Artist’s Brook, North Conway, New Hampshire

Expand

IIIFView PDF

Artist’s Brook, North Conway, New Hampshire

Artist Samuel Lancaster Gerry (American, 1813-1891)

Dateabout 1857

DimensionsFrame: 31 5/8 × 45 1/2 × 2 1/2 in. (80.3 × 115.6 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1947.55

Not on View

Label TextThe stream depicted here, a tributary of the Saco River, was a favorite spot for painters, especially in the 1850s. The view looks across the Conway meadows toward Mount Washington in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, New Hampshire. Benjamin Champney, a leading member of the White Mountain group of landscape painters, reminisced in 1899, “North Conway and the neighborhood of Artists’ Brook at one time became almost as famous as Barbizon and the Forest of Fontainebleau [for its landscape views]…Dozens of umbrellas were dotted about under which sat artists from all sections of the country.” Boston artist Samuel Lancaster Gerry depicts just such an artist, seated on the banks of the brook, sketching under the shade of an umbrella.Published ReferencesLawall, D., "Asher Brown Durand: His Art and Art Theory in Relation to his Times," unpublished version Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1966, appendix, p. 171, no. 338, fig. 156 (as by Durand, 1858).

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, pp. 53-54, pl. 35.

Dubrulle, Elizabeth, Historical New Hampshire, Concord, New Hampshire Historical Society, November 2021, fig. 37 repr. (col.) p. 81.

Exhibition HistoryMontclair (NJ) Art Museum, A. B. Durand 1796-1886, 1971, no. 74, repr. (as Landscape, Artist Sketching, by Durand; cat. by D. Lawall).