Albert Bierstadt - German American painter who catalogued through his landscape painting westward expansion. A member of the Hudson River School; a collection of 19th century artists - founded by Thomas Cole - who created images of an "idealised naturalism", (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hurs/hd_hurs.htm).
Collection of Bierstadt's work - http://www.albertbierstadt.org/
The Rocky Mountains Lander's Peak - 1863.
Albert Bierstadt's work captured an idyllic view of the American landscape as it was discovered. His work presented a dramatic and awe inspiring portrait of America. Bierstadt's landscapes often use scale to present this powerful representation of America, the composition of the paintings forms large mountains or trees framing the picture conveying a sense of dominance in the landscape. This technique illustrates how America was viewed at the time; everything is exaggerated and magnified, drawing on the Romantic movement, nature becomes a symbol of power with an element of the divine. The connotations of the Romantic techniques would have presented to viewers outside America a image of superiority and raw, unspoiled resource and opportunity.
The Oregon Trail - 1869.
The way in which Bierstadt incorporates people in his work contributes to the connotations of power and divinity in American expansion. The above image depicts emigrants on their journey across the frontier. The painting illustrates the way expansion was viewed by the burgeoning American society. The people characterised in the painting are literally traveling to a new home, as understood by the wagon's containing their worldly goods and the livestock trailing behind them. However; in Bierstadt's painting the subtext of the image conveys the meaning behind this journey; in the colouring of the painting and the positioning of the sun. Together they imply the ideal of the Manifest Destiny. The people depicted represent the believed right that the land was to be expanded coast to coast and claimed by the American people and way of life. They are placed in a powerful dominant landscape, travelling towards a bright and welcoming future.
The difference between the two images, is the identity of the people within them. In The Rocky Mountains Lander's Peak it is the Native Americans presented with the landscape but in The Oregon Trail it is emigrant Americans. This combination of the inhabitants of America creates a interesting idea of the attitude towards each. As although both are depicted through their relationship to the landscape, the connotations of what this relationship is differ. In the first image the Native Americans have been placed atop the landscape the relationship is not visibly or explicitly united. The emotion behind it is more clinically observational. However when looking at The Oregon Trail the two elements of nature and society become fused in the colouring and composition; in other worlds they blend. In can be seen then that Bierstadt's landscapes promote the Manifest Destiny of American through his representation of the dominant landscape and divine right of the American expansion.
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