Small but Sublime: Albert Bierstadt’s Cabinet Paintings and Oil Studies investigates oil paintings of intimate scale descended in the family of the artist’s wife, Rosalie Osborn. Ranging in subject matter from Bierstadt’s extensive travels to imagined realms, the exhibition includes two cabinet paintings—highly finished, fully developed studio compositions—and two oil studies painted en plein air. Bierstadt achieved fame for his monumental landscapes inspired by his peripatetic adventures, such as Sunset Glow, Mount Shasta (1880s), also included in the exhibition. In contrast, the Osborn family works, which have never before been exhibited, reveal the painter’s capacity to surprise the viewer with ambitious scenes presented in a jewel-box scale for private interiors.
Small but Sublime: Albert Bierstadt Cabinet Paintings and Oil Studies
Past exhibition
