Study of a Ground Plant in Kauterskill Clove

Aaron Draper Shattuck

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 65.280.1). The young artist may not have known the identity of the plants in these studies, but his earnest description on a minute scale makes it possible to identify the ground plant as swamp saxifrage.

Artist

Aaron Draper Shattuck

Date

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