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Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), German-born, was one of America's top landscape artists when the Earl of Dunraven brought him to Estes Park in December of 1876, the artist returning the summer of the next year. For his Estes Park Hotel, the Earl wanted the best view possible, and for some reason he needed to bring this painter out to Estes to tell him where it was. Dunraven's right hand man, Theodore Whyte drove Bierstadt around the area. Ultimately, the artist picked a spot not far from where the Estes family then the Griff Evans and then even Dunraven's ranch itself stood, along Fish Creek just a little south from today's Highway 36 and Lake Estes.
Once he had returned to his studio in Philadelphia, Bierstadt painted a large oil painting of Longs Peak, for which the Earl was reported to have paid $15,000. The painting was shipped to Ireland where it hung in Dunraven's Glin Castle, in the county of Limerick. The painting, Long's Peak, Estes Park, Colorado, is on a 5 by 8 foot canvas. Bierstadt wrote on October 9, 1877 that the painting was nearly finished. It was displayed in Boston for a while, retouched in Bierstadt's New York studio in February, 1878, then shipped to London, where it was exhibited at the Royal Academy before being taken on to Glin Castle.
The painting now resides in the Denver Public Library's Western Room.
founder of the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painting,
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