Author Description

Albert Bierstadt was the highest-paid and most controversial landscape artist in America in the 1800s. His life mirrored that of the mythical hero. Like all heroes, he left home to face trials and rites of passage. In a single decade he honed his skills, retreated, meditated, met and captured his goddess, and rose to stardom. During the second decade, he made flawed choices, and the gods deserted him. In his decline, he lost his reputation and his income; then he lost his castle with hundreds of his paintings, his collections of western paraphernalia, and all of his mementos. Finally, he lost the wife he adored—the woman he had taken from a friend. In this story you will follow the search, the challenge, and the fulfillment of youth. You will witness his rapid success and notoriety. You will savor his passion and love, and you will mourn his failure and losses. This is the moral story of a man who learned too late in life about the nature of the fall after earthly temptations pulled him from his course.