Skip to main content

The Winter Art Show

March 2024
1min read
The Prussian-born artist Albert Bierstadt made a pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains in 1859, gathering material for the heroic Western landscapes that would soon make him famous. Along the way he sketched this threesome tearing into a meal and called the painting Grizzly Bears . Wiser heads have since concluded these are North American black bears, a less ferocious breed, but it hardly matters.
 
milwaukee art museum1993_8_90

The Prussian-born artist Albert Bierstadt made a pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains in 1859, gathering material for the heroic Western landscapes that would soon make him famous. Along the way he sketched this threesome tearing into a meal and called the painting Grizzly Bears . Wiser heads have since concluded these are North American black bears, a less ferocious breed, but it hardly matters. Their fluid poses under a stippled, opalescent sky make this twelve-by-sixteen-inch work as impressive in its way as any of Bierstadt’s operatic eleven-foot canvases.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this magazine of trusted historical writing, now in its 75th year, and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate