Fishing Station, Watch Hill

Albert Bierstadt's distinguished reputation as one of the finest artists of the nineteenth century rests on the radiant canvases that describe the impressive geography of the American continent. It was in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the artist was raised, that Bierstadt began to cultivate his artistic career by developing a keen sense of observation of the nautical subjects that surrounded him. This was largely a result of "the emphasis on truthful detail in painting, demanded by New Bedford patrons in the pictorially accurate rigging of vessels, and the search for devices of scale and proportions required in visually pitting man against ocean or whale, [which] were certainly problems similar to those confronting an artist who later turned his interest to the presentation of the expanse and vastness of western landscape." (R.S. Trump, Life and Works of Albert Bierstadt, unpublished dissertation, University of Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, 1964, p. 22)

Like many American artists in the mid-nineteenth century, Bierstadt went to Dusseldorf to study. After a few months of study with Emmanuel Leutze, Bierstadt set out on his own to paint the European landscape. The paintings he returned to his patrons in New Bedford were so accomplished that his clients "questioned their authenticity." (Trump, p. 35)

After returning to the United States, he made many trips West that he would continue for the rest of his career. In the American west, Bierstadt assiduously studied the life of Native Americans, the vast unspoiled plains, and the magnificent, soaring mountain ranges, all of which would become hallmarks of the American vision of the western frontier.