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We look across the gleaming, forest-green surface of a lake at the foot of tall, jagged mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The lake is flanked by a steep, gingerbread-brown hill on the left and a shoreline that forms a backward C curving from the lower center around and back along the right side of the composition. Strong sunlight from the upper left illuminates the center of the left-hand hill and the shoreline. The ground to our right is carpeted in rust-red, sage-green, and tan growth and is dotted with boulders. Tall trees with rust-brown trunks, crooked branches, and narrow canopies of caramel-brown and olive-green leaves fill the far end. Closest to us are dead tree trunks jutting out of the water and or lying on a flat, rocky outcropping nearby. Beyond the outcropping is a small black bear wandering down a sliver of sand-colored ground at the water’s edge. The hill on the left is covered with vertical rows of upright jagged boulders and slender, dark green trees marching up its slopes. A narrow, artic-blue waterfall cascades down its right side to empty into the lake. A thick layer of towering blue-gray clouds rises over the hill and lake, stretching back to the looming, snow-covered peaks that nearly brush the top edge of the canvas. The sky around the peak is vivid blue, scattered with high white clouds. The artist signed the lower right, “ABierstadt” with the A and B joined as a monogram.

Mount Corcoran, c. 1876-1877

Albert Bierstadt

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 71

To create this landscape, Albert Bierstadt drew on his experiences seeing the Rocky and Sierra Nevada mountains while traveling through the West in the 1860s. The snow-capped peak, clear mountain lake, and towering pines appear in many of the artist’s Western landscapes. Despite the specific title and convincing sense of place, this scene is imagined.

Bierstadt first exhibited the painting as Mountain Lake but changed the title to entice Washington, DC, collector William Wilson Corcoran. The artist even supplied a map showing the supposed location of Mount Corcoran. The flattery worked. Corcoran purchased the painting, his first by Bierstadt, in 1878.

Dive deeper

In 1877 Albert Bierstadt displayed this enormous composite of Sierra Nevada mountain views at a New York City exhibition with the generic title Mountain Lake. The following year, inspired in part by the Corcoran Gallery of Art's well-publicized purchase of his rival Frederic Edwin Church's Niagara, Bierstadt offered the work—rechristened Mount Corcoran—to the museum and its founder, William Wilson Corcoran. Staff and board members were deeply suspicious, but Bierstadt presented them with a War Department map showing the mountain's location. Curator William MacLeod opined that a government official had manually added Corcoran's name to the document, but it was revealed that the artist had, in fact, named a specific Sierra Nevada peak for the banker (albeit after he had offered him the canvas). Undeterred by the controversy surrounding the painting's acquisition, the artist stated: "I am happy to have named one of our highest mountains after him, the first to catch the morning sunlight [and] the last to say good night."

Bierstadt was the first artist to use his European training to translate field studies into expansive paintings celebrating western American grandeur. Evident everywhere in Mount Corcoran, from the glassy water to the snowy mountain peaks, are the artist's detailed naturalism and smooth surfaces. Following the discovery of gold in California, the American West became a source of intense fascination for East Coast art patrons and armchair travelers alike who were eager to see images of the vistas enthusiastically described by forty-niners, surveyors, and journalists. In 1859 Bierstadt joined US Army Colonel Frederick W. Lander's survey party to the Rocky Mountains. Four years later he set his sights on California's spectacular Yosemite Valley. When he returned to New York following that trip, Bierstadt began producing stunning landscapes such as Mount Corcoran that introduced eastern audiences to the natural wonders of the West.

More information on this painting can be found in the free PDF of Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945, available for download.

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 154.1 × 243.5 cm (60 11/16 × 95 7/8 in.)

framed: 214.9 × 302.3 × 21.6 cm (84 5/8 × 119 × 8 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund)

Accession Number

2014.79.4

Artists / Makers

Albert Bierstadt (painter) American, 1830 - 1902

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Detail Information

Inscription

lower right, AB in monogram: ABierstadt

Provenance

Collection of the artist, New York; purchased 1878 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Bierstadt, Albert
Corcoran Gallery of Art

Exhibition History

1877: 52nd Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, 1877, no. 452, as Mountain Lake.

1947: Loan to display with permanent collection, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1946-1947.

1949: De Gustibus: An Exhibition of American Paintings Illustrating a Century of Taste and Criticism, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949, no. 21.

1964: Albert Bierstadt, A Retrospective Exhibition, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, August-September 1964, no. 65.

1964: Art of the American Frontier, IBM Gallery, New York, March-April 1964, no. 1.

1966: Past and Present: 250 Years of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, unpublished checklist.

1972: National Parks and the American Landscape, National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, 1972, unnumbered catalogue.

1981: The American West: Selections from the Anschutz Collection and the Corcoran Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1981, no. 12.

1998: New Worlds From Old: Australian and American Landscape Painting of the Nineteenth Century, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998-1999, no. 81, repro.

2005: Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, checklist no. 42.

2008: The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, unpublished checklist.

2009: American Paintings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 6 June-18 October 2009, unpublished checklist.

2013: American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013-28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1882: Macleod, William. Catalogue of the Paintings, Statuary, Casts, Bronzes, &c. of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1882: 57, no. 90.

1887: Macleod, William. Catalogue of the Paintings, Statuary, Casts, Bronzes, &c. of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1887: 59, no. 90.

1947: Corcoran Gallery of Art. Handbook of the American Paintings in the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1947: 43.

2011: Strong, Lisa. "Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Edited by Sarah Cash. Washington, 2011: 30, 105, 117, 140-141, 267-268, repro.

2016: Zambello, Francesca. "Creating the World of the Ring." Playbill for Richard Wagner: The Ring of the Nibelung (Washington National Opera, 2016). New York, 2016: 12, color repro.