Albert Bierstadt, painter

Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt, was a pioneer of landscape paintings, the idea to capture nature in its ideal form. The landscape painting would come on massive scales this element was to give the viewer a feel of, "awww". In most landscape paintings the artist would portray only nature very seldomly would you see a human figure; if you see such a figure they are often depicted on a much smaller scale that what viewers were used to. Human figures up to this point were often the center focus of most paintings. Albert Bierstadt, was one of the artist whom inspired the idea that nature was bigger than man.

I personally appreciate this type of painting because I took from it the aspect that for once a painter has put aside the human ego and captured the beauty of nature. Most often you find elements of idealism. This being seeing nature as beautiful and trying to portray it in its most perfect form. At the time, the idea of landscape painting underwent much scrutiny, such are most new concepts. Eventually the concept of landscape painting would be greatly accepted and inspire even French painters, who lead the world in painting. 

This idea that American painters inspired would be taken by many cultures. This acceptance lead to many variations of landscape painting, through brush techniques and subject matter. But the overall idea of portraying nature in its ideal form was uniform amongst various painters. One criticism that many American painters underwent with the idea of landscape painting was that the eye of American painters was to hard versus the looseness of French painters. Albert Bierstadt on the other hand I feel captured the comfortable median of looking too hard and painting too loosely.