just as an aside, in case you do not know, monochromatic painting is a painting that uses a single color, the hue, and then the details are added using variations of that color.
7:39 Holly Frey? So tints, which are created by adding white, shades, which are created by adding black, and tones, which are created by mixing in gray.
7:48 Tracy V. Wilson? These ads ran for more than a year, as did more editorial commentaries on his classes and their value. This is a pretty interesting situation because at the time, Beirstot wasn't particularly accomplished as an artist, although he did bill himself as a master. This was actually part of young Beirstot's bigger effort to just hustle out a living for himself. In a lecture given by Karen Quinn, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Quinn describes Beirstot as a P.T. Barnum-like character. Because he would also arrange to have other artists' work brought into the city and he would charge money for people to see them. This wasn't like a curated exhibit or a collection. It wasn't affiliated with the museum.
8:33 Tracy V. Wilson? It was just a little money-making enterprise that he had come up with.
8:37 Holly Frey? In 1851, Beirstot started working with oil paints for the first time, and it actually wasn't long until he had his first exhibition of these efforts. That same year, he had the 13 paintings shown at the New England Art Union in Boston. In 1853, he had another exhibit, this time at the Massachusetts Academy of Fine Arts.
8:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Beirstot had clearly made a name for himself as an artist, at least locally in Boston, in the first years of the 1850s. His name appears in print in various papers as being part of art sales and exhibitions, and in cases where he's listed with other artists, he's often mentioned first.
9:17 Holly Frey? During this period, he, like a lot of other artists of the time, traveled to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Beirstot had started to become deeply interested in painting landscapes. And while he painted a lot of imagery from the White Mountains and other nearby places, he was also interested in learning more about his craft and expanding his sphere beyond New England. So at the age of 23, Beirstot returned to Germany, hoping to study art in Dusseldorf.
9:46 Tracy V. Wilson? His goal was to get to the Dusseldorf School, but that proved to be a bit of a challenge, and there's a little bit of intrigue here. The Dusseldorf School was led at the time by Andreas Achenbach. He was a German painter, born in 1815, and his specialty was landscapes and sea scapes. If you look at his painting and Beirstot's side by side, the influence is immediately obvious, and Albert Beirstot wanted to be taught by him. But he was dissuaded from doing so after some other artists told him that Achenbach was not taking on any new students at the time. This does not seem to have been true.
10:28 Tracy V. Wilson? It's not clear if that information had been told to Albert erroneously, or if maybe it was some kind of a cruel joke. Regardless, Bierstadt believed it. Despite that discouraging turn, he stayed in Europe for several years. And it was during this time that he really developed the art style he would become known for, that was sweeping landscapes with really dramatic lighting. In addition to his studies in Germany, Albert traveled around Europe and he used the landscapes he saw there as the subjects for his work. In addition to the style of his art, he also developed the techniques that he would use to create them. He made sketches and he would eventually also take photos and then he would take that reference material and make oil sketches, so relatively small, quick paintings, to
11:13 Tracy V. Wilson? test out his compositions. Some of these, he would then transition onto large canvases. One of his other techniques was plusing up landscapes by changing the details for some added drama. So this might mean shifting the geography a little bit to include more elements, or adding animals, or villages, or people to give a sense of the scale.
11:33 Holly Frey? Yeah, there's a great moment in that lecture that we mentioned earlier where there's an example of his art being shown and it's like, hey, you can't see these mountains from this place. He shifted stuff around and scooted it a little so everything looked more majestic.
11:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Was Canaletto doing something similar? I feel like we talked about that, too.
11:54 Holly Frey? Oh, yeah, many artists did the same thing. In Bierstadt's case, it led to a few instances where people misidentified what he had actually painted, because it just didn't look like anything that was quite right.
12:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
12:07 Holly Frey? Coming up, we are going to talk about how Bierstadt's career took off once he was back in the US. But first, we're going to take a little sponsor break.
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16:36 Holly Frey? In 1857, Beirstadt returned to the US with a matured style. And initially, he went back to teaching art lessons to make ends meet. But once he was kind of back on his feet, he focused exclusively on his own painting. Most of the paintings that Bierstot made during the months after he returned to the US from Europe were historical pieces. They were sort of visual representations of fictional moments in European history, or sometimes real moments that he was fictionalizing visually. In 1857, Bierstadt had the good fortune of selling one of these paintings to the Boston Athenaeum. This piece, known as the Portico of Octavia, depicts the ancient Roman structure
17:17 Holly Frey? of the same name, built in 23 BCE by the Roman Emperor Augustus. But the depiction by Bierstadt shows the way historically significant spaces evolve and change, and even become mundane as they are repurposed for changing times. That change is evidenced in an alternate title for the painting, which is Roman Fish Market. The painting captures a moment. The entire scene is filled with life, including fish carcasses, people hawking their offerings, and even people dozing in the open-air market. There's a cat angling for a bit of fish, and a couple of dogs, and several ducks on the scene. And it's all contemporary to Bierstadt's time. Over the street, behind the portico, laundry can be seen hanging
18:00 Holly Frey? across the gap between buildings. And although this scene is full of everyday people and things, there is also still a tourist couple, dressed very smartly, walking through it. The husband, who's wearing his spectacles, carries a red-covered guidebook, and he's looking up at all of the architecture. His wife, on the other hand, who's wearing this yellow and green dress, is looking around at the people and her street-level surroundings. Portico of Octavia is a large painting, but it's not huge. It's a little larger than two feet by three feet, so about 2/3 of a meter by 1 meter. His paintings would get much bigger than that going forward.
18:37 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1858, Bierstadt had a painting accepted for exhibition by the National Academy of Design in New York. The painting, which depicted Lake Lucerne and the surrounding Swiss Alps, was created using multiple sketches that Albert had made during his four years studying in Europe. This painting shows all of the hallmarks of the style that would really make Bierstadt successful. It's large, 6 feet by 10 feet. It offers a sweeping landscape view of open land in the foreground and a mountain range in the background. Of course, it has the water of the lake, and it uses light glancing off the clouds and the snow-capped mountain peaks to great dramatic effect. This was a critical success and was so highly regarded that Bierstadt was made
19:22 Tracy V. Wilson? an honorary member of the National Academy of Design. The NAD was and is an honor society, which includes artists, quote, "selected by their peers in recognition of their extraordinary contributions to art and architecture in America." So for a 28-year-old artist just getting started in his career, this was a big achievement to be recognized in this way.
19:44 Holly Frey? Bierstadt's focus on European subjects changed after he joined a government-contracted overland survey in 1859. He had an opportunity that year to travel across the North American continent with a survey expedition led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander, who had been tasked with building a trail that would pass through Idaho and Wyoming. This early work on assessing the land where the trail might go traveled along the Platte River, and it gave Bierstadt the chance to see a lot of landscapes. And he made sketches and took notes and photographs along the way. So we've covered various aspects of the history of photography on the show before, including
20:24 Holly Frey? back-to-back episodes on Louis Daguerre and Robert Cornelius in December of 2021. And those men were working in the first half of the 19th century. So photography was still really quite new when Bierstadt started using it to capture images of scenery that he hoped to later reproduce in paint.
20:43 Tracy V. Wilson? This whole trip had been something Bierstadt did with commercial sales of his work in mind. He understood the fascination in the US with the West at the time. This was seen as a huge landscape of potential and opportunity. So Bierstadt had decided to paint that landscape as part of his own financial potential and opportunity. And to paint it, he needed to see it and to make sketches. So this journey was a time in which he collected the material that he thought would have commercial success and in a large enough volume that he could have several years' worth of reference for paintings.
21:18 Holly Frey? By September 1859, Bierstadt was back home in New York, where he had moved and he had his new inspiration. He had found the entire journey really quite eye-opening. And after thinking for years that European scenes were going to be his work's focus, he declared, quote, "Our own country has the best material for the artist in the world." When he moved to New York, he rented a space at the 10th Street Studio Building to work from.
21:44 Tracy V. Wilson? The 10th Street Studio Building was an important building. It was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, and it was the first structure that was purpose-built to house artists' studios. The building, which was completed in 1858, was at 15 10th Street in Greenwich Village. Eight years later, in a street number change, it became 51 West 10th Street. It had been built at the behest of James Borman Johnston, a real estate speculator who saw the growing art scene in New York and thought that if he erected a building that offered both work and living space to artists, he would easily fill it, and he was right. Not only did the 10th Street Studio Building fill up, it became a hub of arts in the city.
22:29 Tracy V. Wilson? The building had its own gallery space so that the artists living there could exhibit on-site, and it became a very collaborative place, as well as home to a number of artistic rivalries.
22:41 Holly Frey? And the Hudson River School was centralized at the 10th Street Studios. This was not actually a school, but a movement and a group of artists. A write-up on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website calls it, quote, "America's first true artistic fraternity." This group was highly inspired by the work of Thomas Cole, who painted what he called a, quote, "higher style of landscape." This style combined visible vista with narrative and occasionally even biblical stories. And although Cole died in 1848, the artists who wished to paint in his same style coalesced into a group. To be clear, they did not call themselves the Hudson River School. That name was applied to the group later by a critic because many of the group's members
23:26 Holly Frey? moved on to homes on the Hudson River after their time in Greenwich Village. We're going to talk about that name and how it was not, in fact, a compliment in just a little while. But in addition to Albert Bierstadt, some of the artists associated with this group are Frederick Edwin Church, Charles Herbert Moore, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand, and Sarah Cole. Sarah Cole was actually Thomas Cole's sister.
23:49 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1860, Albert produced the first painting that was based on his experiences from that cross-country travel. It was titled "Base of the Rocky Mountains." We don't know a whole lot about this particular painting because it has been lost. There's a black and white photo of it hanging in a gallery at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, but it's not a clear photo and the painting is kind of at an angle. It's not facing the camera directly. It's obviously a mountain landscape, but additional details are hard to make out.
24:19 Holly Frey? After a few years of work and producing paintings, Albert needed more reference to make more paintings. So in 1863, he went on a second long journey across the country. This time, he traveled with author Fitzhugh Ludlow, who is definitely on my shortlist of topics. And the two men spent a lot of time in Utah and Northern California on this trip. They also stayed in Yosemite Valley, east of San Francisco, for almost two months. And then from there, they moved north to Oregon before eventually returning to the East Coast.
24:52 Tracy V. Wilson? The US Civil War changed things for Bierstadt, but not in a way that you might expect. He was called up for military service in 1863, but he did not serve. He was one of the people that had enough money and privilege and means to pay someone else to serve on their behalf, which was a thing you could do at that time. So he just went on with his life and his career. He would not really feel a personal impact from the war until well after it had claimed the lives of more than 600,000 people. While his military service was being fulfilled by another man, Bierstadt painted "Rocky Mountains' Landers Peak." That's a piece which won him acclaim when it was exhibited at the New York Metropolitan Sanitary Fair.
25:37 Tracy V. Wilson? That was an event held by the US Sanitary Commission to raise money for sick and wounded Civil War soldiers. People could pay a small fee to see the gallery of art on exhibit, and that money went into the support fund. In addition to being a charitable effort, this painting was also a boon to his reputation.
25:57 Holly Frey? In 1865, Bierstadt built himself a home outside the city in Irvington, New York, on the Hudson River. The location of that home is in what's Tarrytown, New York today. And this was something that was made possible by the years he had been working to make money, but particularly because in 1865, he sold Rocky Mountains Lander's Peak to a man named James McHenry for $25,000. That is not adjusted to today's currency. That would be close to half a million dollars in today's money. Bierstadt named his new home that he was able to build because of this windfall Malkasten, which is the German word for paint box. That was also
26:38 Holly Frey? the name of a political artists' association in Dusseldorf, which had been founded in 1848. The home was designed by architect Jacob Ray Mold, and it was a luxury home with three stories and a footprint of 75 by 100 feet, or 23 by 30 meters. Albert's studio in particular had very high ceilings. It had 20-foot-tall doors that could be opened on either end to create sort of a grand salon. And that sounds very fancy pants unicorn, but it actually makes a lot of sense for his work, because he did tend to create such large paintings. So with a massive space that he could open up when he wished, he not only had plenty of room to
27:19 Holly Frey? work on those giant canvases, but he also had enough area to see what they looked like from a distance. He also during this time did maintain a studio in the city. But while the giant studio space at Malkasten makes sense, you might wonder why a bachelor would need or want such a grand mansion.
27:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Well, maybe just to have it, but there was an interesting bit of interpersonal intrigue with Bierstadt and his friend Ludlow in the years after they finished their trip that had, of course, happened in 1863 and 1864. Fitz Ludlow was married to a woman named Rosalie. They had been married in the late 1850s when Rosalie was 18 and he was in his early 20s. She was often described as incredibly pretty, very vivacious and flirtatious. They were a popular couple in the New York literary scene of the mid 19th century. But after Fitz got back from his journey out west, their marriage went south.
28:18 Tracy V. Wilson? It's unclear exactly what happened between them, but there were rumors of infidelity and some pretty substantial evidence for that. In 1866, Bierstadt made a painting titled "A Storm in the Rocky Mountains: Mount Rosalie." There is no Mount Rosalie. He had titled this painting in honor of Ludlow's wife. That, of course, cemented the rumors that he was the person that Rosalie Ludlow was having an affair with. Those rumors appeared to gain additional validation when the Ludlos were divorced in May of 1866 and Albert and Rosalie got married that November. Somehow Albert and Fitz remained friends despite this turn of events.
29:04 Holly Frey? Yeah, Fitz Ludlow had a kind of a short life. Like I said, he is on my short list because that is a story. But this marriage between Albert and Rosalie and the completion of his new mansion marked the start of a really productive time for Bierstadt. He made a lot of paintings, but the quality of those paintings is said to be some of his best work. He wasn't just sitting at home and working, though, because he seemed to almost always be traveling around New England with his brothers, photographing landscapes for future use as painting reference. But in fact, he traveled a lot for many years to many places after his estate had been completed.
29:44 Tracy V. Wilson? In a moment, we'll discuss how Albert was received in Europe during his and Rosalie's honeymoon, but first we'll hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.
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30:41 Speaker 05 reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
30:53 Tracy V. Wilson? For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges
31:37 Tracy V. Wilson? and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.
32:04 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
32:46 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
33:52 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
34:12 Holly Frey? Albert and Rosalie spent two years in Europe as sort of a late and prolonged honeymoon. And this actually seems like it must have been a pretty dizzying tour because he had become famous by that point, and he was received by heads of state and lauded as one of the greatest living artists. He met Queen Victoria and gave her a private exhibition of his paintings. He partied with previous podcast subject Franz Liszt, and he was given the French Legion of Honor Medal by Napoleon III. And he was also really calculated about parlaying all of this popularity into additional income. For one thing, he was able to make connections to wealthy collectors who could potentially become clients. But another thing
34:56 Holly Frey? he did sort of hearkens back to his first years in New Haven, putting together little art exhibits and charging money for people to see them. Because while he was in Europe, Bierstadt rented studios and he continued working. And then he would stage display events where people could pay a fee and come to his studio and see his canvas before it was sent home to the US for exhibit and/or sale. He had realized that he could monetize his paintings beyond just selling them. And beyond selling display tickets, he also started getting into the prints business, enabling to start selling art to people who couldn't afford originals to an almost unlimited degree.
35:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Back in the US, the couple traveled to California together in 1871 aboard the transcontinental railroad, which was newly completed. They ended up spending two years on the West Coast, visiting Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As always, Albert sketched throughout this journey and then made oil sketches and larger paintings based on the reference that he had created while on the trip. One of these is Seal Rock, Pacific Ocean, California, which feels almost playful in comparison to his other work, including other work of this same vista, because it includes an assortment of seals clambering around a set of rocks.
36:15 Holly Frey? Yeah, the oil sketch that he did to preclude the larger painting is extra silly. There's like a little seal in the center foreground, like popping his head up into the frame, making a very silly face. It's quite charming. The late 1870s and into the 1880s were a time of shifting luck for Bierstadt. He had managed to orchestrate such an impressive rise through the art world and such a successful career financially, but then his good fortunes seemed to just kind of run out. Rosalie was sick in 1876 and the diagnosis was not good. It was tuberculosis. Her doctor prescribed her warm climates, so she and Albert went to the Bahamas when the New England weather turned cold.
37:01 Holly Frey? He painted shore of the turquoise sea while they were on their tropical retreat there, and that is an incredibly beautiful rendition of waves breaking onto a craggy beach. The translucence that Bierstadt was able to capture in the water is very, very striking. Critics thought so, too. When he brought this painting back to New York and displayed it at the National Academy of Design, it was a huge hit. Rosalie's health waxed and waned over the following years, and they continued to spend winters in the Bahamas.
37:31 Tracy V. Wilson? This next bit isn't really something that affected Albert Bierstadt, but it's next in the timeline and it sets up an interesting story that helps illustrate the ways in which his work has been perceived over the decades. In 1877, Alvin Adams, purchaser of Lake Lucerne, died. That painting went up for auction as part of the sale of his estate in 1882. A man named Hezekiah Conant bought it for a whopping $3,375, and then that painting vanished. Conant died in 1902, but the painting was not among his assets at that time. Its whereabouts were not known. This was a large painting, six feet tall and 10 feet wide, or 1.8 meters by 3 meters.
38:16 Tracy V. Wilson? So it's not as though somebody could have just misplaced it, lost track of it in storage, accidentally stuck it behind another painting.
38:25 Holly Frey? It went into a midden heap accidentally.
38:28 Tracy V. Wilson? We're mentioning this because the painting is going to pop up again at the end of the episode.
38:33 Holly Frey? So then in 1882, there was a fire at Malkasten and the entire mansion burned down. And Albert had a great many paintings there, all of which were lost. He also had a significant collection of indigenous artifacts that he had collected while traveling and which he used in his work as reference. That was also gone.
38:54 Tracy V. Wilson? And to make matters worse, the 1880s is when the impact of the Civil War in the United States really finally started to affect Bierstadt's livelihood. This was more than a decade after the war before it really started to happen. But as post-war attitudes in the US had shifted, so had the country's taste in art. Bierstadt's popularity earlier in the 19th century had been really tied to the idea of manifest destiny. His work appealed to people who believed that it was God's will that European-born and descended people in North America would expand the country westward and also spread their way of doing things.
39:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Of course, this was tied to the whole concept of colonialism and pioneer spirit and the idea that somehow the European-influenced way of life was the right one. And Bierstadt had kind of courted that whole misguided idealism in his selection of material and the style in which he painted. He had included imagery of indigenous cultures in his art as a way to appeal to the exoticism that like white East Coasters engaged in regarding Native Americans. He really made a lot of money on capturing natural beauty while also offering what he was depicting as a place that like beckoned development.
40:23 Holly Frey? But in a nation that had been through a devastating war because people could not decide on what exactly that right way of life was, the idea of manifest destiny had kind of shattered. Additionally, the rise of industrialism and a change of focus to naval supremacy rather than conquering the wide open West meant that art like Bierstadt's was no longer seen as majestic and inspiring, but instead sort of quaint and old fashioned. And it was actually in this vein that the term Hudson River School first was used to characterize the artists that had made their names with such art as passe and living out their lives in retirement mansions, removed from the real lives of average Americans.
41:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, there was still plenty of like expansionism and growth and all of that going on, but it didn't have quite the same shiny appeal as in the earlier decades.
41:19 Holly Frey? Well, and I feel like the people that would have been able to afford original art moved on to industrialism instead of going, I'm going to take my chances by developing places to the West. They were like, yeah, but I can make a factory right here, right now and not go through that. So.
41:36 Tracy V. Wilson? So Albert struggled through the 1880s and the end of the decade was especially painful. In 1888, he was made a member of the Boone and Crockett Club, which was a conservation club founded by Theodore Roosevelt in response to the overhunting of buffalo and other big game. This group didn't want to outlaw hunting, but it wanted it regulated for sustainable practices to be put in place for the sport. That same year, Bierstadt painted a piece titled The Last of the Buffalo. This image features an indigenous man on horseback spearing a buffalo, and there are several dead buffalo on the ground in the foreground of the painting. The herd of them are spread around in the background grazing
42:20 Tracy V. Wilson? and walking through a body of water. To the right of the painting in the background, there are more men on horsebacks who have axes and bows and arrows. They're all on the hunt. So while the artist may have been hoping to create a piece of art that would raise awareness about the dwindling number of buffalo in the West, the scene he created made it seem like indigenous people had caused the problem, which was not the case. There was an intentional effort by white people to kill buffalo to starve the indigenous population. So this was a very backwards way of looking at it. This is another massive painting, the same size as Lake Lucerne.
43:02 Holly Frey? And Bierstadt thought that this would be the perfect piece to send to the 1889 Paris Exposition. But unfortunately, that sentiment was not shared with the committee that selected art on behalf of the US for exhibition. And Bierstadt was really hurt by this decision. A lot of the committee members had been his old friends, but he found his own way around it. Remember that Legion of Honor medal that Napoleon III gave him? Because he had that, that meant that he was entitled to show the painting if he wanted at the Paris Salon, which he did. So it was on display in Paris at the same time that the Paris Expo was happening. The painting has problems, but I do love this sort of petty workaround.
43:47 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1889, Bierstadt traveled through Canada via the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then to Alaska, which was not yet a state, by Steamer. He was once again in search of material for his paintings. It seemed that he recognized that the landscapes of the Western US were kind of out of favor at this point, so he was in search of some new terrain. The paintings, Alaskan Coast Range, Indian Encampment Alaska, and one just titled Alaska, as well as others, came out of this travel. They really were not met with the demand that his previous work had enjoyed.
44:23 Holly Frey? Then, after 17 years of frail health and efforts to get better, Rosalie died in 1893. In 1894, Albert remarried, this time to a woman named Mary Hicks Stewart. She was a widow with a considerable fortune, but that fortune did not become Bierstadt's, and he was forced to declare bankruptcy. He sold all of his assets to pay his creditors, including 150 paintings. Had he sold that many paintings at the height of his career, he would have made an entirely new fortune for himself. But by the 1890s, few buyers were really interested in what was at the time considered to be his overly theatrical style.
45:05 Tracy V. Wilson? He lived out the next several years pretty quietly. No longer was being invited to meet royalty. Nobody wanted to pay to see his paintings before he sold them. On February 18th, 1902, Bierstadt left the Union League Club in New York and returned to his home. He told one of his house staff that he wasn't feeling well and asked for a stimulant. He was found dead a short time later. Bierstadt was buried in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at Rural Cemetery.
45:34 Holly Frey? So, a lot of biographies indicate that he was completely unknown by the time he died, but that does not appear to be entirely accurate. He had an exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum in 1901, so a year before he died. And on January 7th, 1902, so just a little over a month before he died, the Boston Transcript had a lengthy write-up about his life and career, which included fairly in-depth analysis of his work, some of which includes, "Bierstadt is a true representative of the Dusseldorf school in landscape. To this fact are to be ascribed both his merits and defects. Skill prevails over imagination in the Dusseldorf artists. They are more effective than impressive, more clever than tender,
46:19 Holly Frey? yet withal admirably equipped for their work. One reason for the success of Bierstadt is that the Dusseldorf style was a novelty here, though familiar abroad."
46:30 Tracy V. Wilson? While he had fallen out of favor by the time of his death, a few decades later, interest in his paintings started to revive. And today, there are museums all over the U.S. and the world that include his art in their permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Met in New York, the DeYoung in San Francisco, and, as was mentioned in the listener mail that Holly read at the top of the episode, the Denver Art Museum.
46:55 Holly Frey? Okay, so now it is time for the Lake Lucerne Coda. As we mentioned earlier, that painting was not in Hezekiah Connet's belongings when he died. And there was no indication at the time as to where that giant painting may have gone. Cut to 1990, when a woman named Pearl Rose, who lived in Exeter, Rhode Island, died. The painting was inherited by one of her relatives named Louis Peck, who then shared the news that the missing beer stout was found. It had never really been lost. Mrs. Rose's first husband, William Sunderland, purchased the painting from Connet in 1890, and it had stayed in the family for 100 years. And apparently, this family owned a lot of high-end art
47:40 Holly Frey? and chose to keep that fact private lest art thieves target their collection. That seems to make a lot of sense. One would think that the size of this piece would have alerted someone, because apparently it was so large that a portion of the roof had to be lifted off of the Exeter home to get it moved in initially. This painting was sold a few months later, after this news broke in 1990, for a little more than half a million dollars. It was purchased by an art dealer named Richard York. He was the agent of the National Gallery of Art. That purchase was made possible by the financial backing of Richard M. Scaife and Margaret R. Battle, and it remains in the National Gallery of Art collection today. So it's kind of an interesting way to look
48:24 Holly Frey? at how his career went. Sky high while he was alive, then fell off. People thought he was outdated. And then his painting was sold for half a million dollars.
48:35 Holly Frey? Everything is cyclical. Since we did listener mail at the top of the episode, I won't do one here, but we have a lot of fun ones coming up. And I will just say, if you would like to write to us about this or anything else, you can do so at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
49:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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