Albert Bierstadt (German/American, 1830–1902)
Cloudscape
Oil on paper mounted to canvas
12 × 16 in.
Initialed lower right: “A.B.”
Provenance: Alfred H. Barr, Jr.; thence by descent to his daughter, Victoria Barr (1937–2025).
Exhibited: 18th and 19th Century American Paintings from Private Collections, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 27–September 11, 1972.
A rare, introspective study by one of the preeminent figures of American landscape painting, Cloudscape distills Albert Bierstadt’s fascination with the sublime forces of nature into an intimate meditation on atmosphere and light. The composition—stripped of human presence—captures the shifting drama of mist and cloud as they envelop a mountainous peak, dissolving the boundary between land and sky. Bierstadt’s nuanced handling of tone and texture, from luminous veils of vapor to the darkened contours of earth, reveals his technical mastery and his enduring Romantic vision of nature as both majestic and mysterious.
Born in Solingen, Germany, and raised in Massachusetts, Bierstadt trained in Düsseldorf before embarking on his celebrated journeys through the American West. His monumental canvases of the Rockies and Sierra Nevada defined the visual mythology of nineteenth-century America, yet smaller studies such as Cloudscape disclose another dimension of his genius—one rooted in quiet observation, painterly subtlety, and spiritual reverence for the transitory effects of light and weather.
This work is included in the database of the Albert Bierstadt Catalogue Raisonné Project and is accompanied by a letter of opinion from Melissa Webster Speidel, President of the Bierstadt Foundation and Director of the Albert Bierstadt Catalogue Raisonné Project.
