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Lot Essay
John Frederick Kensett was one of the most important landscape painters of the Hudson River School. Along with such notable contemporaries as Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, Kensett focused on the depiction of landscapes in upstate New York and New England, the principle subjects of his long career. Early on, he evinced a preference for American themes. While living in Europe in 1844, he wrote to his mother, Elizabeth, "I long to get among the scenery of my own country for it abounds with the picturesque, the grand and the beautiful--to revel among the striking scenes which a bountiful hand has spread over its wide-extended and almost boundless territory." (as quoted in J.P. Driscoll, "From Burin to Brush: The Development of a Painter", John Frederick Kensett: An American Master, New York, 1985, p. 79)
Kensett would often compose paintings based on field sketches, such as the drawings completed on a summer 1850 trip to the White Mountains with fellow artists Benjamin Champney and John William Casilear.
In the present work, which may have been inspired in part by this sketching trip, the artist depicts a group of five Native Americans on a rocky outcropping. Behind the group is a series of waterfalls from which the resulting stream runs directly through the composition, bisecting the forest and cascading into the foreground. Kensett has composed the scene with a painterly style, rendering elements such as the waterfall and figures with a fluid gracefulness, set againt a rugged landscape of trees and rocks.
Kensett has painted a pervasive atmospheric light throughout the composition that unifies the pictorial elements and creates a sense of spatial recession. Waterfall in the Woods with Indians clearly demonstrates Kensett's preoccupation with light and atmosphere.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming John F. Kensett catalogue raisonné being prepared under the direction of Dr. John Driscoll.
Kensett would often compose paintings based on field sketches, such as the drawings completed on a summer 1850 trip to the White Mountains with fellow artists Benjamin Champney and John William Casilear.
In the present work, which may have been inspired in part by this sketching trip, the artist depicts a group of five Native Americans on a rocky outcropping. Behind the group is a series of waterfalls from which the resulting stream runs directly through the composition, bisecting the forest and cascading into the foreground. Kensett has composed the scene with a painterly style, rendering elements such as the waterfall and figures with a fluid gracefulness, set againt a rugged landscape of trees and rocks.
Kensett has painted a pervasive atmospheric light throughout the composition that unifies the pictorial elements and creates a sense of spatial recession. Waterfall in the Woods with Indians clearly demonstrates Kensett's preoccupation with light and atmosphere.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming John F. Kensett catalogue raisonné being prepared under the direction of Dr. John Driscoll.