Among the Sierra Nevada, California
1868 · Oil on canvas · Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
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This print
About this work
- Artist
- Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)
- Year
- 1868
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 183 × 305 cm
- Collection
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
- Movement
- Hudson River School
Light breaks through parting clouds onto granite peaks and a waterfall and pours across a still lake where a herd of elk stands at the water's edge and waterfowl rise; a single trout can be found in the shallows at the left by anyone who looks closely. Bierstadt painted the canvas, more than three metres wide, in Rome in the winter of 1867 to 1868, four years after his 1863 journey to California, and it is a composite ideal rather than a view of any one place. He showed it in London the following summer and then at the Royal Academy in Berlin, and its tour of Europe is credited with stirring interest in emigration to the American West. The painting is a centrepiece of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's nineteenth-century landscape galleries in Washington.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Light breaking through clouds onto peaks, a waterfall and elk at a still lake, for a living room, dining room or hallway at 36×24 in black. A sage, cream or pale blue wall; it reads across a room and suits a mountain home.
- Style
- Hudson River School painting
- Era
- 19th century (1868)
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Mood
- calm
- Rooms
- living room, dining room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. Prints at 18×12, 24×16, 36×24 in — 18×12 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 24×16 above a console or sideboard; 36×24 as the statement piece above a sofa or headboard.
Framing. The gallery ground is part of the print, so frame it without a mat — black suits the deep tones of this period; oak lightens it.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is Among the Sierra Nevada, California in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was Among the Sierra Nevada, California painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
