Item Number: 113438 Title: ALBERT BIERSTADT : Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast Author: Junker, Patricia Price: Not Available ISBN: 9780295991245 Description: Seattle: Univesity of Washington Press, Seattle Art Museum, 2011. 29cm., pbk., 72pp., 52 color plates Exhibition catalogue. Summary: In 1870, Albert Bierstadt painted one of the most novel subjects of his career: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast. The canvas resulted from newly reawakened interest in a region the artist had visited only briefly seven years before. Although Bierstadt claimed to have painted "a portrait of the place," he had never actually made it to Puget Sound in 1863 and the painting has long been dismissed as another "superb vision of dreamland." This book reveals the fact-within-the-fiction of Bierstadt's spectacular, eight-footwide view of Puget Sound. It follows his travels around the Washington Territory in 1863, travels that were far more extensive than previously known. It identifies the artist's source material in Northwest Coast native artifacts, early historical accounts of the region, and the sketches he made on the Columbia River and Washington and Vancouver Island coasts. It compels us to reconsider the function of the painting - to see it not as a landscape, but as a historical work, a narrative of an ancient maritime people, and a rumination on the ages-old mountains, basaltic rocks, dense woods, glacial rivers, and surf-pounded shores that have given this region its look and also shaped its culture. We regret to inform you that this title is no longer available. P.O. Box 3904, Kingston, New York 12402 US Phone: 845-331-8519 Fax: 845-331-0852 Email: michael@artbooks.com |
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