Albert Bierstadt 1830 - 1902

Sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, May 13, 1966, lot 39, illustrated (as Landscape with Deer)
Ira Spanierman, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Sloan & Roman Inc., New York
Douglas B. Collins (sold: Richard A. Bourne, Hyannis, Massachusetts, August 18, 1972, lot 57, illustrated on the cover)
Robert K. Wineland, M.D., Alexandria, Virginia (acquired at the above sale)
By descent to the present owner 

Springfield, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, Collins Collection, May-September 1970, no. 1

This work is in very good condition. There is frame abrasion at the edges and one very minor dent at the lower left in the water. Under UV: there are a few scattered dots of inpainting in the sky and water, and a few touchups to the frame abrasion, otherwise fine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Albert Bierstadt’s dramatic views of the majestic American West earned him broad popularity as one of America’s most distinguished artists of the mid-nineteenth century. He was among the greatest American painters to fully capture the splendor of the landscape and to record the many moods of its climate and terrain. Bierstadt was one of very few artists to have traveled in the western territories and his views were eagerly anticipated and met with curiosity and wonder. His idealized interpretations of the western landscape brought to life the image of the fabled frontier for many who would never travel there.

It was on his second journey west in 1863 with the writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow that Bierstadt first beheld Mount Hood. The party traveled up from California into the Pacific Northwest on horseback and then by steamer and rail up the Columbia River from near Mount Hood. According to Patricia Junker, “Mount Hood was an almost continual presence as the two men made their way up the Columbia, and we know from Ludlow that Bierstadt studied it intently, seeing it from different perspectives, from the northeast and the northwest, and in the changing light of different times of day. At Dalles City Bierstadt paid an ‘old Indian interpreter and trapper’ to guide him to a high point southwest of town that offered the most imposing view of the mountain in the rising sun, and there he spent most of a morning making oil studies of the opaline peak. ‘His work upon this mountain was in some respects the best he ever accomplished,’ Ludlow offered, ‘being done with a loving faithfulness hardly called out by Hood’s only rival, the Peak of Shasta’” (Albert Bierstadt: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, Seattle, Washington, 2011, p. 38).

Though Mount Hood makes very few appearances in Bierstadt’s oeuvre it is featured in two major canvases of 1865 and 1869, as well as this smaller gem painted in 1870. Bierstadt’s reputation was emergent during the 1860s, with a newspaper critic writing in 1867, “He is ascending the throne, and [with] a few more strides, he will seat himself as the monarch of landscape painters” (quoted in Nancy K. Anderson and Linda S. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise, New York, 1990 p. 25). As the first artist-explorer of the west, Bierstadt followed in Frederic Church’s tradition of painting monumental dramatic views that were unveiled as public events to great acclaim. Following on the great success of his presentation painting The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) of 1863, Bierstadt embarked on a major exhibition view of Mount Hood after his return to New York, which was completed in 1865.

The present work captures an intimate, tranquil scene on the Columbia River rather than the immense magnitude of the western landscape depicted in Bierstadt’s other views of Mount Hood. Suffused with a golden light over the still surface of the water, it is a scene filled with a sense of the ideal and a representation not only of the dawning of a new day, but also the beginning of a new era of peace in post-Civil War America. While the painting is smaller in scale than many of Bierstadt’s more imposing productions, the resulting impact is one of quietude and grandeur.