Albert Bierstadt Biography

In 1857, he returned to America, briefly teaching Art in New Bedford.
In 1959, Bierstadt joined Colonel Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor, to travel west across the American frontier where he sketched and photographed the dramatic landscape.
These were transformed into huge oil canvasses painted in his studio in New York.
His first major sale was when the Boston Athenaeum purchased The Portico of Octavia Rome in December 1857.  Later, he exhibited at the Athenaeum from 1859 to 1864. (Other notable exhibitions included the Brooklyn Art Association from 1861 to 1879 and the Boston Art Club from 1873 to 1880.)