Moonlight on Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire

William Trost Richards

1873 · Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on gray-green wove paper · The American Wing

This watercolor is one of scores that Richards painted for the Reverend Elias Magoon, a collector and writer on American scenery. In 1880, Magoon donated many of them to the Metropolitan Museum to create a Richards Gallery on the model of the Turner Gallery in London. Richards, a native of Philadelphia and a disciple of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement in the 1860s, painted the watercolor equivalents of Hudson River School oil landscapes of scenery ranging from the English and Irish coasts to the Atlantic shoreline from Massachusetts to New Jersey, and from the hills of southern Pennsylvania to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Magoon's home state. The artist, the cleric, and their wives vacationed together in the White Mountains in the summer before this watercolor was painted.

Artist

William Trost Richards

Date

1873

Medium

Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on gray-green wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of The Reverend E. L. Magoon, D.D., 1880