Mount Hood
Albert Bierstadt, Mount Hood, 1869, oil on canvas, Gift of Henry Failing Cabell, public domain, 53.21
This work is not currently on view.
- Title
Mount Hood
- Artist
- Date
1869
- Medium
oil on canvas
- Dimensions (H x W x D)
51 in x 60 1/4 in
- Inscriptions & Markings
signature/maker's mark: signed and dated, lower right: Bierstadt 69
- Collection Area
American Art
- Category
Paintings
- Object Type
painting
- Culture
American
- Credit Line
Gift of Henry Failing Cabell
- Accession Number
53.21
- Copyright
public domain
- Terms
- Related Places
Depicts: Oregon
Depicts: Hood, Mount
Albert Bierstadt's fame came from his dramatic landscapes of the American West. He composed paintings in his New York and London studios from the sketches, notes, and small oil studies that he made during his extended travels across the western United States. The resulting works are designed to give urban viewers a sense of place rather than a realistic record of a particular location.
In Mount Hood, Bierstadt characteristically exaggerates the height of the mountain and includes several landscape elements that could not be viewed from a single site along the Columbia River Gorge. For example, Mount Hood is painted as though seen from the northern shore of the Columbia River and Multnomah Falls, but the profile of the mountain is actually the one seen from Portland, and featured in a Childe Hassam painting nearby. The drama and monumentality of the far West, as a metaphor, was more important to Bierstadt than geographic accuracy.
- Exhibitions
1998 The Other Nineteenth Century Portland Art Museum
2015 Paradise: Fallen Fruit Portland Art Museum
