Oil on Panel
24″ x 36″
Available
To hone my oil painting skills, I followed my instructor’s advice by copying the masters—just as a musician practices Mozart or Beethoven—before venturing into original landscapes.
Albert Bierstadt’s “In the Mountains” (1867), a luminous Hudson River School masterpiece now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, was my second such study. Bierstadt, one of America’s pioneering landscape painters, became renowned for his grand, sweeping visions of the American West, often infused with dramatic light and atmosphere.
My version faithfully captures the original’s misty peaks, cascading waterfalls, serene lake, and forested shores, while I exercised creative license by repositioning the main waterfall to align with the Golden Mean for stronger composition.
It begins with an azuraccio (blue-grey, ten-value) underpainting, built up through layers of translucent oil glazes in the classical tradition. Painted on untempered Masonite reinforced with oak strips, the work is sealed with a protective oil medium; after a full year of drying, it received multiple coats of damar varnish. With proper care and no direct sunlight, this piece should endure for centuries.