Landscape (from Sketchbook) 1890

Albert Bierstadt made this graphite Landscape sketch, part of a sketchbook, sometime in the mid to late 19th century. Bierstadt was one of the most successful painters of the American West, and this sketch gives us a glimpse into his working methods. We can imagine him on location, rapidly capturing the basic forms of the landscape before him. But these landscapes were not neutral records, but powerful statements about the idea of Manifest Destiny. They portrayed the West as a new Eden, a land of unlimited opportunity, ripe for settlement and exploitation, ignoring the claims of the Native American population. To understand Bierstadt's art fully, we need to look not only at the sketches, but also the finished paintings, the critical reception, and the social and political context in which they were made.