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From a little above a dirt road, we look past a grove of trees to a broad plain and a lake at the foot of towering, hazy mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The narrow, teal-blue lake runs from left to right along the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition so the hills and mountains take up most of the picture. On the far shore of the lake, steep hills are thick with fern-green trees and growth. Beyond these hills, muted gray and green rocky mountains reach precipitously into the clear, robin’s egg-blue sky so some nearly touch the top edge of the canvas. Snow nestles in the mountain peaks while gauzy mist hovers among the mountain tops. The meadow below is a patchwork of avocado-green and sand-brown fields. An ice-blue stream winds from the lake across the plain while olive-green trees and shrubs dot the fields. Closest to us, in the lower left corner of the painting, small stones and clumps of green grass run along the dirt road, and boulders line it to either side. A band of dark green spanning the road creates a screen a short distance from us, in the lower left quadrant of the composition. Through the trees is a view of miniscule buildings lining the lakeside. In the shadows, under the trees, people camp with a covered wagon covered in white fabric and several animals including a donkey. A red and yellow fire glows, almost lost in the deep shadows of the trees, next to the people. On our right, about a dozen people with a horse-drawn wagon, all tiny in scale, work in the field next to the stream. Farther along the stream, another wagon approaches a covered bridge. On our right and close to us, a dark shadow falls across the landscape. Beyond the shadow, a group of buildings with a church in the center sit on a low hill.

Lake Lucerne, 1858

Albert Bierstadt

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 64

Albert Bierstadt created this scenic view of Lake Lucerne and the Swiss Alps using dozens of sketches he made on-site. Bierstadt, a German immigrant, had returned to his birthplace for training. He traveled through Switzerland on his way back to the United States.

Though set in Europe, this breakthrough work would serve as a model for Bierstadt’s equally grand paintings of the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite Valley. He would become one of the most acclaimed landscape painters of the 19th century.

The painting disappeared in 1882, after being sold at auction following the death of its original owner. It had been lost for more than 100 years when it was rediscovered in a Rhode Island farmhouse in 1990.

Dive deeper

Best known for his panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains, Albert Bierstadt began his career as a painter of European landscapes. In 1856, during a period of study abroad, he spent time in Switzerland and completed the plein air sketches he would later use to compose Lake Lucerne, the most important painting of his early career.

In the spring of 1858 he sent the painting to New York for the annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design. The picture caused a sensation. Bierstadt was hailed as a bright new star on the American art stage and was elected an honorary member of the Academy.

Bierstadt's painting offers a sweeping view of Lake Lucerne with the village of Brunnen in the middle distance and the alpine peaks Ematten, Oberbauen, Uri–Rotstock and St. Gotthard in the distance. Though an image of mountain grandeur, Lake Lucerne also contains numerous pastoral vignettes—a harvest scene near the center, a religious procession at the right, and a camp of Roma people at the left.

One year after completing Lake Lucerne Bierstadt traveled to the Rocky Mountains for the first time. During the decade that followed he produced the western landscapes that brought him his greatest success. These views of the West, so often described as distinctly American, were born of Bierstadt's experience abroad and frequently duplicate the composition of the first of his large-scale landscapes, Lake Lucerne.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I, pages 33-39, which is available as a free PDF.

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 182.9 x 304.8 cm (72 x 120 in.)

framed: 235.3 x 359.4 x 17.2 cm (92 5/8 x 141 1/2 x 6 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Richard M. Scaife and Margaret R. Battle, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Accession Number

1990.50.1

Artists / Makers

Albert Bierstadt (artist) American, 1830 - 1902

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Detail Information

Inscription

lower right: ABierstadt. / 1858.

Provenance

Purchased from the artist by Alvin Adams [1804-1877], Watertown, Massachusetts, by 14 December 1858;[1] his estate; (his estate sale, Leonard & Co., Boston, 16-17 March 1882, 2nd day, no. 109); Hezekiah Conant [1827-1902], Pawtucket, Rhode Island;[2] William Leroy Sunderland [d. 1938], Exeter, Rhode Island, circa 1890;[3] his wife, Pearl Joslin Tarbox Sunderland Rose [d. 1989], Exeter, Rhode Island; (her estate sale, Northern Appraisers, Warwick, Rhode Island, 13 October 1990, no. 43).[4]

[1] On 14 December 1858 the New Bedford Daily Mercury reported "Mr. Bierstadt has disposed of his oil painting of 'Lake Lucerne' to a gentleman in Boston [Alvin Adams], for the sum of $925." Orphaned as a young boy, Adams [1804-1877] later rose to prominence and acquired a substantial fortune as founder and president of the Adams Express Company. In 1860 he built Fairhaven, a lavish home in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he displayed his art collection in a gallery open to the public one day a week.

[2] Alvin Adams died 1877 but his art collection was not sold until 1882. On 18 March 1882 the Boston Globe reported that Lake Lucerne had been purchased at the Adams sale by Mr. H[ezekiah] Conant of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for $3375. Conant [1827-1902], an inventor and manufacturer, had established the Conant Thread Company in Pawtucket in 1868. For many years the largest employer in the state, he succeeded in forging profitable alliances with European thread manufacturers including J. & P. Coats Company, Ltd., of Paisley, Scotland, which began operating the Conant Thread Company as one of its branches in 1893.

[3] The New York Times (11 June 1990) reported that John D. Lynch, executor of the Rose estate, said he was told by Mrs. Rose that William L. Sunderland, her first husband, had acquired the painting in the 1890s.

[4] Lake Lucerne was purchased at auction by Richard York of Richard York Gallery, New York, acting on behalf of the National Gallery of Art with funds provided by Richard M. Scaife and Margaret R. Battle.

Associated Names

Adams, Alvin
Conant, Hezekiah
Leonard & Co.
Northern Appraisers
Rose, Pearl Joslin Tarbox Sunderland
Sunderland, William Leroy
York Gallery, Richard

Exhibition History

1858: Boston Athenaeum, c. September - December 1858, no. 327.

1858: New-Bedford Art Exhibition, New Bedford, Massachusetts, 20 July - 7 August 1858, no. 136.

1858: Thirty-Third Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, 13 April - 30 June 1858, no. 6.

1860: Boston Athenaeum, 1860, no. 207, and later that year as no. 239.

1861: Boston Athenaeum, 1861, no. 246.

1862: Boston Athenaeum, 1862, no. 260.

1991: Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, unnumbered catalogue, color repro.

1992: Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991-1992, no. 6.

Technical Summary

The support is a medium-weight, plain-weave fabric coated with a white ground of moderate thickness. Infrared reflectography and x-radiography reveal traces of underdrawing, probably in pencil, as well as significant compositional changes in the paint layer. Of particular note are passages at the far left, where a rocky cliff was transformed into a grove of trees, and at the far right, where the church atop the promontory was repositioned at least twice. Pentimenti in the sky indicate that the profiles of several mountain peaks were also altered. Except in dark areas where the paint is thin and transparent, the surface is opaque. Numerous brush strokes are visible in the paint, which was applied as a relatively fluid paste. Impasto highlights are common in the foreground. A strong tented craquelure, perhaps signifying the use of driers, is visible in the sky. In 1990-1991 the picture was relined, discolored varnish was removed, and the painting was restored. The painting is in excellent condition.

Bibliography

1858: "A Grand Picture." Home Journal (3 April 1858): 2.

1858: "A Grand Picture." New Bedford Evening Standard (6 April 1858): 2.

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1991: Gingold, Diane J., and Elizabeth A.C. Weil. The Corporate Patron. New York, 1991: 157, color repro.

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1991: Simon, Robin. "The National Gallery of Art, Washington: Fifty Years of Collecting for the Public Good." Apollo 133 (March 1991): 153-154.

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1991: Suckow, Shirley. "Albert Bierstadt le paysage en gloire." La Tribune de Geneve (6 November 1991): 37.

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1995: National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of A rt, Washington, Rev. ed. Washington, D.C.,1995: 233, repro.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 33-39, color repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 301-302, no. 244, color repro.

2013: Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 424.