Art 160
Fundamentals
When we think of nature in painting form, we tend to imagine a place where we can get away from it all, and just relax and enjoy the scenery. Sometimes the scenery can be mind blowing for the average person. In the painting below “Among the Sierra Nevada, California” (1868) by Albert Bierstadt, the subject of the painting is the image of America as a promised land just when Europeans were immigrating to this country in great numbers. This painting involves the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a lake, trees, waterfalls, ducks and deer. Bierstadt’s painting is focused mainly on the beautiful calm landscape that surrounds the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The artist used great unity and variety by the way the bits and pieces of the lake, mountains, waterfalls, trees and animals come together to create an amazing landscape. With the limited amount of colors used, creating darkness to the clouds and shades to the mountains and trees, makes this theme seem late in the afternoon with a chance of rain. The asymmetrical balance of the painting is great, with the large mountainside taking up most of the left side; the lake, deer and trees balance the right side. The snow-capped mountain and dark clouds take up depth and height while the lake, deer, grass and trees make up the smaller, closer scale. The painter used hierarchical scale using the massive mountain located in the depth of the background, comparing its size to the deer by the lake. The mountain is the most important in his painting because of the attention that it’s getting from the sun. The proportion makes sense in real life, since this is what we would see if we were to look at such a view. All of the objects are in appropriate size in nature
The bright sunlight shining down on the mountain shows great emphasis, by attracting our attention to the lighter contrast to show its great three-dimensional detail. With the mountaintop being our focal point, we tend to follow the mountain down the center towards the lake. Where we then drift towards the trees, as they get bigger and closer to the deer and ducks in the lake. Last, we look