Newport Lighthouse
Albert BIERSTADT
(American, 1830-1902)
Newport Lighthouse
Date1860s
Mediumoil on paper mounted on masonite
Dimensionsoverall: 10 1/4 x 13 in. (26 x 33 cm)
frame: 16 3/4 x 19 1/2 in. (42.5 x 49.5 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Bequest of Margaret Mallory
Object number1998.50.11
Subject(s)
- beach
- ocean
- ocean
- buildings
Collection
- 19th century American
On View
On viewLabel TextAlong with Frederic Church, who was four years his senior, Bierstadt is considered one of the principal leaders of the so-called Rocky Mountain school, a group of artists who specialized in sublime landscapes of the American west. Bierstadt emigrated to Boston with his family. His mother’s cousin was a successful artist of the Düsseldorf school and Bierstadt was able to travel there to study in 1853, funded by some local patrons. Bierstadt’s breakthrough painting came just ten years later with Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak (Metropolitan Museum of Art), which catapulted him to the ranks of Church in the eyes of the public, when it was exhibited at the Art Gallery of the New York Sanitary Fair opposite Church’s Heart of the Andes. Thereafter, Bierstadt enjoyed steady demand for his landscapes, most of which, like this diminutive painting, exhibit his trademark affinity for dramatic effects. The furious surf in the middle ground is described with splatters of paint, and rendered more ominous by the plunging perspective of the foregrounded rocks.