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Artist or Maker: John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872)

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Provenance: Alexander Gallery, New York.
Private collection, New York.

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Literature: Berry-Hill Galleries, American Painting XI, New York, 2003, pp. 32-3, illustrated.

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Notes: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION

The present painting, New England Coastal View, most likely depicts the coastline of Newport, Rhode Island, where John Frederick Kensett executed some of his most poignant works of the 1860s. The present work represents a significant moment in Kensett's evolution as an artist, marking the shift from his Hudson River School aesthetic of meticulous scenes depicting mountain and forest interiors to more atmospheric landscapes capturing nature's sublimity.

John Wilmerding writes that Kensett's "coastal scenes of Newport are composed like the river views, but with a crispness and clarity unparalleled in his other work. With sharp outlined, thinly applied paint, and subtle changes of color he achieves an expansive space flooded with light...Largely by means of curving and diagonal lines Kensett moves the eye back along the crests of waves or the edge of a beach to almost imperceptible shore or distant horizon. There is a romantic confrontation with nature in the open. Human figures seldom appear in Kensett's paintings, and usually only to reinforce man's insignificance before nature's lonely permanence." (American Marine Painting, New York, 1987 ed., pp. 53-5) Emphasizing nature's immense presence in New England Coastal View, Kensett has dotted white sails along the horizon set against an immeasurable sea and sky and placed diminutive fisherman in the middleground who appear insignificant in relation to the towering rocks surrounding them.

While embodying the main principles of Kensett's ideology, New England Coastal View also demonstrates the artist's superb attention to detail. A contemporary critic commented, "Mr. Kensett has painted some of the most exquisite pictures that illustrate our art. Never invoking the assistance of a great or sensational subject, but sedulously seeking for the simplest material, he has by his skill and feeling as a painter, taught us the beauty and poetry of subjects that have been called meager and devoid of interest." (as quoted in H. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists: American Artist Life, New York, 1967 ed., p. 512)

Wilmerding further comments that Kensett's "best work illustrates a high degree of expressive economy and an uncluttered poignance. There is a decided modernity in his simple, large areas of form and color. In these paintings, Kensett employed his favored composition of a large rock mass to one side balanced by an almost empty expanse of sky and water on the other. These broad slabs and the breaking waves lead the eye into the middleground where a closer look sometimes exposes small figures on the rocks, and ultimately into the distance where a sailboat sails down the lee of the shore." (American Marine Painting, p. 55) New England Coastal View is a contemplative scene that masterfully demonstrates Kensett's transition into his mature style characterized by Luminism.

This painting will be included in the forthcoming John F. Kensett catalogue raisonné being prepared under the direction of Dr. John Driscoll.