Sunrise in the Sierras
ca. 1872
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Orrin Wickersham June
Accession Number
1967.136.8
Tags
About this artwork
In 1872, Albert Bierstadt traveled deep into Kings River canyon in the South Sierra Nevada with the geologist Clarence King. He created many paintings on this trip, believing that people back East would be fascinated by images of the distant western states. In Sunrise in the Sierras the sunlight bouncing off the tips of the mountains emphasizes the vivid color of the rock against the dark, unfinished foreground. (Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, 1990)
About the Artist
Albert Bierstadt · 1830–1902
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was a German-American landscape painter renowned for his monumental, luminous depictions of the American West. As a prominent member of the second generation of the Hudson River School and the Rocky Mountain School, Bierstadt created sweeping panoramas that captured the sublime grandeur of untamed wilderness with unprecedented theatrical scale and romantic vision. His ...