Oaks on a dry hillside above a wide pale valley

Two big oaks stand near the centre of a dry grassy slope, their trunks bare for most of their height and their crowns thin against a soft grey-blue sky. Boulders and a fallen branch lie in the grass in the foreground, and more trees run along the ridge to the right. Beyond the slope the land drops away into a wide pale valley that fades out into haze.

Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) was the grandest landscape painter of the American West. Born in Solingen and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he trained at the Düsseldorf academy before joining Frederick W. Lander's overland survey to the Rocky Mountains in 1859 — the first of the western journeys that gave him his subject. From the sketches he brought back he built enormous exhibition canvases such as The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1863) and Among the Sierra Nevada, California (1868), in which shafts of light break over peaks and mirrored lakes on a scale that drew paying crowds. His paintings are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.