The Edge of the World
Albert Bierstadt did not paint Seal Rock to give New York millionaires a polite lesson in marine biology. He painted it to sell them the raw terror and majesty of a coastline they were too afraid to visit themselves. It was 1872. The East Coast elite sat in their velvet armchairs and practically salivated over the myth of the untamed West. Bierstadt gave them exactly what they wanted. He ventured out past San Francisco and stood before the crushing Pacific surf.
He did not just paint the water. He built it. He used thick heavy impasto to drag the crashing waves onto the canvas. You can almost feel the salt spray and the kinetic violence of the ocean. He threw in a scattering of sea seals on the jagged rocks just to show you how small and pathetic a living creature is against that massive expanse of raging water. The scale alone is meant to make you feel tiny.
The art critics of his day loved his giant landscapes at first. They crowned him the king of the frontier. But critics are fickle creatures. They eventually mocked his theatrical lighting and called his dramatic flair repetitive. They missed the point entirely. Bierstadt was not a documentarian. He was an illusionist. He took a thirty by forty-five inch canvas and turned it into a window looking out onto the edge of the world. He understood that rich men back east did not want reality. They wanted a dangerous dream they could safely hang on their parlor walls.
References
Anderson, Nancy K. Albert Bierstadt Art and Enterprise. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990.
Hendricks, Gordon. Albert Bierstadt Painter of the American West. New York: Harrison House, 1988.
