Albert Bierstadt

(1830-1902)

Pacific Coast, Cal. or View toward Point Bonita Lighthouse 16 x 22in framed 25 x 31in

Footnotes

Provenance
Ira Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York, 1971.
Greenfield Galleries, Seattle, Washington, 1974.
Ira Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York, 1977.
Private collection, Oregon.

We wish to thank Melissa Webster Speidel, President of the Bierstadt Foundation and Director of the Albert Bierstadt catalogue raisonné project, for her kind assistance in cataloguing this lot. This painting will be included in her database being compiled on the artist's work.

California was a significant subject for Albert Bierstadt, one of the most important artists and vivacious personalities in the American art world in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pacific Coast, Cal. showcases Bierstadt's ability to capture the moody atmosphere and subdued light of the natural bay located along the Point Reyes National Seashore. Although the precise location of the scene is not confirmed, it appears from research and labels to be in the Drakes Bay coastal area looking South South East toward Point Bonita. Unaligned with the majestic landscapes of resplendent romanticism ripe for Eastern consumption that brought Bierstadt notable fame, Pacific Coast, Cal. provides a subtly thoughtful yet luminous vision of the West as an untouched, American Eden.

During his extensive travels throughout the West, Bierstadt spent much of his time in California recording the topography of the Golden State from the coast to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. His admiration for the resplendent beauty of California's coastline, particularly the environs of San Francisco, is indisputable, as evidenced in some of his other well-known works on the subject from the same period, such as Entrance to Golden Gate (circa 1872, sold at Bonhams, New York, November 24, 2020), San Francisco Bay (1871-1873, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.) and Alcatraz, San Francisco Bay (1875, Private collection, Berkeley, California). Characteristic of Bierstadt's work, in Pacific Coast, Cal. he chose to depict a completely naturalistic landscape devoid of the presence of man, focusing on the varied splendor of a calm day on the Pacific coast.

Bierstadt and his wife Rosalie arrived in San Francisco in July 1871 aboard a modern and recently constructed transcontinental railroad. This journey was much quicker and far more comfortable compared to Bierstadt's earlier and much lengthier expeditions to California that began in 1859 by wagon trail. The San Francisco that greeted the Bierstadts when they arrived had been transformed from a mere prospecting settlement to the most cosmopolitan and industrial city on the West Coast. New buildings began to take over the city skyline and the streets were filled with horses, carriages, merchants, trolley cars, and the masses of new residents that now called San Francisco home. The fresh and captivating energy of this growing western metropolis attracted the Bierstadts and the couple would decide to stay for approximately two years.

During their third extended stay in California, Bierstadt opened a studio on Clay Street. His studio had large windows on all sides that provided magnificent views of San Francisco looking over the city below, the bay from Golden Gate to the west, and Mount Diablo to the east. Facing to the north, the window was so large that it appeared to be a wall of glass. The San Francisco Bulletin visited the artist's studio and reported that Bierstadt would have been able to take in "a view of the whole passage from the Pacific Ocean to the inner bay, with the peninsular and Marine [sic] county shores, including Mt. Tamalpais, a distance of six or seven miles." ¹

Although he worked often on site, these magnificent studio views undoubtedly inspired the artist daily, and provided him with a constant visual resource to study the majestic landscape surrounding San Francisco. Due to the struggle of transporting materials in the field, Bierstadt worked extensively with oil paints on a fine paper support rather than canvas. Like Entrance to Golden Gate, the immediacy of the scene indicates that the present work is one of the earliest California landscapes painted directly from nature.

In Pacific Coast, Cal., Bierstadt has chosen a slightly elevated vantage point along a beach framed with craggy rocks, that yields to a sweeping view of the distant coastal hills and the Pacific. Seawater gently snakes across the foreground sand, its white foamy edges creating enticing surface patterns. The suggestion of birds nesting on rocks in the middle distance are formed with a few deft strokes of white paint. The distant hills and sky are painted in subtle tones of greens and greys, capturing the damp atmosphere of the overcast day. In the otherwise tranquil view, a crashing spray of ocean water built with rich impasto draws the viewer's eye to a moment of action and movement in the precise center of the composition.

Pacific Coast, Cal.'s detailed and balanced panoramic landscape shows the artist's reverence for the natural splendor of the California coast. Summarizing Bierstadt's achievement, his biographer, Gordon Hendricks, wrote that "his successes envelop us with the beauty of nature, its sunlight, its greenness, its mists, its subtle shades, its marvelous freshness. All of these Bierstadt felt deeply. Often he was able, with the struggle that every artist knows, to put his feelings on canvas. When he succeeded in what he was trying to do — to pass along some of his own passion for the wildness and beauty of the new West — he was as good as any landscapist in the history of American art." <sup>2

1</sup> R. Trump, Life and Works of Albert Bierstadt, dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1963, p. 166.
² G. Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West, New York, 1973, p. 10.