Moonlit Waterfront Landscape
Signed lower left: ABierstadt
Description
Moonlit Waterfront Landscape likely dates to the late 1850s and may have been inspired by one of the many shoreline views visited by Albert Bierstadt and friend and fellow artist William Bradford during their outing. While the location remains a mystery, the composition relates to Bierstadt’s genre paintings created during and initially after his time abroad, wherein figures occupied in their tasks along a beachfront played a compelling role. As the moon peeks from the surrounding clouds, its beams reflect off the calm water and fall along wood fragments, nets, and various fishing accoutrements, and on the shoulders and heads of the figures gathered along the shore. This silhouette effect immediately engages the viewer and moves one’s eyes throughout the scene, taking in the different groups and their activity. The cool blues of the low light setting is punctuated by sporadic flashes of warmth, as a pair of figures share a smoke at center and a blazing bonfire in the distance illuminates the windows of a nearby home.
This painting is accompanied by a letter from Melissa Webster Speidel, Director of the Albert Bierstadt Catalogue Raisonné Project, wherein she confirms its inclusion in the database being compiled in preparation for the artist’s catalogue raisonné, and states that ‘the composition, palette, subject matter, and brushwork are consistent with the artist’s oil paintings.’
Provenance
Private collection, Medfield, Massachusetts, since the 1960s
By descent to a family trust representing the children of the original owners, who had passed away by 2012 and 2015
Inscriptions
Labels
- (stamp verso of canvas, revealed when old lining removed and prior to being relined) Prepared / by / Ed.wd Dechaux / New York
- Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts (loan label) / Object ID: E.65.03 / Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) / American / Moonlight River Landscape / oil on canvas
Exhibitions
Literature
Condition
Very good. The painting was recently cleaned and relined (it had been wax-lined on aluminum and is now lined onto linen using ethyl vinyl acetate with a mat rag board interleaf). The tacking edges had been removed by the conservator who performed the earlier wax lining and they also likely strengthened parts of the artist’s signature and may have abraded some of the artist’s original glazes. Under UV, there are spots of in-paint in the corners and a few spots scattered along the edges. There is minor in-paint over a previously repaired tear in the sky to the right of the moon, a cluster of short thin lines in the far-right sky, and scattered specks in the rest of the sky. The water has two spots of in-paint at far-left and a cluster of specks and very thin short lines in the center. In the foreground, there are a few scattered specks and very small spots of in-paint, with the largest being a 1” vertical line and a 1” x 1” spot along the lower center edge.
Frame Details
Description
Moonlit Waterfront Landscape likely dates to the late 1850s and may have been inspired by one of the many shoreline views visited by Albert Bierstadt and friend and fellow artist William Bradford during their outing. While the location remains a mystery, the composition relates to Bierstadt’s genre paintings created during and initially after his time abroad, wherein figures occupied in their tasks along a beachfront played a compelling role. As the moon peeks from the surrounding clouds, its beams reflect off the calm water and fall along wood fragments, nets, and various fishing accoutrements, and on the shoulders and heads of the figures gathered along the shore. This silhouette effect immediately engages the viewer and moves one’s eyes throughout the scene, taking in the different groups and their activity. The cool blues of the low light setting is punctuated by sporadic flashes of warmth, as a pair of figures share a smoke at center and a blazing bonfire in the distance illuminates the windows of a nearby home.
This painting is accompanied by a letter from Melissa Webster Speidel, Director of the Albert Bierstadt Catalogue Raisonné Project, wherein she confirms its inclusion in the database being compiled in preparation for the artist’s catalogue raisonné, and states that ‘the composition, palette, subject matter, and brushwork are consistent with the artist’s oil paintings.’
Provenance
Private collection, Medfield, Massachusetts, since the 1960s
By descent to a family trust representing the children of the original owners, who had passed away by 2012 and 2015
Inscriptions
Labels
- (stamp verso of canvas, revealed when old lining removed and prior to being relined) Prepared / by / Ed.wd Dechaux / New York
- Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts (loan label) / Object ID: E.65.03 / Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) / American / Moonlight River Landscape / oil on canvas
Exhibitions
Literature
Condition
Very good. The painting was recently cleaned and relined (it had been wax-lined on aluminum and is now lined onto linen using ethyl vinyl acetate with a mat rag board interleaf). The tacking edges had been removed by the conservator who performed the earlier wax lining and they also likely strengthened parts of the artist’s signature and may have abraded some of the artist’s original glazes. Under UV, there are spots of in-paint in the corners and a few spots scattered along the edges. There is minor in-paint over a previously repaired tear in the sky to the right of the moon, a cluster of short thin lines in the far-right sky, and scattered specks in the rest of the sky. The water has two spots of in-paint at far-left and a cluster of specks and very thin short lines in the center. In the foreground, there are a few scattered specks and very small spots of in-paint, with the largest being a 1” vertical line and a 1” x 1” spot along the lower center edge.
