Albert Bierstadt. Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West.
   He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.
   Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was 1. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River.
   Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.
   Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany, the son of Christina M. and Henry Bierstadt, a cooper. His brother was prominent photographer Edward Bierstadt. Albert was just a year old when his family immigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1831. He made clever crayon sketches in his youth and developed a taste for art. In 1851, Bierstadt began to paint in oils. He returned to Germany in 1853 and studied painting for several years in Düsseldorf with members of its informal school of painting. After returning to New Bedford in 1857, he taught d
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