Considered the foremost painter of landscape of the American West, Albert Bierstadt was a German-American who joined several expeditions of the Westward Expansion. He was part of the Hudson River School of like-minded painters that combined carefully detailed paintings with a type of almost-glowing lighting known as “luminism.” He was grouped with Thomas Moran with the Rocky Mountain School. Bierstadt’s family moved from Soligen, German, to Massachusetts in 1831. He studied painting in Dusseldorf, Germany, from 1853-1857. He taught painting and drawing before devoting himself to painting only. His early works were of New England and Upstate New York, and then expanded his range to the West.