Light in the Forest #9
by Eric Glaser
Title
Light in the Forest #9
Artist
Eric Glaser
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
"Light in the Forest"
Artist: Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Title: Light in the Forest
Object Type: Painting
Genre: Landscape Art
Date: unknown
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: Height: 132 cm (51.9 in); Width: 107 cm (42.1 in)
Inscriptions: signed ABierstadt, lower right
About the painting:
We are grateful to Gerald Carr for his help in preparing the following essay. Mr. Carr is the author of Frederic Edwin Church: "The Icebergs" (Texas, 1980) and Frederic Edwin Church, Catalogue Raisonné of Work of Art at Olana State Historic Site (New York, 1994).
Like his well-traveled compatriots Frederic E. Church (1826-1900) and Thomas Moran (1837-1926), Bierstadt was inspired by the scientific and territorial expansions of his day, and intrigued by their investigative mechanisms. The paintings his travels inspired inclined towards mytho-poetic or emotional values. First-hand observation was the foundation, but studio re-creativity was the nexus of Bierstadt's methodology as an artist. It was in the studio where Bierstadt allowed sentiment, in the nineteenth-century sense of the word, to pervade his work. The parable of the Americas as Eden, the allegory of North American Manifest Destiny, the supposed curative powers of mountains, woodlands, and waters, and the allure of exotic fantasy, are all operative in his canvases.
During his more settled periods dominated by time in the studio, Bierstadt occupied himself with three principal activities, often simultaneously -- sketching and painting; arranging sales, displays, and advertising of his paintings; and socializing. Fearlessly prolific as a studio artist, that productivity presupposed impressionable urban audiences and affluent, attentive collectors who shuttled between cities and rural estates. He strove to share in the society and monetary wealth of his patrons, preferably within settings of his contrivance. In his maturity Bierstadt was an adroit and capable performer in the cosmopolitan societal theater of his day. Moreover, he was approachable and altruistic and supported charitable causes. Some skeptical contemporaries recognized his flair and pragmatism but dismissed him as a showman. Others, however, admired his industriousness and accessibility. In 1881 a New York writer grumbled, "Why, there are people who think Mr. Bierstadt's pictures 'The Greatest Show on Earth.'" (Independent, New York, Apr. 7, 1881.) The painter would have both agreed and disagreed.
Bierstadt likely painted Light in the Forest (a modern title) in the mid- to late-1870s. A rare vertically formatted work, the painting is enclosed by gracefully arching trees rendered with the brushy handling which is so recognizable in his landscapes. Meanwhile, the center of the canvas remains invitingly open, veritably glowing with a luminous golden sunset which melts into the horizon below, while simultaneously stretching into the pink-hued clouds above. Starting in the late 1850s Bierstadt introduced deer into many of his American pictures as signs of scale and sentiment, repeating them in canvases for the next quarter century or more. Their presence no doubt resonated with a public already familiar with popular illustrations such as the 1877 frontispiece for the long-running London periodical, The Family Friend, which presented the animals as symbols of the majestic landscape they inhabited. The deer in this painting have been identified as elk, due to the dark, longer coat that grows the length of their neck. While Bierstadt continued to paint "mountains on mountains and valleys innumerable," he remained enamored with the American plains and woodlands, animals and Native Americans that lived on and in them, and the ravishing sunsets and sunrises that elevated these scenes to supernal vistas.
Light in the Forest also covertly shares the preservationist sentiment which appears so overtly in Bierstadt's Last of the Buffalo (1888; Corcoran Gallery of Art). As early as the 1860s, some Californians already believed that that region's trees were its principal feature and resource. A late 1880 commentary (credited to the Fishkill Landing, N.Y., Standard) by an American agricultural author made for harsh reading when re-printed coast to coast into 1882. Between shoe pegs, boot lasts, Lucifer matches, telegraph poles, railroad ties and fences, the making of brick, and sundry other consumptions, that writer and others guessed that "American forests . . . will all be gone in twenty years' time." (e.g., Scientific American, New York, Jan. 1, 1881; Commercial Advertiser, New York, Jan. 12, 1881; North American, Philadelphia, Mar. 9, 1881.) Bierstadt's glorious renderings of America's virginal woodlands, are imbued with an almost nostalgic ether – a subtle reminder that human progress is not without cost.
Text Credit: Sotheby's
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Additional image editing by Eric Glaser
Uploaded
May 17th, 2020
Embed
Share