Albert Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1830. At the age of two, he and his family immigrated to the United States, settling in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Nothing is known of his early art training, however he might possibly have been influenced by local landscape painters.

In 1853, Bierstadt traveled to Dusseldorf in order to broaden his art education. It was there that he associated with such American artists as Worthington Whittredge and Carl Wimar, all of whom frequently gathered in the studio of the German-American history painter, Emanuel Leutze. During this period, he was introduced to the work of Carl Friedrich Lessing and Andreas Aachenbach, contemporary German painters widely admired for their heroic, highly finished landscape compositions.

Albert Bierstadt died in New York City in 1902. Although his reputation during the 1890s suffered slightly from the attraction for French art, his impact upon the American landscape tradition of the nineteenth century remains strong.