June 18, 2025 • 38 mins
Albert Bierstadt’s story runs counter to the romanticized idea of a passionate starving artist. He was strategic in his career, selecting imagery that he knew would appeal to U.S. audiences, and monetizing his art outside of selling paintings.
Research:
- Appman, Sarah Bean. “How One Building Turned Greenwich Village Into an Artists’ Mecca.” Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. August 6, 2019. https://www.villagepreservation.org/2019/08/06/how-one-building-turned-greenwich-village-into-an-artists-mecca/
- “Albert Bierstadt Dead.” Indianapolis News. Feb. 19, 1902. https://www.newspapers.com/image/37784929/?match=1&terms=Albert%20Bierstadt
- Avery, Kevin J. “Hudson River School.” The Met. Oct. 1, 2004. https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/the-hudson-river-school
- “Bierstadt Painting Surfaces After 100 Years.” Greenville News. June 7, 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/image/192068392/?match=1&terms=Albert%20Bierstadt%20Lucerne
- “Dealer Gets Bargain on Lost Art.” The News Tribune. Oct. 14, 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/image/738127494/?match=1&terms=Albert%20Bierstadt%20Lucerne
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Düsseldorf school". Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 Mar. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dusseldorf-school
- “Fine Paintings.” Boston Evening Transcript. May 26, 1857. https://www.newspapers.com/image/734940677/?match=1&terms=Albert%20Bierstadt
- Hassrick, Peter H., et al. “Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West.” University of Oklahoma Press. 2018.
- “Jan. 7, 1830, Albert Bierstadt was born.” Boston Evening Transcript. Jan. 7, 1902. https://www.newspapers.com/image/735167933/?match=1&terms=Albert%20Bierstadt
- “Look at This.” Boston Evening Transcript. Dec. 19, 1850. https://www.newspapers.com/image/735037015/?match=1&terms=Albert%20Bierstadt
- “Meet the artists of the Hudson River School and visit the places in nature that they painted and made famous.” Hudson River School Art Trail. https://www.hudsonriverschool.org/artists
- “Albert Bierstadt.” The Art Story. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/bierstadt-albert/
- “Mission.” National Academy of Design. https://nationalacademy.org/the-academy/about-us
- Quinn, Karen. “American Landscape Painting: Albert Bierstadt and the American Land.” Museum of Fine Arts Boston. February 13, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phAETFErwRU&t=9s
- “Roman Fish Market. Arch of Octavius.” Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. De Young Museum. https://www.famsf.org/artworks/roman-fish-market-arch-of-octavius
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Tracy, We're going crazy over here. We're going to do
this whole thing backwards this week. We're going to need
this episode backwards because we're going to read listener mail first,
because this listener mail led to this episode. So this
is from our listener who only signed their email with
an L. I see their name in the return address,
(00:38):
but I don't know if they would like it kept
out of the show, so Elle writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy.
I have my PhD in SMI HC, and over the
years of enjoying your show, I have only ever liked
the art focused episodes because of the non art stuff,
the family drama, the historical event connections, etc. As an
(00:59):
engineer from a family full of stem people, I had
only ever looked at art as something that took skill
and that those weird creative people were obsessed with. My
partner and I recently moved to the Denver area, partially
for work, but also because we love the mountains and
the outdoors. This past weekend, we went to the Denver
Art Museum, mainly to enjoy the architecture and the museum vibes.
(01:19):
As we wandered the exhibits, I saw a painting that
stopped me in my tracks. I stared at it for
a good ten minutes before my partner found me and
wondered if I was okay, because why would I want
to look at a painting for so long? It was
wind River Country by Albert Bierstadt. The depth and the
beauty and the way he so perfectly captured the way
I feel when I'm in the outdoors took my breath away.
(01:41):
I went on to find all his other works in
that museum and became obsessed. I sat in front of
Rocky Pool, New Hampshire and almost teared up from how
much it felt like I was back in my childhood,
playing in the woods and exploring my surroundings. All of
that to say, I have a newfound appreciation for the
way art impacts people, and I can no longer make
fun of you, Holly and everyone else that loves art,
(02:02):
because now I do too. I couldn't find an episode
on Beerstatt, so if you've covered him already, my apologies,
but he seems like an interesting character for an episode.
Elle attaches Pet tacks of They're very sweet pups, Rosy
and Bucket, who are referred to as two dummies who
love to fight over sticks and go on adventures with us.
They look like perfect angels. They don't look like dummies,
(02:25):
so they look like perfect babies. Listenel, I love an
art awakening, and you managed to fall in love with
the work of an artist whose story is pretty interesting
because it runs counter to the romanticized idea we often
have or is often portrayed in media of a passionate,
starving artist. Beer Stott was not naturally talented, although he
(02:46):
clearly developed incredible skills to make just arresting imagery, and
he was really really unusually strategic in his career, selecting
imagery that he knew was gonna appeal widely to us audience,
and he also found ways to monetize his art outside
of selling paintings in print. He is really really interesting
(03:08):
to me, So here's your episode. He became known for
primarily painting the grandeur of the American landscape, but as
we'll see, there's a lot more to his story.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Albert Bierstatt was born in Solingen, Germany, on January seventh,
eighteen thirty Sometimes he's described as being from nearby Dusseldorf,
mostly because that's a larger and more recognizable city. His parents,
Henry and Christina, already had five children when Albert was born.
Although he was born in Germany, he's often described as
(03:42):
being an American artist, and that's because his family moved
to the US in eighteen thirty two, when Albert was
just a two year old. The Beerstots moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts,
for the whaling industry. Henry was a cooper, and whaling towns,
of course, needed plenty of barrels.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
We don't have a whole lot of details about Albert's
early years other than the fact that he was interested
in art from a young age. He did not formally
study art as a kid. He just practiced a lot,
and he developed his own knowledge and skill set just
through self study. But though he hadn't ever learned our
informal setting, he was apparently and natural at teaching it
(04:23):
because when he was just twenty, Beerstatt had begun teaching
painting to make money. Ads ran in the Boston evening
transcript for his teaching services that read quote, look at
this monochromatic painting. Mister Albert Berstatt commenced teaching the above
art in this city with a few scholars, and was
so successful that the number soon reached seventy. And although
(04:46):
the promise that every scholar should, in six lessons of
two hours each make a picture worthy of a frame,
we are not aware of any case in which he
has not succeeded in redeeming that pledge. Although some of
the scholars at the time they commenced knew nothing of
drawing or perspective. So this ad is undersigned by a
number of people, including people who list their professions, and
(05:10):
a couple of them are principles of local schools, their booksellers,
and their other pupils of beer Stott. Also, just as
in a side in case you do not know, monochromatic
painting is a painting that uses a single color, the hue,
and then the details are added using variations of that color,
so tints which are created by adding white, shades which
are created by adding black, and tones which are created
(05:33):
by mixing in gray.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
These ads ran for more than a year, as did
more editorial commentaries on his classes and their value. This
is a pretty interesting situation because at the time Beerstott
wasn't particularly accomplished as an artist, although he did bill
himself as a master. This was actually a part of
young Beerstott's bigger effort to just hustle out a living
(05:56):
for himself. And a lecture given by Karen Quinn, a
curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Quinn describes
Bierstutt as a pet Barnum like character because he would
also arrange to have other artists work brought into the city,
and he would charge money for people to see them.
This wasn't like a curated exhibit or a collection. It
(06:18):
wasn't affiliated with the museum, just a little money making
enterprise that he had come up with. In eighteen fifty one,
Beerstutt started working with oil paints for the first time,
and it actually wasn't long until he had his first
exhibition of these efforts. That same year, he had the
thirteen painting shown at the New England Art Union in Boston.
(06:39):
In eighteen fifty three, he had another exhibit, this time
at the Massachusetts Academy of Fine Arts. Bierstatt had clearly
made a name for himself as an artist, at least
locally in Boston in the first years of the eighteen fifties.
His name appears in print in various papers as being
part of art sales and exhibitions, and in cases where
(07:00):
he's listed with other artists, he's often mentioned first. During
this period, he, like a lot of other artists of
the time, traveled to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.
Bierstott had started to become deeply interested in painting landscapes,
and while he painted a lot of imagery from the
White Mountains and other nearby places, he was also interested
(07:22):
in learning more about his craft and expanding his sphere
beyond New England. So at the age of twenty three,
Berstott returned to Germany, hoping to study art in Dusseldorf.
His goal was to get to the Dusseldorf School, but
that proved to be a bit of a challenge, and
there's a little bit of intrigue here. The Dusseldorf School
(07:42):
was led at the time by Andreas Achenbach. He was
a German painter born in eighteen fifteen, and his specialty
was landscapes.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And seascapes.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
If you look at his painting in Beerstatt's side by side,
the influence is immediately obvious, and Albert Biher wanted to
be taught by him, but he was dissuaded from doing
so after some other artists told him that Ackenbach was
not taking on any new students at the time. This
(08:12):
does not seem to have been true. It's not clear
if that information had been told to Albert erroneously or
if maybe it was some kind of a cruel joke. Regardless,
Beerstott believed it despite that discouraging turn. He stayed in
Europe for several years, and it was during this time
that he really developed the art style he would become
(08:32):
known for. That was sweeping landscapes with really dramatic lighting.
In addition to his studies in Germany, Albert traveled around
Europe and he used the landscapes he saw there as
the subjects for his work. In addition to the style
of his art, he also developed the techniques that he
would use to create them. He made sketches, and he
would eventually also take photos, and then he would take
(08:55):
that reference material and make oil sketches, so relatively small,
quick pains to test out his compositions. Some of these
he would then transition onto large canvases. One of his
other techniques was plussing up landscapes by changing the details
for some added drama. So this might mean shifting the
geography a little bit to include more elements, or adding
(09:17):
animals or villages or people to give a sense of
the scale. Yeah, there's a great moment in that lecture
that we mentioned earlier where there's an example of his
art being shown and it's like, hey, you can't see
these mountains from this place. He shifted stuff around and
scooted it a little so everything looked more majestic. Was
(09:38):
Kintiletto doing something similar? I feel like we talked about
that too. Oh yeah, many artists did the same thing.
In Berstatt's case, it led to a few instances where
people misidentified what he had actually painted because it just
didn't look like anything.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
That was quite right. Right.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Coming up, we are going to talk about how Berstatt's
career took off once he was back in the US. Well, first,
we're going to take a little sponsor break. In eighteen
fifty seven, Beerstot returned to the US with a matured style,
(10:16):
and initially he went back to teaching art lessons to
make ends meet, but once he was kind of back
on his feet, he focused exclusively on his own painting.
Most of the paintings that Beerstot made during the months
after he returned to the US from Europe were historical pieces.
They were sort of visual representations of fictional moments in
European history, or sometimes real moments that he was fictionalizing visually.
(10:41):
In eighteen fifty seven, Beerstot had the good fortune of
selling one of these paintings to the Boston Athenaeum. This piece,
known as the Portico of Octavia, depicts the ancient Roman
structure of the same name, built in twenty three BCE
by the Roman emperor Augustus. But the depiction by Berstatt
shows the way historically nificant spaces evolve and change and
(11:02):
even become mundane as they are repurposed for changing times.
That change is evidence in an alternate title for the painting,
which is Roman Fish Market. The painting captures a moment.
The entire scene is filled with life, including fish carcasses,
people hawking their offerings, and even people dozing in the
open air market. There's a cat angling for a bit
(11:25):
of fish, and a couple of dogs and several ducks
on the scene, and it's all contemporary to Beerstatt's time.
Over the street behind the portico, laundry can be seen
hanging across the gap between buildings. And although this scene
is full of everyday people and things, there is also
still a tourist couple dressed very smartly walking through it.
(11:46):
The husband, who's wearing his spectacles, carries a red covered
guide book and he's looking up at all of the architecture.
His wife, on the other hand, who's wearing this yellow
and green dress, is looking around at the people and
her street level surroundings. Portico of Octavia is a large painting,
but it's not huge. It's a little larger than two
feet by three feet, so about two thirds of a
(12:07):
meter by one meter. His paintings would get much bigger
than that going forward.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
In eighteen fifty eight, Beerstatt had a painting accepted for
exhibition by the National Academy of Design in New York.
The painting, which depicted Lake Lucerne and the surrounding Swiss Alps,
was created using multiple sketches that Albert had made during
his four years studying in Europe. This painting shows all
of the hallmarks of the style that would really make
(12:34):
Beerstatt successful. It's large, six feet by ten feet. It
offers a sweeping landscape view of open land in the
foreground and a mountain range in the background. Of course,
it has the water of the lake and it uses
light glancing off the clouds and the snow capped mountain
peaks to great dramatic effect. This is a critical success
(12:54):
and was so highly regarded that Beerstatt has made an
honorary member of the National Academy Design. The NAD was
and is an honor society which includes artists quote selected
by their peers and recognition of their extraordinary contributions to
art and architecture in America. So for a twenty eight
year old artists just getting started in his career, this
(13:15):
was a big achievement to be recognized in this way.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Berstatt's focus on European subjects changed after he joined a
government contracted overland survey in eighteen fifty nine. He had
an opportunity that year to travel across the North American
continent with a survey expedition led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander,
who had been tasked with building a trail that would
pass through Idaho and Wyoming. This early work on assessing
(13:42):
the land where the trail might go traveled along the
Platte River, and it gave Berstott the chance to see
a lot of landscapes, and he made sketches and took
notes and photographs along the way. So we've covered various
aspects of the history of photography on the show before,
including back to be episodes on Louis Daguerre and Robert
Cornelius in December of twenty twenty one, and those men
(14:05):
were working in the first half of the nineteenth century,
so photography was still really quite new when Beerstott started
using it to capture images of scenery that he hoped
to later reproduce in paint. This whole trip had been
something Bierstott did with commercial sales of his work in mind.
He understood the fascination in the US with the West.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
At the time, this.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Was seen as a huge landscape of potential and opportunity,
so Bierstott had decided to paint that landscape as part
of his own financial potential and opportunity and to paint it,
he needed to see it and to make sketches. So
this journey was a time in which he collected the
material that he thought would have commercial success, and in
a large enough volume that he could have several years
(14:50):
worth of reference for paintings.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
By September eighteen fifty nine, Beerstott was back home in
New York, where he had moved, and he had his
new inspiration. He had found the entire journey really quite
eye opening, and after thinking for years that European scenes
were going to be his work's focus, he declared, quote,
our own country has the best material for the artist
in the world. When he moved to New York, he
(15:14):
rented a space at the Tenth Street Studio Building to
work from. The Tenth Street Studio Building was an important building.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
It was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and it
was the first structure that was purpose built to house
artists studios. The building, which was completed in eighteen fifty eight,
was at fifteen tenth Street in Greenwich Village. Eight years later,
in a street number change, it became fifty one West
tenth Street, Edidman built at the behest of James Boorman
(15:45):
Johnston a real estate speculator who saw the growing art
scene in New York and thought that if he erected
a building that offered both work and living space to artists,
he would easily fill it.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And he was right.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Not only did the Tenth Street Studio building fill up,
it became a hub of arts in the city. The
building had its own gallery space so that the artists
living there could exhibit on site, and it became a
very collaborative place as well as home to a number
of artistic rivalries.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And the Hudson River School was centralized at the ten
Street Studios. This was not actually a school, but a
movement and a group of artists. A write up on
the Metropolitan Museum of Arts website calls it quote America's
first true artistic fraternity. This group was highly inspired by
the work of Thomas Cole, who painted what he called
(16:36):
a quote higher style of landscape. This style combined visible
vista with narrative and occasionally even biblical stories, and although
Cole died in eighteen forty eight, the artists who wished
to paint in his same style coalesced into a group.
To be clear, they did not call themselves the Hudson
River School. That name was applied to the group later
(16:58):
by a critic because many of the group's members moved
on to homes on the Hudson River after their time
in Greenwich Village. We're going to talk about that name
and how it was not in fact a compliment in
just a little while. But in addition to Albert Beerstatt,
some of the artists associated with this group are Frederick
Edwin Church, Charles Herbert Moore, Sandford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand,
(17:20):
and Sarah Cole. Sarah Cole was actually Thomas Cole's sister.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
In eighteen sixty, Albert produced the first painting that was
based on his experiences from that cross country travel. It
was titled Base of the Rocky Mountains. We don't know
a whole lot about this particular painting because it has
been lost. There's a black and white photo of it
hanging in a gallery at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy,
but it's not a clear photo, and the painting is
(17:45):
kind of at an angle. It's not facing the camera directly.
It's obviously a mountain landscape, but additional details are hard
to make out.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
After a few years of work in producing paintings. Albert
needed more reference to make more paintings. In eighteen sixty three,
he went on a second long journey across the country.
This time he traveled with author Fitzhugh Ludlow, who is
definitely on my short list of topics, and the two
men spent a lot of time in Utah and northern
California on this trip. They also stayed in Yosemite Valley
(18:18):
east of San Francisco for almost two months, and then
from there they moved north to Oregon before eventually returning
to the East Coast.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
The US Civil War changed things for beer Stott, but
not in a way that you might expect. He was
called up for military service in eighteen sixty three, but
he did not serve. He was one of the people
that had enough money and privilege and means to pay
someone else to serve on their behalf, which was a
thing you could do at that time, so he just
(18:47):
went on with his life and his career. He would
not really feel a personal impact from the war until
well after it had claimed the lives of more than
six hundred thousand people. While his military service was being
fulfilled by another man, beerstock painted Rocky Mountains landers Peak.
That's a piece which won him acclaim when it was
exhibited at the New York Metropolitan Sanitary Fair. That was
(19:12):
an event held by the US Sanitary Commission to raise
money for sick and wounded Civil War soldiers. People could
pay a small fee to see the gallery of art
on exhibit, and that money went into the support fund.
In addition to being a charitable effort, this painting was
also a boon to his reputation.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
In eighteen sixty five, Beerstott built himself a home outside
the city in Irvington, New York, on the Hudson River.
The location of that home is in what's Terrytown, New
York today, and this was something that was made possible
by the years he had been working to make money,
but particularly because in eighteen sixty five he sold Rocky
(19:52):
Mountains landers Peak to a man named James McHenry for
twenty five thousand dollars. That is not adjusted today's currency,
that would be close to half a million dollars in
today's money. Beerstott named his new home that he was
able to build because of this windfall Malcosten, which is
the German word for paint box. That was also the
(20:13):
name of a political artists association in Dusseldorf, which had
been founded in eighteen forty eight. The home was designed
by architect Jacob Ray Mold and it was a luxury
home with three stories and a footprint of seventy five
by one hundred feet or twenty three by thirty meters.
Albert's studio in particular, had very high ceilings. It had
(20:34):
twenty foot tall doors that could be opened on either
end to create sort of a grand salon. And that
sounds very fancy pants unicorn, but it actually makes a
lot of sense for his work because he did tend
to create such large paintings, so with a massive space
that he could open up when he wished, he not
only had plenty of room to work on those giant canvases,
(20:56):
but he also had enough area to see what they
looked like from a distance. He also, during this time
did maintain a studio in the city. But while the
giant studio space at Malcostin makes sense, you might wonder
why a bachelor would need or want such a grand mansion. Well,
maybe just to have it, But there was an interesting
(21:18):
bit of interpersonal intrigue with Beerstatt and his friend Ludlow
in the years after they finished their trip that had,
of course happened in eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Fitth Ludlow was married to a woman named Rosalie. They
had been married in the late eighteen fifties, when Rosalie
was eighteen and he was in his early twenties. She
was often described as incredibly pretty, very vivacious, and flirtatious.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
They were a popular couple in the New.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
York literary scene of the mid nineteenth century, but after
fitz got back from his journey out west, their marriage
went south. It's unclear exactly what happened between them, but
there were rumors of infidelity, and some pretty so substantial
evidence for that. In eighteen sixty six, Beerstott made a
(22:05):
painting titled A Storm in the Rocky Mountains Mount Rosalie.
There is no Mount Rosalie. He had titled this painting
in honor of Ludlow's wife. That of course cemented the
rumors that he was the person that Rosalie Ludlow was
having an affair with. Those rumors appeared to gain additional
(22:26):
validation when the Ludlows were divorced in May of eighteen
sixty six, and Albert and Rosalie got married that November. Somehow,
Albert and Fitz remained friends despite this turn of events.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, fitz Ludlow had a kind of a short life.
Like I said, he is on my short list because
that is a story. But this marriage between Albert and
Rosalie and the completion of his new mansion marked the
start of a really productive time for beer Stott. He
made a lot of paintings, but the quality of those
paintings is said to be some of his best work.
(23:02):
He wasn't just sitting at home and working, though, because
he seemed to almost always be traveling around New England
with his brothers, photographing landscapes for future use as painting reference.
But in fact he traveled a lot for many years
to many places after his estate had been completed. In
a moment, we'll discuss how Albert was received in Europe
(23:22):
during his and Rosalie's honeymoon.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
But first we'll hear from the sponsors that keep stuffumusts
in history class going.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Albert and Rosalie spent two years in Europe as sort
of a late and prolonged honeymoon. And this actually seems
like it must have been a pretty dizzying tour because
he had become famous by that point, and he was
received by heads of state and lauded as one of
the greatest living artists. He met Queen Victoria and gave
her a private exhibition of his paintings. He hartied with
(24:00):
previous podcast subject Franz's List, and he was given the
French Legion of Honor Metal by Napoleon the Third. And
he was also really calculated about parleying all of this
popularity into additional income. For one thing, he was able
to make connections to wealthy collectors who could potentially become clients.
(24:21):
But another thing he did sort of harkens back to
his first years in New Haven, putting together little art
exhibits and charging money for people to see them. Because
while he was in Europe, beer Stott rented studios and
he continued working, and then he would stage display events
where people could pay a fee and come to his
studio and see his canvas before it was sent home
(24:42):
to the US for exhibit and or sale. He had
realized that he could monetize his paintings beyond just selling them.
And beyond selling display tickets, he also started getting into
the prince business, enabling to start selling art to people
who couldn't afford originals to an almost limited degree.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Back in the.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
US, the couple traveled to California together in eighteen seventy
one aboard the trans Continental Railroad, which was newly completed.
They ended up spending two years on the West coast,
visiting Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As always,
Albert sketched throughout this journey and then made oil sketches
and larger paintings based on the reference that he had
(25:24):
created while on the trip. One of these is Seal
Rock Pacific Ocean, California, which feels almost playful in comparison
to his other work, including other work of this same vista,
because it includes an assortment of seals clambering around a
set of rocks. Yeah, the oil sketch that he did
to preclude the larger painting is extra silly. There's like
(25:47):
a little seal in the center foreground, like popping his
head up into the frame making a very silly face.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It's quite charming.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
The late eighteen seventies and into the eighteen eighties were
a time shifting luck for beer Stott. He had managed
to orchestrate such an impressive rise through the art world
and such a successful career financially, but then his good
fortunes seemed to just kind of run out. Rosalie was
sick in eighteen seventy six and the diagnosis was not good.
(26:18):
It was tuberculosis. Her doctor prescribed her warm climates, so
she and Albert went to the Bahamas when the New
England weather turned cold. He painted Shore of the Turquoise
Sea while they were on their tropical retreat there, and
that is an incredibly beautiful rendition of waves breaking onto
a craggy beach. The translucence that Beerstott was able to
(26:39):
capture in the water is very, very striking. Critics thought
so too. When he brought this painting back to New
York and displayed it at the National Academy of Design,
it was.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
A huge hit.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Rosalie's health waxed and waned over the following years, and
they continued to spend winters in the Bahamas. This next
bit isn't really something that affected out Bert Beierstatt, but
it's next in the timeline and it sets up an
interesting story that helps illustrate the ways in which his
work has been perceived over the decades. In eighteen seventy seven,
(27:11):
Alvin Adams, purchaser of Lake Lucerne, died. That painting went
up for auction as part of the sale of his estate.
In eighteen eighty two, a man named Hezekiah Kanent bought
it for a whopping three thousand, three hundred and seventy
five dollars, and then that painting vanished conn It died
in nineteen oh two, but the painting was not among
(27:32):
his assets at that time.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Its whereabouts were not known. This was a large painting
six feet tall and ten feet wide or one point
eight meters by three meters, so it's not as though
somebody could have just misplaced it, lost track of it
in storage, accidentally stuck it behind another painting, it.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Went into a midden heap accidentally.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
We're mentioning this because the painting is going to pop
up again at the end of the episode. So then
in eighteen eighty two there was a fire at Malkasten
and the entire mansion burned down, and Albert had a
great many paintings.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
There, all of which were lost. He also had a
significant collection of indigenous artifacts that he had collected while
traveling in which he used in his work as reference
that was also gone, and to.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Make matters worse, the eighteen eighties is when the impact
of the Civil War in the United States really finally
started to affect Beerstat's livelihood.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
This was more than a.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Decade after the war before it really started to happen,
but as post war attitudes in the US had shifted,
so had the country's taste in art. Berstot's popularity earlier
in the nineteenth century had been really tied to the.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Idea of manifest destiny.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
His work appealed to people who believed that it was
God's will that European born and descended people in North
America would expand to the country westward and also spread
their way of doing things. Of course, this was tied
to the whole concept of colonialism and pioneer spirit and
the idea that somehow the European influenced way of life
(29:14):
was the right one, and Beersad had kind of courted
that whole misguided idealism in his selection of material and
the style in which he painted. He had included imagery
of indigenous cultures in his art as a way to
appeal to the exoticism that like white East Coasters engaged
(29:35):
in regarding Native Americans. He really made a lot of
money on capturing natural beauty while also offering what he
was depicting as a place that beckoned development, but in
a nation that had been through a devastating war because
people could not decide on what exactly that right way
(29:56):
of life was, the idea of manifest destiny had kind
of sh Additionally, the rise of industrialism and a change
of focus to naval supremacy rather than conquering the wide
open West meant that art like beer Stotts was no
longer seen as majestic and inspiring, but instead sort of
quaint and old fashioned. And it was actually in this
(30:17):
vein that the term Hudson River School first was used
to characterize the artists that had made their names with
such art as passe and living out their lives in
retirement mansions removed from the real lives of average Americans. Yeah,
there was still plenty of like expansionism and growth and
(30:37):
all of that going on, but it didn't have quite
the same shiny appeal. Yeah, in the earlier decades.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Well, I feel like the people that would have been
able to afford original art moved on to industrialism instead
of going I'm going to take my chances by developing
places to the west. They were like, yeah, but I
can make a factory right here, right now, and goes
through that.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
So so Albert struggled through the eighteen eighties, and the
end of the decade was especially painful. In eighteen eighty eight,
he was made a member of the Boone and Crockett Club,
which was a conservation club founded by Theodore Roosevelt in
response to the overhunting of buffalo and other big game.
(31:22):
This group didn't want to outlaw hunting, but it wanted
it regulated for sustainable practices to be put in place
for the sport. That same year, Beerstock painted a piece
titled The Last of the Buffalo. This image features an
indigenous man on horseback spearing a buffalo, and there are
several dead buffalo on the ground in the foreground of
(31:42):
the painting. The herd of them are spread around in
the background, grazing and walking through a body of water.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
To the right of the painting, in.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
The background, there are more men on horsebacks who have
axes and bows and arrows.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
They're all on the hunt.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
So while the artist may have been hoping to create
a piece of art that would raise awareness about the
dwindling number of buffalo in the West, the scene he
created made it seem like indigenous people had caused the problem.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Which was not the case.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
There was an intentional effort by white people to kill
buffalo to starve the indigenous population, so this was a
very backwards way of looking at it. This is another
massive painting, the same size as Lake Lucerne, and Berstott
thought that this would be the perfect piece to send
to the eighteen eighty nine Paris Exposition, but unfortunately that
(32:35):
sentiment was not shared with the committee that selected art
on behalf of the US for exhibition, and Beerstott was
really hurt by this decision. A lot of the committee
members had been his old friends. But he found his
own way around it. Remember that legion of honor metal
the Napoleon the Third gave him. Because he had that,
(32:56):
that meant that he was entitled to show the painting
if he wanted at the Paris Salon, which he did,
so it was on display in Paris at the same
time that the Paris Expo was happening. The painting has problems,
but I do love this sort of petty workaround. In
eighteen eighty nine, Beerstatt traveled through Canada via the Canadian
(33:17):
Pacific Railway and then to Alaska, which was not yet
a state by steamer. He was once again in search
of material for his paintings. It seems that he recognized
that the landscapes of the western US were kind of
out of favor at this point, so he was in
search of some new terrain. The paintings Alaskan Coast Range,
(33:37):
Indian Encambment, Alaska, and one just titled Alaska, as well
as others, came out of this travel. They really were
not met with the demand that his previous work had enjoyed.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Then, after seventeen years of frail health and efforts to
get better, Rosalie died in eighteen ninety three. In eighteen
ninety four, Albert remarried, this time to a war named
Mary hick Stewart. She was a widow with a considerable fortune,
but that fortune did not become Beerstattz and he was
forced to declare bankruptcy. He sold all of his assets
(34:12):
to pay his creditors, including one hundred and fifty paintings.
Had he sold that many paintings at the height of
his career, he would have made an entirely new fortune
for himself. But by the eighteen nineties few buyers were
really interested in what was at the time considered to
be his overly theatrical style. He lived out the next
(34:32):
several years pretty quietly. No longer was being invited to
meet royalty, nobody wanted to pay to see his paintings
before he sold them. On February eighteenth, nineteen oh two,
Beerstatt left the Union League Club in New York and
returned to his home. He told one of his house
staff that he wasn't feeling well and asked for a stimulant.
(34:53):
He was found dead a short time later. Barstott was
buried in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at Rural Cemetery. So A
lot of biographies indicate that he was completely unknown by
the time he died, but that does not appear to
be entirely accurate. He had an exhibition at the Worcester
Art Museum in nineteen oh one, so a year before
(35:14):
he died, and on January seventh, nineteen oh two, so
just a little over a month before he died, The
Boston Transcript had a lengthy write up about his life
and career, which included fairly in depth analysis of his work,
some of which includes quote, Beerstatt is a true representative
of the Dusseldorf school in landscape. To this fact are
(35:35):
to be ascribed both his merits and defects. Skill prevails
over imagination in the Dusseldorf artists. They are more effective
than impressive, more clever than tender, yet with all admirably
equipped for their work. One reason for the success of
Beerstatt is that the Dusseldorf style was a novelty here,
though familiar abroad.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
While he had fallen out of favor by the time
of his death, a few decades later interest in his
paintings started to revive, and today there are museums all
over the US and the world that include his art
in their permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston, the met in New York, the de Young
in San Francisco, and, as was manched under the listener
(36:17):
mail the Holly Red at the top of the episode,
the Denver Art Museum.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Okay, so now it is time for the Lake Lucerne coda.
As we mentioned earlier, that painting was not in Hezekiah
Konan's belongings when he died, and there was no indication
at the time as to where that giant painting may
have gone. Cut to nineteen ninety when a woman named
Pearl Rose, who lived in Exeter, Rhode Island, died. The
(36:44):
painting was inherited by one of her relatives named Lewis Peck,
who then shared the news that the missing Beerstott was found.
It had never really been lost. Missus Rose's first husband,
William Sunderland, purchased a painting from Connet in eighteen ninety
and it had stayed in the family for one hundred years.
And apparently this family owned a lot of high end
(37:06):
art and chose to keep that fact private lest art
thieves target their collection. That seems to make a lot
of sense. One would think that the size of this
piece would have alerted someone, because apparently it was so
large that a portion of the roof had to be
lifted off of the Exeter home to get it moved in. Initially,
this painting was sold a few months later after this
(37:28):
news broken. Nineteen ninety for a little more than half
a million dollars. It was purchased by an art dealer
named Richard Yorke. He was the agent of the National
Gallery of Art. That purchase was made possible by the
financial backing of Richard m scaife and Margaret ar Battle,
and it remains in the National Gallery of Art collection today.
So it's kind of an interesting way to look at
(37:50):
how his career went sky high while he was alive,
then fell off people thought he was outdated, and then
his painting was sold for half a million dollars. Everything
is cyclical. Since we did listener mail at the top
of the episode, I won't do one here, but we
have a lot of fun ones coming up, and I
(38:10):
will just say if you would like to write to
us about this or anything else, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere
you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Tracy, We're going crazy over here. We're going to do
this whole thing backwards this week. We're going to need
this episode backwards because we're going to read listener mail first,
because this listener mail led to this episode. So this
is from our listener who only signed their email with
an L. I see their name in the return address,
(00:38):
but I don't know if they would like it kept
out of the show, so Elle writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy.
I have my PhD in SMI HC, and over the
years of enjoying your show, I have only ever liked
the art focused episodes because of the non art stuff,
the family drama, the historical event connections, etc. As an
(00:59):
engineer from a family full of stem people, I had
only ever looked at art as something that took skill
and that those weird creative people were obsessed with. My
partner and I recently moved to the Denver area, partially
for work, but also because we love the mountains and
the outdoors. This past weekend, we went to the Denver
Art Museum, mainly to enjoy the architecture and the museum vibes.
(01:19):
As we wandered the exhibits, I saw a painting that
stopped me in my tracks. I stared at it for
a good ten minutes before my partner found me and
wondered if I was okay, because why would I want
to look at a painting for so long? It was
wind River Country by Albert Bierstadt. The depth and the
beauty and the way he so perfectly captured the way
I feel when I'm in the outdoors took my breath away.
(01:41):
I went on to find all his other works in
that museum and became obsessed. I sat in front of
Rocky Pool, New Hampshire and almost teared up from how
much it felt like I was back in my childhood,
playing in the woods and exploring my surroundings. All of
that to say, I have a newfound appreciation for the
way art impacts people, and I can no longer make
fun of you, Holly and everyone else that loves art,
(02:02):
because now I do too. I couldn't find an episode
on Beerstatt, so if you've covered him already, my apologies,
but he seems like an interesting character for an episode.
Elle attaches Pet tacks of They're very sweet pups, Rosy
and Bucket, who are referred to as two dummies who
love to fight over sticks and go on adventures with us.
They look like perfect angels. They don't look like dummies,
(02:25):
so they look like perfect babies. Listenel, I love an
art awakening, and you managed to fall in love with
the work of an artist whose story is pretty interesting
because it runs counter to the romanticized idea we often
have or is often portrayed in media of a passionate,
starving artist. Beer Stott was not naturally talented, although he
(02:46):
clearly developed incredible skills to make just arresting imagery, and
he was really really unusually strategic in his career, selecting
imagery that he knew was gonna appeal widely to us audience,
and he also found ways to monetize his art outside
of selling paintings in print. He is really really interesting
(03:08):
to me, So here's your episode. He became known for
primarily painting the grandeur of the American landscape, but as
we'll see, there's a lot more to his story.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Albert Bierstatt was born in Solingen, Germany, on January seventh,
eighteen thirty Sometimes he's described as being from nearby Dusseldorf,
mostly because that's a larger and more recognizable city. His parents,
Henry and Christina, already had five children when Albert was born.
Although he was born in Germany, he's often described as
(03:42):
being an American artist, and that's because his family moved
to the US in eighteen thirty two, when Albert was
just a two year old. The Beerstots moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts,
for the whaling industry. Henry was a cooper, and whaling towns,
of course, needed plenty of barrels.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
We don't have a whole lot of details about Albert's
early years other than the fact that he was interested
in art from a young age. He did not formally
study art as a kid. He just practiced a lot,
and he developed his own knowledge and skill set just
through self study. But though he hadn't ever learned our
informal setting, he was apparently and natural at teaching it
(04:23):
because when he was just twenty, Beerstatt had begun teaching
painting to make money. Ads ran in the Boston evening
transcript for his teaching services that read quote, look at
this monochromatic painting. Mister Albert Berstatt commenced teaching the above
art in this city with a few scholars, and was
so successful that the number soon reached seventy. And although
(04:46):
the promise that every scholar should, in six lessons of
two hours each make a picture worthy of a frame,
we are not aware of any case in which he
has not succeeded in redeeming that pledge. Although some of
the scholars at the time they commenced knew nothing of
drawing or perspective. So this ad is undersigned by a
number of people, including people who list their professions, and
(05:10):
a couple of them are principles of local schools, their booksellers,
and their other pupils of beer Stott. Also, just as
in a side in case you do not know, monochromatic
painting is a painting that uses a single color, the hue,
and then the details are added using variations of that color,
so tints which are created by adding white, shades which
are created by adding black, and tones which are created
(05:33):
by mixing in gray.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
These ads ran for more than a year, as did
more editorial commentaries on his classes and their value. This
is a pretty interesting situation because at the time Beerstott
wasn't particularly accomplished as an artist, although he did bill
himself as a master. This was actually a part of
young Beerstott's bigger effort to just hustle out a living
(05:56):
for himself. And a lecture given by Karen Quinn, a
curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Quinn describes
Bierstutt as a pet Barnum like character because he would
also arrange to have other artists work brought into the city,
and he would charge money for people to see them.
This wasn't like a curated exhibit or a collection. It
(06:18):
wasn't affiliated with the museum, just a little money making
enterprise that he had come up with. In eighteen fifty one,
Beerstutt started working with oil paints for the first time,
and it actually wasn't long until he had his first
exhibition of these efforts. That same year, he had the
thirteen painting shown at the New England Art Union in Boston.
(06:39):
In eighteen fifty three, he had another exhibit, this time
at the Massachusetts Academy of Fine Arts. Bierstatt had clearly
made a name for himself as an artist, at least
locally in Boston in the first years of the eighteen fifties.
His name appears in print in various papers as being
part of art sales and exhibitions, and in cases where
(07:00):
he's listed with other artists, he's often mentioned first. During
this period, he, like a lot of other artists of
the time, traveled to the White Mountains in New Hampshire.
Bierstott had started to become deeply interested in painting landscapes,
and while he painted a lot of imagery from the
White Mountains and other nearby places, he was also interested
(07:22):
in learning more about his craft and expanding his sphere
beyond New England. So at the age of twenty three,
Berstott returned to Germany, hoping to study art in Dusseldorf.
His goal was to get to the Dusseldorf School, but
that proved to be a bit of a challenge, and
there's a little bit of intrigue here. The Dusseldorf School
(07:42):
was led at the time by Andreas Achenbach. He was
a German painter born in eighteen fifteen, and his specialty
was landscapes.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And seascapes.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
If you look at his painting in Beerstatt's side by side,
the influence is immediately obvious, and Albert Biher wanted to
be taught by him, but he was dissuaded from doing
so after some other artists told him that Ackenbach was
not taking on any new students at the time. This
(08:12):
does not seem to have been true. It's not clear
if that information had been told to Albert erroneously or
if maybe it was some kind of a cruel joke. Regardless,
Beerstott believed it despite that discouraging turn. He stayed in
Europe for several years, and it was during this time
that he really developed the art style he would become
(08:32):
known for. That was sweeping landscapes with really dramatic lighting.
In addition to his studies in Germany, Albert traveled around
Europe and he used the landscapes he saw there as
the subjects for his work. In addition to the style
of his art, he also developed the techniques that he
would use to create them. He made sketches, and he
would eventually also take photos, and then he would take
(08:55):
that reference material and make oil sketches, so relatively small,
quick pains to test out his compositions. Some of these
he would then transition onto large canvases. One of his
other techniques was plussing up landscapes by changing the details
for some added drama. So this might mean shifting the
geography a little bit to include more elements, or adding
(09:17):
animals or villages or people to give a sense of
the scale. Yeah, there's a great moment in that lecture
that we mentioned earlier where there's an example of his
art being shown and it's like, hey, you can't see
these mountains from this place. He shifted stuff around and
scooted it a little so everything looked more majestic. Was
(09:38):
Kintiletto doing something similar? I feel like we talked about
that too. Oh yeah, many artists did the same thing.
In Berstatt's case, it led to a few instances where
people misidentified what he had actually painted because it just
didn't look like anything.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
That was quite right. Right.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Coming up, we are going to talk about how Berstatt's
career took off once he was back in the US. Well, first,
we're going to take a little sponsor break. In eighteen
fifty seven, Beerstot returned to the US with a matured style,
(10:16):
and initially he went back to teaching art lessons to
make ends meet, but once he was kind of back
on his feet, he focused exclusively on his own painting.
Most of the paintings that Beerstot made during the months
after he returned to the US from Europe were historical pieces.
They were sort of visual representations of fictional moments in
European history, or sometimes real moments that he was fictionalizing visually.
(10:41):
In eighteen fifty seven, Beerstot had the good fortune of
selling one of these paintings to the Boston Athenaeum. This piece,
known as the Portico of Octavia, depicts the ancient Roman
structure of the same name, built in twenty three BCE
by the Roman emperor Augustus. But the depiction by Berstatt
shows the way historically nificant spaces evolve and change and
(11:02):
even become mundane as they are repurposed for changing times.
That change is evidence in an alternate title for the painting,
which is Roman Fish Market. The painting captures a moment.
The entire scene is filled with life, including fish carcasses,
people hawking their offerings, and even people dozing in the
open air market. There's a cat angling for a bit
(11:25):
of fish, and a couple of dogs and several ducks
on the scene, and it's all contemporary to Beerstatt's time.
Over the street behind the portico, laundry can be seen
hanging across the gap between buildings. And although this scene
is full of everyday people and things, there is also
still a tourist couple dressed very smartly walking through it.
(11:46):
The husband, who's wearing his spectacles, carries a red covered
guide book and he's looking up at all of the architecture.
His wife, on the other hand, who's wearing this yellow
and green dress, is looking around at the people and
her street level surroundings. Portico of Octavia is a large painting,
but it's not huge. It's a little larger than two
feet by three feet, so about two thirds of a
(12:07):
meter by one meter. His paintings would get much bigger
than that going forward.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
In eighteen fifty eight, Beerstatt had a painting accepted for
exhibition by the National Academy of Design in New York.
The painting, which depicted Lake Lucerne and the surrounding Swiss Alps,
was created using multiple sketches that Albert had made during
his four years studying in Europe. This painting shows all
of the hallmarks of the style that would really make
(12:34):
Beerstatt successful. It's large, six feet by ten feet. It
offers a sweeping landscape view of open land in the
foreground and a mountain range in the background. Of course,
it has the water of the lake and it uses
light glancing off the clouds and the snow capped mountain
peaks to great dramatic effect. This is a critical success
(12:54):
and was so highly regarded that Beerstatt has made an
honorary member of the National Academy Design. The NAD was
and is an honor society which includes artists quote selected
by their peers and recognition of their extraordinary contributions to
art and architecture in America. So for a twenty eight
year old artists just getting started in his career, this
(13:15):
was a big achievement to be recognized in this way.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Berstatt's focus on European subjects changed after he joined a
government contracted overland survey in eighteen fifty nine. He had
an opportunity that year to travel across the North American
continent with a survey expedition led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander,
who had been tasked with building a trail that would
pass through Idaho and Wyoming. This early work on assessing
(13:42):
the land where the trail might go traveled along the
Platte River, and it gave Berstott the chance to see
a lot of landscapes, and he made sketches and took
notes and photographs along the way. So we've covered various
aspects of the history of photography on the show before,
including back to be episodes on Louis Daguerre and Robert
Cornelius in December of twenty twenty one, and those men
(14:05):
were working in the first half of the nineteenth century,
so photography was still really quite new when Beerstott started
using it to capture images of scenery that he hoped
to later reproduce in paint. This whole trip had been
something Bierstott did with commercial sales of his work in mind.
He understood the fascination in the US with the West.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
At the time, this.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Was seen as a huge landscape of potential and opportunity,
so Bierstott had decided to paint that landscape as part
of his own financial potential and opportunity and to paint it,
he needed to see it and to make sketches. So
this journey was a time in which he collected the
material that he thought would have commercial success, and in
a large enough volume that he could have several years
(14:50):
worth of reference for paintings.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
By September eighteen fifty nine, Beerstott was back home in
New York, where he had moved, and he had his
new inspiration. He had found the entire journey really quite
eye opening, and after thinking for years that European scenes
were going to be his work's focus, he declared, quote,
our own country has the best material for the artist
in the world. When he moved to New York, he
(15:14):
rented a space at the Tenth Street Studio Building to
work from. The Tenth Street Studio Building was an important building.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
It was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and it
was the first structure that was purpose built to house
artists studios. The building, which was completed in eighteen fifty eight,
was at fifteen tenth Street in Greenwich Village. Eight years later,
in a street number change, it became fifty one West
tenth Street, Edidman built at the behest of James Boorman
(15:45):
Johnston a real estate speculator who saw the growing art
scene in New York and thought that if he erected
a building that offered both work and living space to artists,
he would easily fill it.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And he was right.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Not only did the Tenth Street Studio building fill up,
it became a hub of arts in the city. The
building had its own gallery space so that the artists
living there could exhibit on site, and it became a
very collaborative place as well as home to a number
of artistic rivalries.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And the Hudson River School was centralized at the ten
Street Studios. This was not actually a school, but a
movement and a group of artists. A write up on
the Metropolitan Museum of Arts website calls it quote America's
first true artistic fraternity. This group was highly inspired by
the work of Thomas Cole, who painted what he called
(16:36):
a quote higher style of landscape. This style combined visible
vista with narrative and occasionally even biblical stories, and although
Cole died in eighteen forty eight, the artists who wished
to paint in his same style coalesced into a group.
To be clear, they did not call themselves the Hudson
River School. That name was applied to the group later
(16:58):
by a critic because many of the group's members moved
on to homes on the Hudson River after their time
in Greenwich Village. We're going to talk about that name
and how it was not in fact a compliment in
just a little while. But in addition to Albert Beerstatt,
some of the artists associated with this group are Frederick
Edwin Church, Charles Herbert Moore, Sandford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand,
(17:20):
and Sarah Cole. Sarah Cole was actually Thomas Cole's sister.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
In eighteen sixty, Albert produced the first painting that was
based on his experiences from that cross country travel. It
was titled Base of the Rocky Mountains. We don't know
a whole lot about this particular painting because it has
been lost. There's a black and white photo of it
hanging in a gallery at the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy,
but it's not a clear photo, and the painting is
(17:45):
kind of at an angle. It's not facing the camera directly.
It's obviously a mountain landscape, but additional details are hard
to make out.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
After a few years of work in producing paintings. Albert
needed more reference to make more paintings. In eighteen sixty three,
he went on a second long journey across the country.
This time he traveled with author Fitzhugh Ludlow, who is
definitely on my short list of topics, and the two
men spent a lot of time in Utah and northern
California on this trip. They also stayed in Yosemite Valley
(18:18):
east of San Francisco for almost two months, and then
from there they moved north to Oregon before eventually returning
to the East Coast.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
The US Civil War changed things for beer Stott, but
not in a way that you might expect. He was
called up for military service in eighteen sixty three, but
he did not serve. He was one of the people
that had enough money and privilege and means to pay
someone else to serve on their behalf, which was a
thing you could do at that time, so he just
(18:47):
went on with his life and his career. He would
not really feel a personal impact from the war until
well after it had claimed the lives of more than
six hundred thousand people. While his military service was being
fulfilled by another man, beerstock painted Rocky Mountains landers Peak.
That's a piece which won him acclaim when it was
exhibited at the New York Metropolitan Sanitary Fair. That was
(19:12):
an event held by the US Sanitary Commission to raise
money for sick and wounded Civil War soldiers. People could
pay a small fee to see the gallery of art
on exhibit, and that money went into the support fund.
In addition to being a charitable effort, this painting was
also a boon to his reputation.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
In eighteen sixty five, Beerstott built himself a home outside
the city in Irvington, New York, on the Hudson River.
The location of that home is in what's Terrytown, New
York today, and this was something that was made possible
by the years he had been working to make money,
but particularly because in eighteen sixty five he sold Rocky
(19:52):
Mountains landers Peak to a man named James McHenry for
twenty five thousand dollars. That is not adjusted today's currency,
that would be close to half a million dollars in
today's money. Beerstott named his new home that he was
able to build because of this windfall Malcosten, which is
the German word for paint box. That was also the
(20:13):
name of a political artists association in Dusseldorf, which had
been founded in eighteen forty eight. The home was designed
by architect Jacob Ray Mold and it was a luxury
home with three stories and a footprint of seventy five
by one hundred feet or twenty three by thirty meters.
Albert's studio in particular, had very high ceilings. It had
(20:34):
twenty foot tall doors that could be opened on either
end to create sort of a grand salon. And that
sounds very fancy pants unicorn, but it actually makes a
lot of sense for his work because he did tend
to create such large paintings, so with a massive space
that he could open up when he wished, he not
only had plenty of room to work on those giant canvases,
(20:56):
but he also had enough area to see what they
looked like from a distance. He also, during this time
did maintain a studio in the city. But while the
giant studio space at Malcostin makes sense, you might wonder
why a bachelor would need or want such a grand mansion. Well,
maybe just to have it, But there was an interesting
(21:18):
bit of interpersonal intrigue with Beerstatt and his friend Ludlow
in the years after they finished their trip that had,
of course happened in eighteen sixty three and eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Fitth Ludlow was married to a woman named Rosalie. They
had been married in the late eighteen fifties, when Rosalie
was eighteen and he was in his early twenties. She
was often described as incredibly pretty, very vivacious, and flirtatious.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
They were a popular couple in the New.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
York literary scene of the mid nineteenth century, but after
fitz got back from his journey out west, their marriage
went south. It's unclear exactly what happened between them, but
there were rumors of infidelity, and some pretty so substantial
evidence for that. In eighteen sixty six, Beerstott made a
(22:05):
painting titled A Storm in the Rocky Mountains Mount Rosalie.
There is no Mount Rosalie. He had titled this painting
in honor of Ludlow's wife. That of course cemented the
rumors that he was the person that Rosalie Ludlow was
having an affair with. Those rumors appeared to gain additional
(22:26):
validation when the Ludlows were divorced in May of eighteen
sixty six, and Albert and Rosalie got married that November. Somehow,
Albert and Fitz remained friends despite this turn of events.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Yeah, fitz Ludlow had a kind of a short life.
Like I said, he is on my short list because
that is a story. But this marriage between Albert and
Rosalie and the completion of his new mansion marked the
start of a really productive time for beer Stott. He
made a lot of paintings, but the quality of those
paintings is said to be some of his best work.
(23:02):
He wasn't just sitting at home and working, though, because
he seemed to almost always be traveling around New England
with his brothers, photographing landscapes for future use as painting reference.
But in fact he traveled a lot for many years
to many places after his estate had been completed. In
a moment, we'll discuss how Albert was received in Europe
(23:22):
during his and Rosalie's honeymoon.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
But first we'll hear from the sponsors that keep stuffumusts
in history class going.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Albert and Rosalie spent two years in Europe as sort
of a late and prolonged honeymoon. And this actually seems
like it must have been a pretty dizzying tour because
he had become famous by that point, and he was
received by heads of state and lauded as one of
the greatest living artists. He met Queen Victoria and gave
her a private exhibition of his paintings. He hartied with
(24:00):
previous podcast subject Franz's List, and he was given the
French Legion of Honor Metal by Napoleon the Third. And
he was also really calculated about parleying all of this
popularity into additional income. For one thing, he was able
to make connections to wealthy collectors who could potentially become clients.
(24:21):
But another thing he did sort of harkens back to
his first years in New Haven, putting together little art
exhibits and charging money for people to see them. Because
while he was in Europe, beer Stott rented studios and
he continued working, and then he would stage display events
where people could pay a fee and come to his
studio and see his canvas before it was sent home
(24:42):
to the US for exhibit and or sale. He had
realized that he could monetize his paintings beyond just selling them.
And beyond selling display tickets, he also started getting into
the prince business, enabling to start selling art to people
who couldn't afford originals to an almost limited degree.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Back in the.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
US, the couple traveled to California together in eighteen seventy
one aboard the trans Continental Railroad, which was newly completed.
They ended up spending two years on the West coast,
visiting Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As always,
Albert sketched throughout this journey and then made oil sketches
and larger paintings based on the reference that he had
(25:24):
created while on the trip. One of these is Seal
Rock Pacific Ocean, California, which feels almost playful in comparison
to his other work, including other work of this same vista,
because it includes an assortment of seals clambering around a
set of rocks. Yeah, the oil sketch that he did
to preclude the larger painting is extra silly. There's like
(25:47):
a little seal in the center foreground, like popping his
head up into the frame making a very silly face.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It's quite charming.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
The late eighteen seventies and into the eighteen eighties were
a time shifting luck for beer Stott. He had managed
to orchestrate such an impressive rise through the art world
and such a successful career financially, but then his good
fortunes seemed to just kind of run out. Rosalie was
sick in eighteen seventy six and the diagnosis was not good.
(26:18):
It was tuberculosis. Her doctor prescribed her warm climates, so
she and Albert went to the Bahamas when the New
England weather turned cold. He painted Shore of the Turquoise
Sea while they were on their tropical retreat there, and
that is an incredibly beautiful rendition of waves breaking onto
a craggy beach. The translucence that Beerstott was able to
(26:39):
capture in the water is very, very striking. Critics thought
so too. When he brought this painting back to New
York and displayed it at the National Academy of Design,
it was.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
A huge hit.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Rosalie's health waxed and waned over the following years, and
they continued to spend winters in the Bahamas. This next
bit isn't really something that affected out Bert Beierstatt, but
it's next in the timeline and it sets up an
interesting story that helps illustrate the ways in which his
work has been perceived over the decades. In eighteen seventy seven,
(27:11):
Alvin Adams, purchaser of Lake Lucerne, died. That painting went
up for auction as part of the sale of his estate.
In eighteen eighty two, a man named Hezekiah Kanent bought
it for a whopping three thousand, three hundred and seventy
five dollars, and then that painting vanished conn It died
in nineteen oh two, but the painting was not among
(27:32):
his assets at that time.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Its whereabouts were not known. This was a large painting
six feet tall and ten feet wide or one point
eight meters by three meters, so it's not as though
somebody could have just misplaced it, lost track of it
in storage, accidentally stuck it behind another painting, it.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Went into a midden heap accidentally.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
We're mentioning this because the painting is going to pop
up again at the end of the episode. So then
in eighteen eighty two there was a fire at Malkasten
and the entire mansion burned down, and Albert had a
great many paintings.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
There, all of which were lost. He also had a
significant collection of indigenous artifacts that he had collected while
traveling in which he used in his work as reference
that was also gone, and to.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Make matters worse, the eighteen eighties is when the impact
of the Civil War in the United States really finally
started to affect Beerstat's livelihood.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
This was more than a.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Decade after the war before it really started to happen,
but as post war attitudes in the US had shifted,
so had the country's taste in art. Berstot's popularity earlier
in the nineteenth century had been really tied to the.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Idea of manifest destiny.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
His work appealed to people who believed that it was
God's will that European born and descended people in North
America would expand to the country westward and also spread
their way of doing things. Of course, this was tied
to the whole concept of colonialism and pioneer spirit and
the idea that somehow the European influenced way of life
(29:14):
was the right one, and Beersad had kind of courted
that whole misguided idealism in his selection of material and
the style in which he painted. He had included imagery
of indigenous cultures in his art as a way to
appeal to the exoticism that like white East Coasters engaged
(29:35):
in regarding Native Americans. He really made a lot of
money on capturing natural beauty while also offering what he
was depicting as a place that beckoned development, but in
a nation that had been through a devastating war because
people could not decide on what exactly that right way
(29:56):
of life was, the idea of manifest destiny had kind
of sh Additionally, the rise of industrialism and a change
of focus to naval supremacy rather than conquering the wide
open West meant that art like beer Stotts was no
longer seen as majestic and inspiring, but instead sort of
quaint and old fashioned. And it was actually in this
(30:17):
vein that the term Hudson River School first was used
to characterize the artists that had made their names with
such art as passe and living out their lives in
retirement mansions removed from the real lives of average Americans. Yeah,
there was still plenty of like expansionism and growth and
(30:37):
all of that going on, but it didn't have quite
the same shiny appeal. Yeah, in the earlier decades.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Well, I feel like the people that would have been
able to afford original art moved on to industrialism instead
of going I'm going to take my chances by developing
places to the west. They were like, yeah, but I
can make a factory right here, right now, and goes
through that.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
So so Albert struggled through the eighteen eighties, and the
end of the decade was especially painful. In eighteen eighty eight,
he was made a member of the Boone and Crockett Club,
which was a conservation club founded by Theodore Roosevelt in
response to the overhunting of buffalo and other big game.
(31:22):
This group didn't want to outlaw hunting, but it wanted
it regulated for sustainable practices to be put in place
for the sport. That same year, Beerstock painted a piece
titled The Last of the Buffalo. This image features an
indigenous man on horseback spearing a buffalo, and there are
several dead buffalo on the ground in the foreground of
(31:42):
the painting. The herd of them are spread around in
the background, grazing and walking through a body of water.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
To the right of the painting, in.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
The background, there are more men on horsebacks who have
axes and bows and arrows.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
They're all on the hunt.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
So while the artist may have been hoping to create
a piece of art that would raise awareness about the
dwindling number of buffalo in the West, the scene he
created made it seem like indigenous people had caused the problem.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Which was not the case.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
There was an intentional effort by white people to kill
buffalo to starve the indigenous population, so this was a
very backwards way of looking at it. This is another
massive painting, the same size as Lake Lucerne, and Berstott
thought that this would be the perfect piece to send
to the eighteen eighty nine Paris Exposition, but unfortunately that
(32:35):
sentiment was not shared with the committee that selected art
on behalf of the US for exhibition, and Beerstott was
really hurt by this decision. A lot of the committee
members had been his old friends. But he found his
own way around it. Remember that legion of honor metal
the Napoleon the Third gave him. Because he had that,
(32:56):
that meant that he was entitled to show the painting
if he wanted at the Paris Salon, which he did,
so it was on display in Paris at the same
time that the Paris Expo was happening. The painting has problems,
but I do love this sort of petty workaround. In
eighteen eighty nine, Beerstatt traveled through Canada via the Canadian
(33:17):
Pacific Railway and then to Alaska, which was not yet
a state by steamer. He was once again in search
of material for his paintings. It seems that he recognized
that the landscapes of the western US were kind of
out of favor at this point, so he was in
search of some new terrain. The paintings Alaskan Coast Range,
(33:37):
Indian Encambment, Alaska, and one just titled Alaska, as well
as others, came out of this travel. They really were
not met with the demand that his previous work had enjoyed.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Then, after seventeen years of frail health and efforts to
get better, Rosalie died in eighteen ninety three. In eighteen
ninety four, Albert remarried, this time to a war named
Mary hick Stewart. She was a widow with a considerable fortune,
but that fortune did not become Beerstattz and he was
forced to declare bankruptcy. He sold all of his assets
(34:12):
to pay his creditors, including one hundred and fifty paintings.
Had he sold that many paintings at the height of
his career, he would have made an entirely new fortune
for himself. But by the eighteen nineties few buyers were
really interested in what was at the time considered to
be his overly theatrical style. He lived out the next
(34:32):
several years pretty quietly. No longer was being invited to
meet royalty, nobody wanted to pay to see his paintings
before he sold them. On February eighteenth, nineteen oh two,
Beerstatt left the Union League Club in New York and
returned to his home. He told one of his house
staff that he wasn't feeling well and asked for a stimulant.
(34:53):
He was found dead a short time later. Barstott was
buried in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at Rural Cemetery. So A
lot of biographies indicate that he was completely unknown by
the time he died, but that does not appear to
be entirely accurate. He had an exhibition at the Worcester
Art Museum in nineteen oh one, so a year before
(35:14):
he died, and on January seventh, nineteen oh two, so
just a little over a month before he died, The
Boston Transcript had a lengthy write up about his life
and career, which included fairly in depth analysis of his work,
some of which includes quote, Beerstatt is a true representative
of the Dusseldorf school in landscape. To this fact are
(35:35):
to be ascribed both his merits and defects. Skill prevails
over imagination in the Dusseldorf artists. They are more effective
than impressive, more clever than tender, yet with all admirably
equipped for their work. One reason for the success of
Beerstatt is that the Dusseldorf style was a novelty here,
though familiar abroad.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
While he had fallen out of favor by the time
of his death, a few decades later interest in his
paintings started to revive, and today there are museums all
over the US and the world that include his art
in their permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston, the met in New York, the de Young
in San Francisco, and, as was manched under the listener
(36:17):
mail the Holly Red at the top of the episode,
the Denver Art Museum.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Okay, so now it is time for the Lake Lucerne coda.
As we mentioned earlier, that painting was not in Hezekiah
Konan's belongings when he died, and there was no indication
at the time as to where that giant painting may
have gone. Cut to nineteen ninety when a woman named
Pearl Rose, who lived in Exeter, Rhode Island, died. The
(36:44):
painting was inherited by one of her relatives named Lewis Peck,
who then shared the news that the missing Beerstott was found.
It had never really been lost. Missus Rose's first husband,
William Sunderland, purchased a painting from Connet in eighteen ninety
and it had stayed in the family for one hundred years.
And apparently this family owned a lot of high end
(37:06):
art and chose to keep that fact private lest art
thieves target their collection. That seems to make a lot
of sense. One would think that the size of this
piece would have alerted someone, because apparently it was so
large that a portion of the roof had to be
lifted off of the Exeter home to get it moved in. Initially,
this painting was sold a few months later after this
(37:28):
news broken. Nineteen ninety for a little more than half
a million dollars. It was purchased by an art dealer
named Richard Yorke. He was the agent of the National
Gallery of Art. That purchase was made possible by the
financial backing of Richard m scaife and Margaret ar Battle,
and it remains in the National Gallery of Art collection today.
So it's kind of an interesting way to look at
(37:50):
how his career went sky high while he was alive,
then fell off people thought he was outdated, and then
his painting was sold for half a million dollars. Everything
is cyclical. Since we did listener mail at the top
of the episode, I won't do one here, but we
have a lot of fun ones coming up, and I
(38:10):
will just say if you would like to write to
us about this or anything else, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere
you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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