The Cathedral, White Mountains, New Hampshire

Artist Bierstadt Brothers (American, Charles (1819-1903), Edward (1824-1907), Albert (1830-1902))

Dateca. 1860

MediumAlbumen print

DimensionsImage: 8 × 6 1/16 inches (20.32 × 15.4 cm)
Sheet: 8 11/16 × 6 9/16 inches (22.07 × 16.67 cm)

Credit LineGift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Object number2005.27.250

Signednone

InscribedOn sheet verso, lower left, in pencil: "Cathedral. North Conway / N. Hampshire"

MarkingsOn sheet verso, upper right corner, in pencil: "H579"

On View

Not on view

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Photography

Terms

DescriptionImage of trees with narrow branches next to a rocky cliff.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

The three Bierstadt brothers of New Bedford, Massachusetts, were highly talented landscape artists. Albert was an acclaimed painter; Charles and Edward were photographers. The three worked together to make landscape photographs in New Hampshire in 1860-1861. Albert Bierstadt helped select the points of view, and his brothers saw to the technical details. The technical quality and aesthetic assurance of these images mark them as the most accomplished Eastern landscape photographs of the period.

Published References

Crayon (January 1862): 22, repr. in Catherine Campbell, "Albert Bierstadt and the White Mountains," Archives of American Art Journal 21:3 (1981): 14-19; Bierstadt Brothers, Gems of American Scenery, pp. 94-95.

Keith F. Davis, The Origins of American Photography: from Daguerreotype to Dry-Plate, 1839-1885. With contributions by Jane L. Aspinwall. Kansas City, MO: Hall Family Foundation: in association with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007. Distributed by Yale University Press. Published in conjunction with Developing Greatness: the Origins of American Photography, 1839-1885, shown at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 212 (repro), 339.

Diane Waggoner, Russell Lord, and Jennifer Raab. East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art Washington and New Orleans, LA: New Orleans Museum of Art, 2017), 123 (repro.).

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