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Lot Essay
Over the course of his lifetime Albert Bierstadt was a great sportsman and an avid outdoorsman. From his earliest trips hiking in the Catskills in the early 1860s and then in the Rockies and Sierra Nevada mountains during the 1860s and 1870s, the painter exhilarated in the soaring, open spaces of the North American wilderness. Salmon Fishing on the Cascapediac River is a celebration of this spirit.
Like many nineteenth-century American painters who spent extended months in the great outdoors, Bierstadt was a passionate angler. In addition to carrying his paint box and easel on his extended trips, he would also pack his fishing rod and flybox. Other landscape painters of the Hudson River School, such as Worthington Whittredge who were Bierstadt's friends and colleagues, also enjoyed fishing in the woodland streams and rivers that they encountered on their sketching trips. The activities of painting and sketching, hiking and fishing naturally complemented as these artists pursued their vocation and avocation with equal passion.
Bierstadt painted Salmon Fishing on the Cascapediac River during the 1870s or early 1880s. During this period of his career, the artist made several trips to the Province of Quebec and the Gasp Peninsula where he went salmon fishing on the Cascapediac River. One such trip was in June of 1881, when he travelled to the Gasp Peninsula for a fishing expedition with the governor-general of Canada. The Cascapediac River is one of the great Atlantic salmon runs that flows into Cascapedia Bay and Chaleur Bay in the region of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.
Salmon Fishing on the Cascapediac River shows a fisherman standing in a canoe as two guides steady the boat in the current. The angler's bamboo rod bends with the weight of a trophy salmon that leaps out of the water in a silvery arc. Sawn logs float at the river's edge in the lower right foreground, evidence of the great lumber industry active in the area during the late nineteenth century. Bierstadt has included a plank table and campfire in the lower left foreground at the edge of the river--a gesture to the rustic lifestyle that Bierstadt enjoyed while away from his studio in New York.
Like many nineteenth-century American painters who spent extended months in the great outdoors, Bierstadt was a passionate angler. In addition to carrying his paint box and easel on his extended trips, he would also pack his fishing rod and flybox. Other landscape painters of the Hudson River School, such as Worthington Whittredge who were Bierstadt's friends and colleagues, also enjoyed fishing in the woodland streams and rivers that they encountered on their sketching trips. The activities of painting and sketching, hiking and fishing naturally complemented as these artists pursued their vocation and avocation with equal passion.
Bierstadt painted Salmon Fishing on the Cascapediac River during the 1870s or early 1880s. During this period of his career, the artist made several trips to the Province of Quebec and the Gasp Peninsula where he went salmon fishing on the Cascapediac River. One such trip was in June of 1881, when he travelled to the Gasp Peninsula for a fishing expedition with the governor-general of Canada. The Cascapediac River is one of the great Atlantic salmon runs that flows into Cascapedia Bay and Chaleur Bay in the region of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.
Salmon Fishing on the Cascapediac River shows a fisherman standing in a canoe as two guides steady the boat in the current. The angler's bamboo rod bends with the weight of a trophy salmon that leaps out of the water in a silvery arc. Sawn logs float at the river's edge in the lower right foreground, evidence of the great lumber industry active in the area during the late nineteenth century. Bierstadt has included a plank table and campfire in the lower left foreground at the edge of the river--a gesture to the rustic lifestyle that Bierstadt enjoyed while away from his studio in New York.