Two Sketches of Mountain Landscapes (from Sketchbook) 1890

Albert Bierstadt created these sketches of mountain landscapes sometime during his career, using graphite on paper. Bierstadt was a leading figure in the Hudson River School, a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by landscape paintings. These artists saw nature as a manifestation of God, and their paintings reflect a sense of awe at the American landscape, intimately connected to the idea of Manifest Destiny, the widely held belief that American settlers were destined to expand across the continent. But whose destiny was this really? And at what cost? Bierstadt's majestic landscapes often elided the displacement and suffering of Indigenous peoples, who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands to make way for white settlement. While offering breathtaking vistas, these sketches also reflect the complex and often troubling relationship between art, identity, and power in 19th-century America.