Gathering Storm on Long Island Sound

John Frederick Kensett

1872 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

The simplicity of line, form and arrangement that marks Kensett's late coastal landscapes lends to most of them an appealing repose. Here the mood shifts to subtle tension, in the dialogue between the spiny limbs of the vigilant pines and the enclosing sky. Kensett was a master in the expressive, if understated, use of trees. In this painting, their iconic, even anthropomorphic, qualities, silhouetted against the brooding firmament, evoke Rembrandt's etching, "The Three Trees," a classic of western landscape imagery that Kensett would have known well.

Artist

John Frederick Kensett

Date

1872

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Thomas Kensett, 1874