Mount Corcoran

Albert Bierstadt

National Gallery of Art

We look across the gleaming, forest-green surface of a lake at the foot of tall, jagged mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The lake is flanked by a steep, gingerbread-brown hill on the left and a shoreline that forms a backward C curving from the lower center around and back along the right side of the composition. Strong sunlight from the upper left illuminates the center of the left-hand hill and the shoreline. The ground to our right is carpeted in rust-red, sage-green, and tan growth and is dotted with boulders. Tall trees with rust-brown trunks, crooked branches, and narrow canopies of caramel-brown and olive-green leaves fill the far end. Closest to us are dead tree trunks jutting out of the water and or lying on a flat, rocky outcropping nearby. Beyond the outcropping is a small black bear wandering down a sliver of sand-colored ground at the water’s edge. The hill on the left is covered with vertical rows of upright jagged boulders and slender, dark green trees marching up its slopes. A narrow, artic-blue waterfall cascades down its right side to empty into the lake. A thick layer of towering blue-gray clouds rises over the hill and lake, stretching back to the looming, snow-covered peaks that nearly brush the top edge of the canvas. The sky around the peak is vivid blue, scattered with high white clouds. The artist signed the lower right, “ABierstadt” with the A and B joined as a monogram.