Twilight In The Wilderness Analysis

During the early to late 1860’s landscapes were becoming more hyper-realistic due to the expansion of America with the Louisiana purchase. Artists were hired to go out with these brave colonials and paint the landscapes of this undiscovered region. What came back was absolutely breath taking. Even though this was a ploy to get people from the 13 colonies to migrate west, it was a successful one. Two of the artists chosen were Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church, both painters by trade and both interested in the untouched landscapes of the American west. Both paint with a hyper-realistic style within the realm of Romanticism, but with differences in forms of rendering the landscape before them. Since photography had not been perfected by this time, painters were more relied on to capture scenes, paint portraits, and create adaptations of history. This applied to when painters …show more content…
The clouds are a deep red and fade to a dark maroon towards the upper atmosphere. The mountains reflect an almost scarlet red and fade to a bright yellow with the setting sun. Atmospheric perspective is truly shown with the almost blue mountains that are at the base of where the sun is setting, they appear almost fuzzy to give them the appearance of being farther away from the viewer. This perspective adds to the almost hyper-realistic rendering of Church’s painting, creating rich reds and deep blacks that can only be seen at twilight within that region. Still within the painting there is some basic Romantic building blocks; for instance the overgrowth of the wilderness as if it was never touched by man, the use of some pastels within the sunset and the sky, plus the slight exaggeration of natures beauty. This helps the piece in its purpose to draw Americans