Rocky Landscape

Maker John Frederick Kensett (American, 1816 - 1872)

Collections

American Paintings Selections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Date1853

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 48 x 72 1/2 in. (121.9 x 184.2 cm.) frame: 68 × 96 × 7 1/2 in. (172.7 × 243.8 × 19.1 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation

Status

On view

Label TextRocky Landscape is one of John Kensett's largest paintings of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, which by the 1850s had become a popular tourist destination with several large resort hotels. Kensett included no evidence of man, however, portraying the area as unspoiled wilderness-home to deer, rocks, a large lake, and limitless forest. In 1854, an art critic called the painting "a bold mountain sketch … of one of the last days of September. The autumnal hues are gently approaching, and the variegated colors of the foliage betoken the season considered most favorable for a proper appreciation of the great beauties of the American forest."

Kensett based the composition, with its gradual transition from foreground to background and vertical elements framing the view, on his study of paintings by 17th-century French artist Claude Lorrain and 19th-century British artists such as John Constable (works by both of those artists are on view in the Huntington Art Gallery).

Object number83.8.29