Study of a Fern

Aaron Draper Shattuck

ca. 1856 · Graphite on white-wove paper · The American Wing

In the mid-1850s, many of the Hudson River School painters, encouraged by their leader, Asher B. Durand, fell under the spell of the English critic John Ruskin. Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” set a new standard of naturalism based not on the stagelike compositional strategies of the classical landscape, but on the fastidious pictorial replication of nature’s details. Studies like this example have their counterpart in those of other American Ruskinians such as William Trost Richards and are among Shattuck’s most attractive works (see also 65.280.2).

Artist

Aaron Draper Shattuck

Date

ca. 1856

Medium

Graphite on white-wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Emma Avery Welcher and Amy Ogden Welcher, 1965