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608     Living American Artists

twelve feet by seven, owned by J. W. Kennard, Esq.; "Mount Hood, Oregon," also a large canvas; "Laramie Peak," in possession of the Academy of Fine Arts, Buffalo, and which the writer esteems as one of the artist's best pictures; "Crossing the Plains," owned by A. Stone, Esq., Cleveland, Ohio; "The Overland Mail;" "The Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite," in the possession of Wm. Moller, Esq., of this city ; "The Golden Gate," painted for General J. C. Fremont; "North Fork of the Platte," owned by Judge Hilton ; "The Domes of the Yosemite," possessed by Le Grand B. Lockwood, Norwalk, Conn. ; "View Down the Yosemite," owned by Mr. Crosby, of Chicago; "Burning Whalers by Moonlight," in the possession of A. Belmont, Esq. ; " A View on the Sierra Nevadas," exhibited at Berlin in 1869 (where it received a gold medal), owned by Alvin Adams, Esq., of Boston ; " Vesuvius," purchased by James McHenry, Esq of London ; "Puget Sound," owned by A. A. Low, Esq., of Brooklyn ; and the "Emerald Pool," now at the Exhibition Room of the Tenth Street Studio Building, with several other works of still later date. 

Bierstadt was made a member of the National Academy in 1860, even before he had painted any of the pictures by which he is best known. This early recognition of his talent is to the credit of his fellow-artists with whom the conferring of the honor lay. When at home he has been fairly active in Academy affairs, and deeply interested in the progress of its schools and the success of its exhibitions, to which he contributes his best pictures always; for, unlike others we might name, he considers this his duty to the Academy, even if he thus denies himself the glorification which attends the parlor exhibition of large paintings, where the effect of the picture, and possibly the sale of it, is largely contributed to by a judicious arrangement of drapery and gas-jets. 

Last summer Bierstadt made another trip West, but this time he was carried to and fro at forty miles an hour. For since his previous visit the irresistible engine had eaten its way into the wilderness and laid the forest low before it. This time he made studies for another large painting for which he had received a commission from C. P. Huntington, Esq , President of the Central Pacific Railroad. 

The scene is on the route of the road, and the point of view is near the place where, some fifteen years ago, a party of emigrants perished within a short distance of the civilization they were seeking, but of the proximity of which they did not know. The rocky summit front which the view is taken is high, and thus a vast extent of mountain, lake, and valley is embraced. The line of the railroad is beheld, a mere thread, where it enters the scene some thirty miles off, and the eye follows it, coming nearer still, along the perilous path cut for it in the trap and granite sides of the great hills which tower above it. In the middle distance is Donner Lake, the central point of interest, and beyond it range after range of hills until the horizon meets them. The foreground is to suggest the unbroken wildness of the place, with its great stretches of jagged pine, the outcropping rocks, their bald foreheads to the sky, and the marvelous detail of vegetable life characteristic of the region. To this end the artist has made many studies of the lesser forms which will admit of realization. 

The painting will be entitled "Sunrise on the Sierras," the sun being seen just above the distant horizon, his glories of gold and crimson repeated in the waters of Lake Donner. To make his studies in color for this picture, Bierstadt rose morning after morning at four o'clock, until he had secured the desired effect of light and shade and color. 

With all this work accomplished, reputation secured, and his portfolio laden with sketches and studies enough to supply material for a hundred pictures; with a beautiful home to play the prince in now and then, as he does — a home on one of the loveliest spots of earth, commanding a view than which the Rhine has none more picturesque; with a wife young and fair, a lady of rare culture and much beloved; with hosts of friends at Irvington, in the city, wherever his name is known; with all these, indeed, he might be pardoned if he rested from his labors for a decade or so, 

"To sleep, with soft content about his head, 
And never wake but to a joyful morning." 

But not so; he is even now of upon another adventurous journey, during which he is to explore the Pacific Coast, and invade, once more, the dread defiles of Puget's Sound. 

The thirst for adventure is yet unsated, and we sometimes fancy that were it not that his imagination has its play, even as he sits before his easel, in the suggestions of the titanic forms and the wild grandeurs in light and shade and color - his memories of the West; were it not that his pleasure is renewed in these, and that through his art he can bring us nearer to the wonders he portrays, we verily believe the man would gather to himself his household gods, take to the mountains and the mist, and live and die there!