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| Albert Bierstadt was born in Germany in 1830. When he was three, his family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1853 he moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, to study painting. In 1857 he returned to the U.S., where he organized a major art exhibition in New Bedford. His first major sale occurred in December of that year, when the Boston Athenaeum purchased “The Portico of Octavia Rome.” In 1859 or 1860, Bierstadt visited New Hampshire, while working with his brother as a photographer. Bierstadt became famous for his large paintings of the American West, which were sold for very high prices. His style of exaggerated portrayals of waterfalls, mountains, and lakes, enhanced with fog and cloud effects became enormously popular. His fame and fortune grew, only to fade as impressionism came into prominence. By 1895 he was bankrupt. |  | |
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