Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), A Rustic Mill, 1855. Oil on canvas, 43¼ x 58¼ in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gift of Michelle and Frank J. Hevrdejs.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas, recently acquired an early landscape by 19th-century master Albert Bierstadt titled A Rustic Mill. The painting—which was a gift to the museum from long-time MFAH trustee Frank Hevrdejs and his wife, Michelle—depicts a pastoral scene marked by lush greenery with a body of water in the foreground and a distant mill flanked by towering trees.
Though mostly associated with his scenes of the sublime in nature of the American landscape, Bierstadt established his reputation early on with paintings like A Rustic Mill, painted while the artist was in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“A Rustic Mill exemplifies Bierstadt’s style in its infancy and would allow our audiences to trace the arc of his career from this starting point through the height of his powers,” says Kaylin Weber, assistant curator of American painting and sculpture at MFAH. “The seeds of the sublime, the hallmark of Bierstadt’s greatest landscapes of the American West, were planted in this painting.” —
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