Albert
Bierstadt married Rosalie Osborne Ludlow onNovember21,1866. The
Osborne family hailed from Waterville, New York, and the couple
was married there in Grace Episcopal Church. Rosalie’s first
husband, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, was a writer and publicist with whom
Bierstadt traveled to Yosemite in 1863. Ludlow addiction, and after
his trip a cousin wrote that he was in “a very bad way. Suffering
from neuralgia” and later, that he” had sunk too low
to be worth 3ny consideration anymore” (Gordon end ricks,
Albert Bierstadt, Painter of the American West, New York, 974, p.165).
Rosalie’s divorce from Ludlow and scandal, and in 1870 when
Ludlow published his account of the 1863 Western trip, he did not
credit the artist for any of his illustrations. 4ccording to family
history the present grouping was a gift from Bierstadt to his adored
wife Rosalie. There is no documentation as to Why Bierstadt constructed
:his intriguingly framed display of paintings. Although there are
other examples of similar group arrangements that can be een in
photographs of the b artist’s studio (see fig. 1 ). T has
been Suggested that ,is compendium could lave been an architectural
element designed as part of a house or studio, or that Rosalie may
have been particularly fond of 3everal of these individual ‘views
that were typically 5cattered around Bierstadt’s studio, and
that he assembled and framed them as one for her. The 3rtist was
very devoted to his monumental picture Storm in the Rocky Mountains,
Mount Rosalie, which he named during his 1863 Western trip with
.Ludlow. When she became ill he journeyed with her to the Bahamas
beginning in 1877 until her A death in 1893. According to Gerald
Carr, , Bierstadt probably painted this ensemble of ten small, same-size,
broadly brushed oil studies late in his career, between ca. 1890and
1892. The two-year period 1891-92 in particular was meaningful to
him from professional and personal standpoints. Besides the Columbus’s
landing in the New World, it marked the twenty-fifth anniversaries
of his marriage to the former Rosalie Osborne, and of the triumphant
European tour they undertook together between 1867 and 1869. “The
images are Interesting both for their presentation and for their
subjects. To our eyes the overall effect resembles a phalanx of
video screens. The analogy is appropriate. As Annette Blaugrund
and other scholars have emphasized, in Bierstadt’s day American
artists studios as well as public art exhibitions, art dealerships,
and private art col lections were important social gathering places.
He walls and even the floors of most such interiors customarily
were packed cheek-to-jowl with images and objects. At the communal
New York Studio Building, into which Bierstadt moved in 1859, and
subsequently at “Malkasten,” his home (destroyed by
fire in 1882) near Tarrytown. NY, and at lodgings he rented while
traveling, Bierstadt juxtaposed his studio paintings of multiple
sizes with sketches, diverse objects. And collected photographs,
many of the jut taken by his brothers. His own propensities to enlarge
small, simply Framed, same-size picture )of his by hanging them
in horizontal and vertical and, like beads on strings, are documented
in extant photographs of his working quarters. “The present
paintings do not seem, however, to span Bierstadt’s life in
art as a married man; rather, they touch selected segments of it.
Since the early 1860s he and contemporaries alike had identified
him with “high mountains,” Soon after their marriage
the couple traversed alpine regions of Europe and subsequently in
California; and in 1881 he traveled solo to Yellowstone National
Park, already famed for its “unearthly” wildness and
the aptness of names such as “Fire Hole”, “Devil’s
Glen,” and “Hell Roaring Hole” that had been bestowed
on its features. But neither tall escarpments, rocky crags, snow
fields, nor hot geysers are ,evident here. Instead, the portrayed
topographies, all low latitude including the distant view of Niagara
(of which subject Bierstadt exhibited a painting at Jacksonville.
FL, in 1888) toward the lower right, are consistently warm and inviting.
Four or more of the scenes portray Caribbean coastlines. The view
of bending trees toward the upper left, for example, simplifies
a larger oil study by Bierstadt (ca. 1891; collection of William
and Rose-Marie Sabahan) of the Island of New Providence in the Bahamas.
He began acquainting himself with that tropical locale when his
wife developed problems with her health. From the mid- 18705 into
the 18905, accompanied and unaccompanied by her husband. Rosalie
Bierstadt made numerous journeys to the Bahamas. There l1e couple
enjoyed social situations while keeping her meliorative aims uppermost
in their minds. Eventually, On v1arch 1,1893, in Nassau, she succumbed
as or just after he in ish ed, at his New York studio, a monumental
canvas, The landing of Columbus (City of Plainfield. NJ). Intended
for (but not shown at) the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. To
inform himself for the large picture, in mid-1891, presumably without
his wife, he had visited Spain and Portugal, and early the next
year he surveyed Columbus’s presumed landing place on Watlings
Island. Although excluded from the Chicago :olumbian celebrations,
he did participate in events held in “Jew York, and in May
1892 he hosted a gala reception at his New York studio to unveil
the incomplete Columbus. Hence at that juncture the painted 14905
tropical Paradise of his Columbus would have been a conceptually
poignant place, both for the depicted historic natives whose inheritance
it had been prior to arrivals of Europeans, and for the living,
robust European-born artist and his sickly American spouse.”
It has also been suggested that several of the scenes, such as the
regatta (lower right panel) and the harbor scene (lower center panel)
could be Capri rather than the Bahamas; and that the lake scene
(lower left panel) may be lake Como seen from the Italian side looking
across to the Swiss Alps. We would also like to thank Alexander
Acevedo for his assistance in cataloguing this work.
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