Existing comment:
John Frederick Kensett
Coast of Massachusetts, near Manchester, 1860
A frequent summer traveler to the Massachusetts shore, Kensett may have sketched this scene while visiting Nahant in 1859. When committing the New England view to oil, however, he incorporated the conventions of earlier European landscape printing learned during his extensive travels in England, France, and Italy the previous decade. Large trees frame the far-off vista, and little passages of white pigment -- from the weathered boulder in the foreground to the white sails in the distance -- draw the eye more deeply into the expanse beyond the rocks. |