Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast

Date1870

Maker Albert Bierstadt Born Solingen, Prussia, 1830; died New York City, New York, 1902

Label TextPuget Sound on the Pacific Coast Never one to miss a timely subject, Bierstadt in 1870 turned to Puget Sound at a time when the region was suddenly much in the news. No sooner had the divisions representing East and West joined the transcontinental railway at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, than investors started looking toward a new land of promise and plenty, the Washington Territory, and a new enterprise, the proposed Northern Pacific Railroad from the upper Mississippi to Puget Sound. Having traveled along the Columbia River border of the Washington Territory and along the Northwest Coast in 1863, Bierstadt had been one of the few artists to glimpse the land of enchantment on the Pacific Rim. Although he had not visited the precise site of Puget Sound, he had been close enough that he could reasonably claim that general region as the setting of a picture that he hoped would excite viewers—particularly those who in 1870 had become somewhat obsessed with this romanticized vision of utopia in the Pacific Northwest. A Portrait of a Place Although Albert Bierstadt had not traveled inland into the Washington Territory in 1863, he had amassed the materials he needed to paint a portrait of a place that he could identify as Puget Sound. He had made oil studies of the land forms and Natives he saw along the Columbia River. He had acquired Northwest Coast Native objects, including the examples exhibited here, all of which can be found in Bierstadt’s painting. He also had an extensive library on the early history of America to use for reference—in this case, he appears to have drawn from an illustration in James Gilchrist Swan’s early authoritative study of the region’s topography and people, The Northwest Coast, published in 1857. The fine points of the little-known Puget Sound landscape itself were less important to Americans in 1870 than was the fantasized idea of Puget Sound—a storied inland sea that was a gateway to exotic-seeming points of the globe and lands of unknown peoples. In the still primeval wilderness that Bierstadt depicted, the mysterious realm of an ancient class of seafarers and fishermen, Americans might imagine the modern seaport that would soon arise there—and taking pride in their vision and ingenuity, accord Bierstadt a place in history as the artist who made a valuable and pioneering record of the noble past that was a new maritime civilization’s prologue.

It is, we are told, in all essential features, a portrait of the place depicted, and we need the assurance to satisfy us that it is not a superb vision of that dreamland into which our much admired painter has made at least as many visits as he has made among the material wonders of the West.

– On Bierstadt's painting of Puget Sound, from "On the Easel; Return of the Artists to their Studios," New York Evening Mail, October 24, 1870

Albert Bierstadt was a great adventurer and made many trips to the United States' western frontier regions, which is why one enthusiastic New York reviewer believed this painting represented the artist's faithful "portrait of a place." But Bierstadt had likely not yet traveled to the Washington Territory in 1870. The painting was possibly a commission from a New York shipping magnate who had made his enormous fortune on the Pacific coast. Enterprising artist that he was, Bierstadt did not shy away from the challenge of painting a place he had not yet seen.

Object number2000.70

ProvenanceAbiel Abbot Low (1812-1893), Brooklyn, New York, by March 1872; bequeathed to either his son Abbot Augustus Low (1844-1912), New York, or his son Seth Low (1850-1916), New York, 1893; [Emmanuel David (d. 1949), David Gallery, New York, before June 1916-1949]; bequeathed to his nephew, Philip R. Herzig, New York, 1949-2000; purchased by Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 2000

Photo CreditPhoto: Howard Giske

Exhibition HistoryNew York, New York, Union League Club, [Monthly exhibition], Dec. 1870. Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Inaugural Exhibition, June 6 - Sept. 20, 1916. Cat. no. 2 (as The Storm, lent by the David Gallery). Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, extended loan, after Sept. 20, 1916 - at least Aug. 1917 (as The Storm). Brooklyn, New York, The Brooklyn Museum, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, Feb. 8 - May 6, 1991 (San Francisco, California, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, June 8 - Sept. 1, 1991; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Nov. 3, 1991 - Feb. 17, 1992). Text by Nancy Anderson and Linda Ferber. Cat. no. 53, reproduced p. 214. London, England, Tate Britain. American Sublime, Feb. 21 - May 19, 2002 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, June 17 - Aug. 25, 2002; Minneapolis, Minnesota, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Sept. 22 - Nov. 7, 2002). Text by Andrew Wilton and Tim Barringer. Cat. no. 94, reproduced p. 240. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The View From Here: The Pacific Northwest, 1870-1940, July 1, 2004 - Mar. 27, 2005. No catalogue. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration, June 30 - Sept. 11, 2011. No catalogue. Williamstown, Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Insitute, special exhibition to acknowledge Seattle Seahawks/New England Patriots wager in Superbowl XLIX, Apr. 15 - July 20, 2015. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, American Art: The Stories We Carry, Oct. 20, 2022 - ongoing.Published References[Townley, D. O'C.]. "On the Easel. Return of the Artists to their Studios. Our Notes of an Afternoon." The New York Evening Mail, October 24, 1870: p.1. "Fine Arts; Union League Club Reception . . . ." New York Times, December 11, 1870: p. 3 [as Puget Sound, Oregon]. "Art Gossip in New York." Anglo-American Times (London), December 31, 1870: p. 12 [as Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast]. Townley, D.O'C. "Living American Artists." Scribner's Monthly 3, no. 5 (March, 1872): p. 608 [as Puget Sound owned by A.A. Low, Esq., of Brooklyn]. [Townley, D.O'C]. "Albert Bierstadt." San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, March 16, 1872 [reprint of Scribner's article, March 1872]. {possibly "Personal." Milwaukee Sentinel, January 12, 1871 ["Bierstadt is at work on a large painting of a scene on the Pacific Coast, near Vancouver's Island."].} Hendricks, Gordon. Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1973; p. 230. reproduced fig. 143 [as The Storm, 1870]. Carr, Gerald L. "Albert Bierstadt. The Shore of the Turquoise Sea. In American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, pp. 52, 54, n. 14. Exh cat. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Tu, Janet I. "Museum Acquires Long-Sought Painting." Seattle Times, August 3, 2000: pp. B1, B4, reproduced B1. Raban, Jonathan. "Battleground of the Eye." Atlantic Monthly (March 2001): p. 44, reproduced. Chong, Alan. "Collecting Pictures for Cleveland." In European and American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art, compiled by Alan Chong, p. xvi, reproduced fig. 4.Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. Raban, Jonathan. "Introduction." In The Pacific Northwest Landscape: A Painted History, edited by Kitty Harmon. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2001; pp. 13, 31, reproduced p. 30. Raban, Jonathan. "Battleground of the Eye." In Here/There/Nowhere, pp. 6-8, reproduced p. 7. Portland, Oregon: Nobius Projects, 2007. Seattle Art Museum: Bridging Cultures. London: Scala Publishers Ltd. for the Seattle Art Museum, 2007; p. 25, reproduced. Junker, Patricia. "A Sense of Place: American Art and the Seattle Art Museum." The Magazine Antiques (November 2008): p. 113, reproduced fig. 1, p. 108. Junker, Patricia. Albert Bierstadt, Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast: A Superb Vision of Dreamland, in association with Beauty and Bounty: American Art in the Age of Exploration. Seattle, Washington: Seattle Art Museum in association with University of Washington Press, 2011; pp. 10, 12-13, 22, 42 (detail), 44-45 (detail), 46, 50 (detail), 51 (detail), 54, 55, 56 (detail), 57, 64, reproduced figs. 3.1, 3.6, 3.8, 3.13, 3.15. Land of Beauty and Bounty. Josephone Cheng, producer. KCTS Public Television, Seattle, 2011. Clemsn, Gayle. "America the Beautiful on Canvas." The Seattle Times, Northwest Ticket supplement, July 1, 2011: p. 28. Chasan, Daniel Jack. "A New SAM Show is a Foray into our Environmental History." Crosscut, July 11, 2011, crosscut.com. Haertel, Laura. "'Proper Paintings' of the American Landscape." California Literary Review, July 21, 2011, calitreview.com. Ybarra, Micahel. "Manifest Destiny in Art." Los Angeles Times, August 21, 2011: p. E10. Caughill, Daniel. "How Should Christians Engage Art?" Deeply Rooted: Glorifying God in Womanhood Issue # 10, no. 2016: pp. 30-35, reproduced p. 33. Sterrett, Jill. et al. Planning the Pacific Northwest. Chicago: American Planning Association, 2015; p. xxii, reproduced. Snyder-Camp, Megan . "At the Experimental Forest." Common-place.org. 17, no. 2 (Winter 2017). http://common-place.org/book/at-the-experimental-forest/ "Albert Bierstadt, Island in the Lake," lot 46, Christie's, American Art, May 22, 2018, reproduced p. 102. Kusserow, Karl. "The Trouble with Empire." In Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment. Karl Kusserow and Alan C. Braddock. New Haven and London: Princeton University Art Museum, with Yale University Press, 2019; p. 183, n33, n36.

Credit LineGift of the Friends of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum, with additional funds from General Acquisition Fund

Dimensions52 1/2 x 82 in. (133.4 x 208.3 cm) Framed: 71 1/2 × 101 1/2 × 7 in. (181.6 × 257.8 × 17.8 cm)

MediumOil on canvas