Landscape and Lagoon, New Rochelle

David Johnson

1884 · Graphite and white chalk heightening on tan wove paper · The American Wing

Landscape and Lagoon, New Rochelle — David Johnson

The often sublime, expansive topography characteristic of Johnson’s work as a Hudson River School painter was replaced late in his career by compositions of flat terrain, often, as in this drawing, dominated by a few large trees bordering a body of water in the foreground and admitting only a glimpse of a distant prospect at either side. This drawing was undoubtedly the model for the Museum’s painting “Bayside, New Rochelle, New York” (15.30.65). The site is characteristic of those that Johnson--following French Barbizon taste--preferred as subjects in his later career: domesticated, undramatic, and riparian. This image reflects the quiet, genteel refuge New Rochelle had been, before the arrival of an amusement park in the mid-1880s, which drew thousands of visitors from the metropolitan area each summer.

Artist
David Johnson
Date
1884
Medium
Graphite and white chalk heightening on tan wove paper
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Credit line
John Osgood and Elizabeth Amis Cameron Blanchard Memorial Fund, 1980

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