Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer (1936-1910)
photo by Napoleon Sarony
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_by_Sarony.jpeg)
no copyright infringement intended

Largely self-taught, Winslow Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations.

(wiki)

• Gloucester Harbor (1873)
• Blown Away (c. 1888)
• The Turtle Pond (1898)
• High Cliff, Coast of Maine (1894) 
• Homer, Hopper, Brown

(The Moderns)

(Napoleon Sarony)

Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt
photo by Napoleon Sarony
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bierstadt.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

Albert Bierstadt belonged to the generation of pioneers, together with Thomas Moran, and the art history retained them both in the Hudson River School.

Bierstadt was the painter of American West. He traveled several times Westward in long journeys and came back with sketches that would led to large canvases (he was criticized, by the way, for their size, considered by some as the proof of an egotistical indulgence - his paintings always were dwarfing the works  of other artists that happened to be displayed together). And it was not only their size: there was also a use of light considered (again, by some) as excessive, also Bierstadt liked to emphasize atmospheric elements like fog, clouds, mist, to increase the effect of his works. But, as I said, he was a pioneer, an explorer, and he lived in the Romantic period, so no wonder he was fascinated by vastness, by light, and by the weapons of Mother Nature. Maybe it was a Pantheistic side in play.

• In the Sierras, 1868

(Old Masters)

(Napoleon Sarony)

Napoleon Sarony

Napoleon Sarony, Self-Portrait
undated
source: Broadway Photographs
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SaronySelfPortrait.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

He was a great portrait photographer, eccentric in his personal tastes and loving to be outlandishly dressed, and he left us a universe of images comprising General Sherman, Mark Twain, and Oscar Wilde.

• The Photo of Albert Bierstadt
• The Photo of Winslow Homer 

(America viewed by Americans)