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Albert Bierstadt

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Born in Germany, raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and trained as an artist in Düsseldorf, Albert Bierstadt emerged at the beginning of the 1860s as a rapidly-rising star of the American art world. A trip to the Rocky Mountains in 1859 resulted in several huge paintings of Western scenery that solidified his reputation. Bierstadt visited California for the first time in 1863, spending about a month in Yosemite Valley before returning to his New York studio. There he worked up his field studies into major paintings that did more to publicize the wonders of California scenery than written accounts or photographs. Bierstadt returned to San Francisco in 1871 and spent most of the next two years as a resident California painter, traveling around the state taking plein-air studies. During this second stay in California, Bierstadt often inscribed the location on the reverse of his oil on paper studies. When this work was conserved, the restorer apparently traced the inscription “near Oakland, California” before mounting the painting on a board. Bierstadt studies infrequently include figures in the foreground. This rare work relates to an oil on paper study of about the same size titled “The Artist’s Friends at the Milton S. Latham House” illustrated in Albert Bierstadt by Gordon Hendricks. Some of the figures in this work depicting women sitting in the shade of ancient oak trees seem also to be present in our painting. The exact site “near Oakland” depicted in our work has not been identified, and indeed, Bierstadt may have created a composite landscape taken from other sketches to fill out the distances that conveniently include a hay harvest and an orchard of fruit trees. During 1873, Bierstadt’s wife Rosalie and several friends would go on excursions into the country with the artist, and this painting is a reminiscence of one such outing. The intense gentleman stretched out on the picnic blanket might actually portray the artist himself, who had a full beard like the man in the painting. Rosalie’s sister, Esther, was part of the entourage and may be one of the ladies in the foreground. The season is early summer, with a seasonal creek still running in the left front corner of the composition and the grass shielded by the shade still a green color. The distant golden fields create a harmony of tones that meld into the lavender distances. The dreamy joy of a summer’s day in the country in a then far-off and exotic land is the theme of this work. Rarely have the graceful contours of valley oaks been captured more effectively in art than in this painting.