This breath-taking picture entitled California Sunset is a painting by the German-born artist Albert Bierstadt, and it was made in 1864. It shows a magnificent sunset landscape by the banks of a river.

At first glance, the scenery seems to include an island on the left side of the canvas. After a more attentive look, it becomes clear that it is the other riverside. The trees that grow there were painted against the setting sun. Therefore, the color palette used by Bierstadt on this elements is of dark greens and browns.

The impression this gives the viewer is that these trees are massive. They stand together in a way that doesn’t allow sunlight to go through, making them resemble a construction. The several pine treetops make them look like a castle. As Bierstadt went to Germany at the age 23 to improve his artistic techniques, he practiced by painting the European landscapes which frequently included castles and old constructions. Maybe this influenced in some way the composition created in the California Sunset.

Bierstadt is best known for his series of works depicting the American West. He was a pioneer with the western subject and applied the Romanticism style combined with the aesthetic ideals of the Hudson River School in his mesmerizing landscape paintings. Founded by the British American artist Thomas Cole, the Hudson River group, at least in the beginning, included painters that admired the natural scenery of the United States of America. The first works of this school were of the surrounding areas of the Hudson River, but later it included landscapes of New England, South America, and the American West.

As the landscape artworks found in the United States during Bierstadt’s lifetime were predominantly of the American East scenery, for the Westward Expansion was very recent and still ongoing, his renderings of the newly discovered West were extremely impressive for his contemporaries. Even today they are mesmerizing, but at the time they were so innovative that Bierstadt became a celebrity.

His technical mastery aligned with the exceptional beauty of the United States gave him an enormous recognition which allowed Bierstadt to continue till old age to travel around beautiful and distant lands to paint new beautiful canvases. Here in the California Sunset, we can see how well Bierstadt could manipulate the color palette, making a simple sunset look considerably magical.