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Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) Among the Sierra Nevada, California -oil- National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Bierstadt was clearly going for drama in this extraordinary painting. A master at manipulating a scene to display the sublime, the painter’s artistic career soared to glorious heights with images such as this. He produced works at this scale in order to facilitate the demand for reproduction. Amazingly popular in his own time, Bierstadt’s paintings remain American masterpieces. They retain for us a sense of the unspoiled beauty of the early West. Bierstadt first experienced the West as a member of Colonel Frederick Lander’s expedition to Wind River country in 1859. He claimed that the West furnished “the best material for the artist in the world.”