River Landscape In Summer
Artist
William Mason Brown
(American, 1828-1898)
CultureAmerican
Date1856
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall, Frame: 35 3/4 x 28 3/4 in. (90.8 x 73 cm)
InscribedSigned and dated lower right: ;
W M Brown.;
Newark;
N.J. 1856
Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Waitzer, Alan and Susan Nordlinger, Mrs. Kathryn K. Porter, and Art Purchase Fund
Object number91.45
Not on view
DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting depicting a vertical landscape dominated by two trees in the foreground: a graceful elm at the right which balances a more overgrown, gnarled tree (possibly an oak) at the left. Sheep and cows graze by river's edge at the right while the eye is led through the trees to a panoramic view beyond of lakes, villages and hills. The sky is equally tranquil and casts a suffused golden glow.Label TextWilliam Mason Brown American (1828-1898) River Landscape in Summer, 1856 Oil on canvas Museum purchase with funds from the Accessions Fund and Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Waitzer, Alan and Susan Nordlinger, and Mrs. Kathryn K. Porter 91.45-46, respectively Brown's River Landscape in Summer and its companion, Summer Pastures (above right), celebrate the unspoiled beauty and tranquility of America's mid-nineteenth-century rural landscape -a principal aim of the Hudson River School painters. Thomas Cole set the American fashion for pendant landscape paintings in the 1830s, and the convention was commonplace by mid-century. Many of these works were conceived as allegorical complements. For example, contrasting seasons or times of day might, by extension, reflect contrasting natural or emotional states. Though both of Brown's landscapes depict summer scenes, they may represent differing states of nature: the blasted tree trunk and towering, vine-tangled oaks in River Landscape in Summer may symbolize wildness or "untamed nature," while the fences and placid pastureland of Summer Pastures may signal that nature has been tamed by civilization. ProvenancePrivate collection, Fla., until 1991; Richard York Gallery, New York, 1991; The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Waitzer, Alan and Susan Nordlinger, Mrs. Kathryn K. Porter, and Art Purchase Fund, 1991. Exhibition History"Treasures for the Community: The Chrysler Collects, 1989-1996," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., October 25, 1996 - February 16, 1997. "Reopening of the Joan P. Brock Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Opening in March of 2008. Published ReferencesFranklin Kelly, "American landscape pairs of the 1850's," _The Magazine Antiques_ 146, no. 5 (November 1994): 654-655. Richard York Gallery, _An American Gallery_ 6 (New York: Richard York Gallery, 1990), 5a. Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 68-69, no. 35. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6
1914
Pair/Pair