Old Faithful 

"Old Faithful" was painted by Albert Bierstadt, most likely in the 1880s, using oil paint on canvas. Bierstadt was part of the Hudson River School, and he painted sweeping landscapes of the American West. The canvas and pigments he used were industrially produced, and became widely available during the Industrial Revolution. This availability democratized art, but also changed the way it was made. Here, Bierstadt creates an idealized view of nature. The surface is smooth, the brushstrokes invisible, an effect that erases his labor and directs us to the scene. He would have worked from sketches done on site, adding compositional enhancements in the studio, following the established conventions of landscape painting. The result is an image seemingly untouched by human hands, where the awesome spectacle of nature reigns supreme. Yet the very availability of the materials, and the established techniques with which Bierstadt worked, remind us that even the most romantic vision is always tied to specific historical and economic conditions.