Interior of Woods with Small Stream (from Cropsey Album)

William Trost Richards

1854 · Graphite on off-white wove paper · The American Wing

This charming compositional study was probably intended as an illustration for a publication—never realized—of the work of American poets, including Longfellow, Whittier, and Poe. Despite the intimacy and literary redolence of this scene, it lacks the detailed foliage that would characterize Richards’s later works of this kind, such as “The Spring” (1993.527). Indeed, its character betrays the Germanic influence of the immigrant painter Paul Weber, with whom Richards studied a few years earlier in his native Philadelphia.

Artist

William Trost Richards

Date

1854

Medium

Graphite on off-white wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, Charles and Anita Blatt Gift, 1970