The age-herald., 1902-03-02
Mrs, Foster the Angel of the Tombs, and
 Albert Bierstadt-S4o,ooo in Gems Seized.

imposing pictures of nature in its grand est aspects, such as the Valley of the Yosemite" in the Lenox collection, Mount Corcoran' in the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington, D. C.; Laramie Peak" in the Academy of Fine Arts, Buff falo and "Lander's Peak and Mount Rosalie" which are owned in England For the enthusiasm aroused by these pie lures extended to Europe, and many painting visits which MT. Bierstadt made to the other side of the Atlantic. still further increased his reputation in both hemispheres He received m edals in Au- stria, Germany. Bavaria and Belgium, the Cross of the Legion of Honor. two degrees of the order of St. Stanislaus of Russia and the Imperial Order of the Medjidi, conferred by the Sultan of Tur- key
 The success that attended Bierstadt was the same kind of success that greeted the work of Frederick E. Church, though perhaps still more pronounced; and 1t Is noteworthy that 1t had its beginning in American appreciation. Possibly some eclat may have been attached to Bier stadt through his study in Dusseldorf, for those were Dusseldorfian days. but this would not account for Churchs following indeed 1t seems as if Americans of forty years ago were more enthusiastic than to- day over the work of their own painters. They did not wait for their painters to receive the indorsement of foreigners; there was, in fact, closer rapport be- tween the artists and the public, and In the less cosmopolitan society of that pc riod, the artist occupied position of much consideration.
 It Is quite possible that pictures such as Bierstadt's appealed to more naive taste; to that love of the big and impos- ing of which Barnum so profltably avail ed himself. But even so, this does not ex- plain why a presumably more cultivated taste is so chary of doing justice to pie lures in which just taste is expressed and will still give large prices for foreign pie lures, often on the mere recommendation of a dealer while 1t considers the pur- chase of an American landscape as some thing of a condescention and expects that the price shall be proportionately smaller.
 Again. it is customary nowadays to speak disparagngly of Bierstadt as hay ing introduced into this country the Dus- seldorfian method of huge typographical landscapes, under the influence of his master, Leasing, who was given to senti- mentalism and exaggeration. Well, if 1t were a question between the merits of this sort of landscape and that of the Bar bizon m en, it would be different, but we are concerned at the moment rather with Bierstadt's personal contribution to Amer lean art. And I can quite believe that he had those large ideas in his mind be- fore he went to Dusseldorf. They were days when a star had appeared in the West, beckoning all kinds of men wise and otherwise; days of expansion and large imaginings, and the fact that Bier stadt made for the West immediately up- on his return home rather points to the spontaneousness of the impulse was from the narrow conditions of large measure a recoil from the barren grandiloquence of classcalism, while Bierstadt's impulse was from the narrower conditions of the