Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

signed with the artist's monogrammed signature ABierstadt, l.r. oil on canvas Albert Bierstadt is widely recognized as one of America's most important 19th century landscape artists, renowned for his dramatic views of the newly discovered western territories. In works such as Wapiti (an Indian term for North American elk), he set out to record the western landscape for posterity, painting the local wildlife and natural wonders of these largely unexplored regions. Bierstadt made his first trip to the West in 1859 when he accompanied Colonel Frederick Lander on a government expedition to plot a route from Fort Laramie, Wyoming to the Pacific Ocean. It was on this trip that the artist was introduced to the unspoiled landscape, which he would continue to paint for the rest of his life. Bierstadt's idealized interpretations of the West were in keeping with the popular concept of the frontier and his paintings were highly sought after by patrons willing to pay record prices for his majestic views. Wapiti is based on an earlier sketch titled Wapiti on the Prairie that was illustrated in 1879 in A. Pendarves Vivian's Wanderings in the Western Land (figure 1). Bierstadt met Vivian through his friend and patron the earl of Dunraven, who was Vivian's brother-in-law. The artist and his wife Rosalie visited Vivian in England during the summer of 1878 and a number of Bierstadt's sketches appeared in Vivian's memoir about his own trip to the American West published the following year. Gordon Hendricks has written that these sketches may have been completed between 1859 and 1873 on one of Bierstadt's first three trips to the west. A reporter who visited Bierstadt's studio in Waterville, New York wrote, "In response to the request of his visitor, he showed me a large number of his original sketches. These sketches, let me observe, are mostly in oil, upon loose sheets of canvas, and were made in the open air in all seasons of the year, not excepting winter. They are classified, for