Bierstadt's oil of Mount Rainier to be auctioned

A grand oil painting of Mount Rainier by 19th-century landscape artist Albert Bierstadt will go on the block at Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg's American art auction Tuesday in New York.

The painting, dating from about 1890, was exhibited in Germany and England during the artist's lifetime. His wife eventually gave it to the Union League Club in New York, a thank-you for the club's support of Bierstadt's career. The large 54-by-83-inch canvas was sold to a private collector in 1995.

Valued at anywhere from $1.8 million to $2.2 million, "Mt. Rainier" is expected to draw considerable interest in the Northwest.

A Seattle Art Museum official said that the museum knows of the painting's availability, but has no immediate plans to bid on it. Just two years ago, SAM acquired another major Bierstadt painting, one that also has regional importance. "Puget Sound, on the Pacific Coast," about the same dimensions as the Mount Rainier painting, shows a scene of Native Americans landing on a storm-tossed coast, with celestial light streaming through the clouds. Bierstadt painted the scene in 1870, based solely on written information, without ever having visited this area, said Betty Krulik, American art expert at Phillips. "Puget Sound" is currently on loan to the Tate Gallery in London for an exhibition called "The American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880."

When Bierstadt painted "Mt. Rainier," he had traveled to Seattle and made sketches of the mountain. Nevertheless, back in the studio, he used his imagination.

"He did take a few liberties in depicting the profile," Krulik said, "but I think an artist at this period was going for the drama — and he got it."