Dawn in the Rockies

Details

ALBERT BIERSTADT (1830-1902)
Dawn in the Rockies
signed with initials in monogram 'ABierstadt' (lower left)
oil on canvas
18 ¼ x 24 in. (46.4 x 61 cm.)
Painted circa 1869.

Provenance

Private collection, England.
Museum of Western Art, Denver, Colorado.
Private collection, Fort Worth, Texas.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Private collection, Los Angeles, California.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1997.

Literature

W. Foxley, Frontier Spirit: The Collection of the Museum of Western Art, Denver, Colorado, 1983, pl. 13, no. 7, illustrated.
American Masters: A Selection of Works from the Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1990, pl. 8, illustrated.

Exhibited

New York, Gerald Peters Gallery, Bierstadt's West, September 11-October 24, 1997, pl. 11, illustrated.

Further details

We would like to thank Melissa Webster Speidel, President of the Bierstadt Foundation and Director of the Albert Bierstadt catalogue raisonné project, for her assistance in the cataloguing of this lot. This work is included in the database being compiled for her forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

Painted at the height of his career, Dawn in the Rockies beautifully articulates Albert Bierstadt's profound engagement with the Western landscape as he captures the luminous atmosphere and quiet splendor of nature. The photographs taken on his early trips West would inform the composition and perspective so that the viewer's orientation is at ground level. Bierstadt's paintings from the 1860s are unparalleled examples of the American West on the precipice of industrialization. "Visual embodiment of the wilderness myth at the core of America's definition of itself, Bierstadt's painting offered sanctuary to an idea Americans were reluctant to give up despite their headlong rush into an industrial age" (N.K. Anderson & L.S. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise, New York, 1990, p. 94).

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