Celebrated for his magnificent paintings of the American West, Albert Bierstadt was born near Dusseldorf, Germany. When he was just two years old, his family emigrated to the United States, settling in New Bedford, Massachussetts. As a young man, Bierstadt returned to Germany to study at the Royal Academy in Dusseldorf under Andreas Aschenbach and Karl Friedman Lessing. Fellow students included Emmanuel Leutze, Sanford Gifford and Worthington Whittredge. He admired their highly finished style of large scale, heroic landscape painting, and his own style evolved through this cross-pollination.

He first came to national attention in the United States through an exhibition of his work organized in New Bedford on his return from Europe in 1857. Then in 1859, Bierstadt joined an expedition led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander to survey the Lander Road, an overland, westward-bound wagon road. The artist brought back some of the first sketches that the American public would see of these pristine landscapes. This was the first of many trips to the American West for Bierstadt, who was deeply moved by his experiences of the wilderness, and he declared, "Our country has the best material for the artist in the world" [quoted in G. Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt, Painter of the American West" page 86]. The sketches made during these excursions would later become the glorious paintings of transcendent beauty for which this artist is best known and which secured his position as the preeminent landscape artist of the American West.

The present work, Snow in the Rockies projects a quiet grace and beauty, sparkling with iridescent touches of light and luminous plays of color. In the foreground, bright patches of sienna brush break through the snow covered ground that rings the glassy surface of the lake. In the place of mighty snow capped peaks, here the Rockies slope gently across the background, rising just to the tops of the fir trees. Bierstadt fills the sky with the last gleams of fading sunlight. James Jackson Jarves, one of the preeminent art critics of the nineteenth century, argued that Bierstadt was a master of light, remarking that "in the quality of American light, clear, transparent, and sharp in outlines, he is unsurpassed" [cited in Anderson and Ferber, page 28]. Snow in the Rockies' radiant curls of light charge the canvas with a romanticism that reflects the lyricism of Bierstadt's vision.

Bierstadt's paintings captured the imagination of the nation and he enjoyed tremendous success during his lifetime and to this day, and he is without question one of the most artistically and historically significant American painters of all time.

Albert Bierstadt's paintings are found in renowned institutions and collections across the United States and abroad including: the United States Capital, Washington DC; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; High Museum, Atlanta, GA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstoww, OH; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, and the Imperial Palace, Berlin, Germany.