Sunrise on the Matterhorn

Albert Bierstadt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the summer of 1856, during a four-year period of study in Europe, Bierstadt joined several American colleagues on a sketching trip. His fascination with the Swiss terrain resulted in a series of oil studies and pencil sketches, executed during the trip, and several large canvases of the mountain landscape, painted upon his return to New Bedford, Massachusetts. He revisited Switzerland numerous times between 1867 and 1897 to do more sketching. In this dramatic view of the Matterhorn, the artist depicted the cloud-encircled peak in the distance, strikingly juxtaposed with a low, rocky foreground. The vertical thrust of the mountain is reinforced by the towering pines at the lower left.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art