Albert Bierstadt, American, 1830-1902
Mount Adams Washington, 1875
Bierstadt was one of the foremost painters of the Luminist and later Hudson River school movement, and so his work here deals with exploitation on two fronts: The subject matter of western North America, and the paint used to encapsulate it. Many Luminists and later Hudson River school painters turned their attention away from the east coast of the U.S. to the western part of the continent as a source of inspiration, in turn inspiring Westward Expansion by the U.S.—the seizure of indigenous-held lands and the dispossession of indigenous people. In this piece, Native people are present, but they exist as little more than indicators of the scale and grandeur of the landscape they happen to occupy. The white paint used to highlight the mountain was made with the metal lead, a well-known toxic material for the health effects it had on the miners who extract it and the factory workers who would have made it into paint. It is no stretch of the imagination to believe that the production of this painting harmed several people, and after its completion it encouraged harm to many more. Label by Frank Kennedy