White Mountains from Shelburne, NH

John Frederick Kensett was a well-known landscape painter of the Hudson River School, a group of American naturalist painters, as well as a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a member of the National Academy of Design. He was acclaimed for his images of the picturesque mountains and calm waters of upstate New York and New England and for employing invisibly soft brushstrokes to render his signature luminous pale light. In this painting of New Hampshire?s White Mountains, Kensett presents a lake hued by the golden foliage reflected on its surface and a central mountain apex viewed in the distance through an atmospheric haze. Evoking the awe of nature, this scene references the philosophies of the sublime popular in 19th-century American landscape painting. Kensett returned to this subject often, and images of the White Mountains helped to popularize the area, making it a favored New England destination.