The Brook in the Woods

Worthington Whittredge

ca. 1885–86 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Whittredge, as a colleague of the second-generation Hudson River School artists John Frederick Kensett and Sanford R. Gifford, specialized in views of the Catskill Mountains, New England, and the American West. His later works, however, demonstrate his growing interest in the poetic landscapes of the French Barbizon painters as well as the evocative canvases of George Inness, who worked in Montclair, New Jersey, not far from the home Whittredge occupied in Summit from 1880 until his death in 1910. "The Brook in the Woods" is a fine example of his Barbizon-inspired mode. Thickly painted and coloristically subtle, it evokes a silent, mossy forest interior, one of the artist’s favorite subjects.

Artist

Worthington Whittredge

Date

ca. 1885–86

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Maurice J. Cotter, in memory of his mother, Muriel Josephine Cotter (1902–2003), 2003