Bierstadt, Albert - Sunshine and Shadow (1854)

Albert Bierstadt did not start out painting million dollar frontier panoramas. Before he was the undisputed king of the American West he was just another art student freezing his hands off in Germany. The year was 1854 and he was slogging through the rigorous training of the Dusseldorf Academy. That is where he painted Sunshine and Shadow. It measures barely sixteen inches across. You could fit the entire canvas into the corner of the massive theatrical landscapes that would eventually make him rich.

But the raw materials of his genius are already here. Bierstadt was obsessed with light long before he ever laid eyes on the Rocky Mountains. He used heavy glazing techniques to build up the canvas surface. This created aggressive and deep contrasts between the bright illuminated sections and the heavy shaded voids. The oil on canvas work was shown in a modest student exhibition. It was a quiet debut for a guy who would later charge absolute fortunes to show rich patrons what the wild frontier looked like.

He was learning how to manipulate the viewer. The Dusseldorf Academy taught him the mechanics of drama and he absorbed every single lesson. He figured out how to make light look important. When you look at Sunshine and Shadow you are not looking at a masterpiece of the frontier. You are looking at the rehearsal. You are watching a young artist figure out exactly how to build an American myth from scratch.

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.

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