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Lot Essay
Washington Allston was born in 1779 in South Carolina, where he attended school before studying at Harvard University. In 1801, Allston travelled to Europe, spending much of the next twenty years abroad, primarily staying in Italy. In 1818, he permanently settled in Massachusetts, working and exhibiting there until his death in 1843.
Allston's works "project a sense and mood of reverie. Suffused with the glow of a setting sun [as in the present work], or bathed in moonlight, they seem remembrances of things past—of dreams, of visions, of art. His compositions achieve a timelessness..." (Views and Visions: American Landscape before 1830, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 71) Indeed, the present work is no exception, highlighted by a glowing sky and classical nature that characterizes the best of Allston's compositions.
Allston's works "project a sense and mood of reverie. Suffused with the glow of a setting sun [as in the present work], or bathed in moonlight, they seem remembrances of things past—of dreams, of visions, of art. His compositions achieve a timelessness..." (Views and Visions: American Landscape before 1830, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 71) Indeed, the present work is no exception, highlighted by a glowing sky and classical nature that characterizes the best of Allston's compositions.