Landscape

Thomas Doughty was capable of poetic statements that could have only come from a deep love of nature. This painting is typical of his unassuming art: sublimity reduced to a minor note by the almost tentative character of the composition; the stock figure of the Romantic wanderer dwarfed by the wilderness and fierceness of the storm. Landscape falls within the stylistic range of what has been described as the middle period of Doughty’s development, from 1828 to 1838. The year of its creation was also one of Doughty’s most productive; he exhibited nineteen canvases at the Boston Athenaeum in 1829 and seventeen at the Athenaeum the following year.