Albert Bierstadt And The Oregon Trail: Romanticism Movement

During the 19th century Romanticism era, Albert Bierstadt was one of the most influential painters brought into this time. Bierstadt best known for his paintings that took place in the later 1800s that predominantly consisted of the landscapes of the American West. Although Bierstadt was not the first painter to record these sites, he was the one painter who had people look forward to his own version of these paintings. In the 1860s, Bierstadt went west for the first time and it would change his life as well as the lives of others that got the chance to experience his paintings and sketches. One artwork of his in particular was titled “The Oregon Trail” (1869). This painting was taken place during The Oregon Trail as Bierstadt sketched and
Why does it? Because the emotion that Bierstadt put into this painting is the amount of passion you need for any line of work. Bierstadt when finished made viewers appreciate what it means to be those type of people and what those people have to go through day in and day out. These spectators could understand all of that by looking at a painting on a canvas. The meaning of Romanticism as said earlier is the emphasis of emotions and imagination has in literature and art. Bierstadt explained this perfectly by the way the animals and people are walking, to the sky and the sunlight that is beating down on them. The different colors mixed in the painting to give it this look of standing there as one and Bierstadt is presenting in this painting that these emigrants are all staying as one group no matter what. As Bierstadt headed out west and took in these historical moments, he had many things to say about his time but one thing to say about The Oregon Trail, “Every wagon was a gem of an interior such as no Fleming ever put on canvas, and every group a genre piece for Boughton. The whole picture of the train was such a delight in form, color, and spirit, that I could have lingered near it all the way to Kearny” (Hendricks, 342). This explains Bierstadt’s love for people and scenery. A perfect example of Idealization, the emotion and the imagination as Bierstadt’s covers this historic
As anyone can see above he clearly changed the way people paint and the way people think about a painting. Albert aspired the viewers to notice the detail he puts into his paintings because in every one he gives the observer a message that we could take with us the rest of our lives (i.e. never give up and always strive for greatness, etc.). When you analyze Bierstadt’s painting’s folks and different scholars look at the attention to detail he gives by enhancing layer upon layer to his paintings and how Bierstadt paints with such passion. In the above painting The Oregon Trail (1869) you can see the feeling from the people, animals, and even the sunlight and trees. Bierstadt wants us to view and understand what these people had to go through just from looking at a painting. The way Bierstadt caught every moment is pure art. During the Romanticism time nobody would be able to paint and really seize a flash of time quite like Bierstadt could. He was the painter of the Romanticism era; everything he has done has shown true emotion. Toward the end of his career, critics were skeptical on when Bierstadt was going to arise to the top once again, but he never did. Still to this day people are writing different blurbs in magazines and such about Bierstadt, “The most fatal flaw of the catalogue, (and of the exhibition that it represents) is that it makes Bierstadt look like a mediocre artist, which I for one do not believe he is” (Stebbins,