Sketches of Landscape Views after Leaving Seattle (from Sketchbook) (1890, Met-Objekt 2681)
Original title: Sketches of Landscape Views after Leaving Seattle (from Sketchbook)
kurzbeschreibung
Albert Bierstadt set down a landscape view with striking hills or mountains in pencil in 1890. The sheet comes from a sketchbook and is drawn in graphite on wove paper.
Description
Several pronounced rises break up the view, which Bierstadt captures with loose, shifting strokes. That handling betrays a quickly noted, direct observation. A faint crease down the middle of the sheet comes from its nature as a sketchbook page. There is no color; the sheet remains a black-and-white drawing. The arrangement feels plain: no worked-out details, just a summary rendering of the terrain.
Context
The German-American painter Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) became known for large-scale landscapes of the American West. By 1890, when this page was made, commissions had fallen off after the great successes of the 1860s and 1870s. The sketchbook the sheet belongs to records a journey on which Bierstadt gathered new motifs. The drawing survives as part of that sketchbook in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Impact
The fleeting, relaxed linework gives the sheet something immediate and credible. One seems to witness an observation made on the spot, and it becomes clear how Bierstadt could grasp a landscape with a few strokes. Because everything incidental drops away, the drawing gains calm and concentration.
Technique
Graphite on wove paper carries the drawing, executed with loose, shifting strokes that suggest a fast, spontaneous approach. The paper's slight bend at the center matches the character of sketchbook pages, as they form when the book is opened.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)