Rainbow in the Sierra Nevada
Albert Bierstadt (American, born Germany, 1830-1902)
Rainbow in the Sierra Nevada
- Date: ca. 1871-73
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Object Dimensions: 18 x 24 in. (45.72 x 60.96 cm)
- Credit Line: Museum Purchase, 1997.006
- Photo Credit: Mark Woods
- Verbal Description: This dramatically lit, hyper-realistic landscape painting has a rainbow arching from the left side across the composition, illuminating the dark sky and dissolving into a puff of fog at the top right corner. At the center of the painting lies a clear and calm lake, reflecting the jagged, rocky ridges towering behind it and the thick pine woods in front of it. Reaching across the bottom left corner, in the foreground, is a bit of an opening in the woods where two leafy, deciduous trees stand out. They’re tall, teaching almost as high as the far away mountain ledges. The tops of their branches are in a golden light. To the left of these central objects, almost completely in the shadows, is a dead tree with wiry branches.
