Artist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)
Title: Indian Sunset – Deer by a Lake
Date: circa 1880-1890
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: height: 77.2 cm (30.3 in); width: 113.1 cm (44.5 in)
Collection: Yale University Art Gallery
What I love about this painting:
I love the way the setting sun glows through the rising mist, shining across the still waters of the lake. I love the shadowy woods, the deepening sense that twilight is near and night will soon enshroud the scene.
Deer graze in the lush meadow at the shore. Perhaps they will bed down in the shelter of the trees at the edge of the wood.
Albert Bierstadt’s landscapes made even the most ordinary scene feel majestic. One of his greatest skills was his ability to show the haze of twilight and the stillness of a pond or lake at that singular time of the late September evening, that moment when the warm breeze cools, slows, and fades to calm.
By placing wild deer in his scene, Bierstadt gives us a little story and a reason to care. It is autumn, and hunting season. Will this brief moment of peace be the buck’s last? We’ll never know, but I like to think Bambi and his family will live to see the advent of spring.
About the Author, via Wikipedia:
Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the westward expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.
Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. [1]
To read more about this artist, go to Albert Bierstadt – Wikipedia.
Credits and Attributions:
IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Indian Sunset Deer by a Lake by Albert Bierstadt.jpeg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Indian_Sunset_Deer_by_a_Lake_by_Albert_Bierstadt.jpeg&oldid=828692957 (accessed September 18, 2025).
[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Albert Bierstadt,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=1308977510 (accessed September 18, 2025).
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