By the time Albert Bierstadt began painting his dramatic landscapes in the middle of the 19th Century, the mountains of New York’s Hudson valley, once the epitome of the American wilderness, had been widely portrayed by two generations of painters, from Thomas Cole and Asher Durand to Frederick Church, John Frederick Kensett and the Luminists.

Church himself would travel to South America in search of even more dramatic and unspoiled wilderness, but Bierstadt found his calling in the still wild American west.

Bierstadt was brought to America at the age of two when his parents emigrated here from Germany. Little is known about his early artistic training, it may have consisted only of resources available in and around the tiny town of New Bedford, Massachusetts where his parents had settled. In his early 20’s, Bierstadt traveled back to Germany to study in Dusseldorf, returning a few years later to paint scenes of New England and the mountains of New York.

In search of ever more wild and dramatic vistas, Bierstadt took several journeys west, one of them on the wagon train sent to chart a path for the Transcontinental Railroad. He would return to a studio in New York, a studio with exceptionally high ceilings that would accommodate his enormous canvasses, and he would translate his sketches and small paintings into grandly dramatic scenes that proved to be tremendously popular.

Bierstadt was tremendously impressed by the grandeur of the Rockies, which he felt bested even the Alps for drama, and was particularly struck by the Yosemitie Valley, which became the subject of numerous paintings. The image above (with detail at bottom) is simply titled Yosemitie Valley, and is not one of his larger paintings (60″ by 38″, 152cm x 96cm, larger version here).

I’ll suggest again, as I did in my post on Church, that I think it’s hard for us, jaded as we are by lifelong exposure to billboards, movie screens and other large scale images, to appreciate how much of a dazzling “special effect” was created at the time by large scale paintings like his, many of which were 8 foot by 10 foot (2.4m x 3m).

Bierstadt was often put down by critics of his day (and is still looked down on by contemporary critics) for the overly dramatic nature of his work. While I’ll admit that he didn’t pull any punches when it came to dazzling viewers with exaggeratedly rugged and “scenic” vistas, theatrical light, clouds, mist, shadow and other visual effects, in addition to the sheer size of his monumental canvasses, I don’t think that takes away from the enjoyment of his paintings.

In fact those elements are the great thing about his paintings, drama is the point (but of course, “serious” critics aren’t allowed to put their blessing on anything fun). Bierstadt had the last laugh, though, as his work sold for enormous sums. His paintings are still popular today (another problem for critics) and are widely reproduced. Many are readily available online and you’ll find his paintings in numerous books.

If you can, try to see one of Bierstadt’s large scale works in person to get the real effect. The Artcyclopedia has links to some museums with his work in their collections (and online).

Anyone interested in dramatic contemporary matte painting who is not familiar with Bierstadt will find in his work a textbook for how to paint dramatic landscape. The rest of us can just enjoy the journey across the great rugged face of the American west, oohing and aahing along the way.

Gustav Klimt is an artist of surprises.

Considered both a symbolist and a member of the Art Nouveau movement, Klimt is most well known for his bold intersections of design and draftsmanship, like his first Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, shown above (larger version here) which last year set a record for the highest price paid at auction for a single work of art, at $135 million.

Unlike many artists whose works become posthumous monuments to the greed-fests in an art market gone mad, in which dealers make millions standing on the graves of artists who lived in poverty and desperation, Klimt actually received a good deal of success with his work during his lifetime. Many of his works from his most successful periods used gold leaf on their surface, a tradition reaching back to the decorative arts of previous centuries.

Klimt’s work is general is some of the most sought after, highly priced and most widely reproduced art in the world, and there are numerous books on the artist. But for those with on only a passing exposure to his paintings and drawings, he can continue to surprise and delight as you delve further.

Klimt’s art can be seen as a nexus of many styles in influences. If you’re familiar with works like the above portrait or his famous image of The Kiss, one of the most widely reproduced images in art, you may be surprised by his earlier works, that are much more traditional and academic (or “realistic”) in approach. Some of them, like Two Girls with Oleander, suggest the work of the Pre-Raphaelites in their blending of Art Nouveau grace with representational painting; others have the muted softness of Whistler’s portraits.

If you are aware of Klimt’s fascination with the female figure and the warm, frank eroticism of his drawings, you might be surprised by the the number and intensity of his landscape paintings.

In his landscapes, as in his most famous figurative works, Klimt flattens out the image to the picture plane, but mixes “realistic” rendering of figures or objects with design elements, often filled with luxurious patterns pulled from the rich history of decorative arts. His figures can retain their “realism” even while being stretched and extended like those of Modigliani or Giocametti, so that the figures themselves become simultaneously decorative elements and pictorial images, both standing out from and blending into the Byzantine dazzle of their surroundings.

He manages to simultaneously prompt delight in our appreciation of design and the decoration of surface, and tap our deep response to recognizable figures and elements of nature.

This intersection of pictorial image and design is one of the reasons for the strong appeal of Art Nouveau, and Klimt throws in another strongly appealing element, sexual desire, with smoldering erotic undertones in many of his images, and overt eroticism in others, particularly in his drawings.

In other words, Klimt knows how to push our buttons, and oh how we love to have them pushed.

[Note: the sites linked here contain images that are not suitable for children and Not Safe For Work.]