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Worthington Whittredge
View from the Hawk's Nest, Western Virginia, Morning, 1846
This picturesque vista is among the earliest landscapes painted by Worthington Whittredge, who became associated with the Hudson River school movement. In 1845, the Ohio-born painter journeyed to western Virginia (now West Virginia) where he sketched the breathtaking view from Hawk's Nest, a promontory overlooking the New River Gorge. From his preliminary on-site study (displayed nearby), he completed this larger, more detailed canvas in his studio. It includes additional narrative elements: a hunter and his dog at center, a decaying tree across the foreground, and a distant column of smoke suggesting habitation at the river's edge.
In the following decade, Whittredge studied in Dusseldorf, Germany, and traveled to Italy alongside American landscapists Sanford Gifford, Albert Bierstadt, and Robert Scott Duncanson. After establishing a New York City studio in 1859, he enjoyed a long, prolific career producing images that range from intimate woodland interiors to vast panoramas of the western frontier. |