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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming John F. Kensett catalogue raisonné being prepared under the direction of Dr. John Driscoll.
Even at the outset of his career, John Frederick Kensett achieved considerable acclaim for his depictions of the American landscape. After seven years of training abroad, Kensett returned to America in 1847 and immediately embarked on a career grounded in the close study of nature. Writing in 1867, the nineteenth-century historian Henry Tuckerman made note of his early success: "He commenced a series of careful studies of our mountain, lake, forest, and coastal landscape; and in his delineation of rocks, trees, and water, attained a wide and permanent celebrity. Year after year he studiously explored and faithfully painted the mountains of New England and New York, the lakes and rivers of the Middle States, and the Eastern sea-coast, selecting with much judgement or combining with rare tact the most characteristic features and phases of each. Many of these landscapes, patiently elaborated as they were from studies made from nature, at once gained the artist numerous admirers and liberal patrons." (Book of the Artists: American Artist Life, New York, 1967 ed., p. 511)
Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode Island is the earliest known painting from an important body of work created by Kensett from the mid-1850s to the early-1860s depicting views of Easton Bay in Newport, Rhode Island, and the rocky cliffs that today mark the start of the famous Cliff Walk. The two other known versions of this subject are Newport Coast (Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame) and Forty Steps, Newport, Rhode Island (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts). These Newport works are pivotal in the development of Kensett's painting style demonstrating a transition from the traditional Hudson River School aesthetic to a more modern Luminist treatment of light and form. Kensett "became well known for his ability to endow a scene with his own tranquil, poetic feeling. [He] shifted from the more conventional anecdotal picturesque mode derived from the tradition of Cole and Durand, to the quiet openness, light, and simplification of form, color, and composition that is now recognized as his mature style and associated with the phenomenon of 'luminism.'" (J. Driscoll, "From Burin to Brush," John Frederick Kensett: An American Master, exhibition catalogue, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 99) Newport would prove to be a significant locale where Kensett could explore the distinct landscape of coastal New England, and by the mid-1850s when Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode was painted, his adoption of these new aesthetic principles was becoming fully realized.
In Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode Island there is a freshness to the treatment of the composition that clearly indicates the spontaneous yet highly finished manner in which Kensett executed the painting directly from nature. Along a diagonal line, waves gently roll into the shore leading the viewer into the scene, first settling on the hunter and his dog before proceeding along the imposing coastline. The horizon is a diffusion of light that reveals a few distant ships at full sail and cumulus clouds tinged with subtle traces of pink. This figure and his dog, along with the sailboats dotted along the horizon, further underscore this complexity of the scene as well as Kensett's choices to juxtapose man and nature.
Even at the outset of his career, John Frederick Kensett achieved considerable acclaim for his depictions of the American landscape. After seven years of training abroad, Kensett returned to America in 1847 and immediately embarked on a career grounded in the close study of nature. Writing in 1867, the nineteenth-century historian Henry Tuckerman made note of his early success: "He commenced a series of careful studies of our mountain, lake, forest, and coastal landscape; and in his delineation of rocks, trees, and water, attained a wide and permanent celebrity. Year after year he studiously explored and faithfully painted the mountains of New England and New York, the lakes and rivers of the Middle States, and the Eastern sea-coast, selecting with much judgement or combining with rare tact the most characteristic features and phases of each. Many of these landscapes, patiently elaborated as they were from studies made from nature, at once gained the artist numerous admirers and liberal patrons." (Book of the Artists: American Artist Life, New York, 1967 ed., p. 511)
Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode Island is the earliest known painting from an important body of work created by Kensett from the mid-1850s to the early-1860s depicting views of Easton Bay in Newport, Rhode Island, and the rocky cliffs that today mark the start of the famous Cliff Walk. The two other known versions of this subject are Newport Coast (Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame) and Forty Steps, Newport, Rhode Island (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts). These Newport works are pivotal in the development of Kensett's painting style demonstrating a transition from the traditional Hudson River School aesthetic to a more modern Luminist treatment of light and form. Kensett "became well known for his ability to endow a scene with his own tranquil, poetic feeling. [He] shifted from the more conventional anecdotal picturesque mode derived from the tradition of Cole and Durand, to the quiet openness, light, and simplification of form, color, and composition that is now recognized as his mature style and associated with the phenomenon of 'luminism.'" (J. Driscoll, "From Burin to Brush," John Frederick Kensett: An American Master, exhibition catalogue, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1985, p. 99) Newport would prove to be a significant locale where Kensett could explore the distinct landscape of coastal New England, and by the mid-1850s when Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode was painted, his adoption of these new aesthetic principles was becoming fully realized.
In Duck Hunter, First Beach, Newport, Rhode Island there is a freshness to the treatment of the composition that clearly indicates the spontaneous yet highly finished manner in which Kensett executed the painting directly from nature. Along a diagonal line, waves gently roll into the shore leading the viewer into the scene, first settling on the hunter and his dog before proceeding along the imposing coastline. The horizon is a diffusion of light that reveals a few distant ships at full sail and cumulus clouds tinged with subtle traces of pink. This figure and his dog, along with the sailboats dotted along the horizon, further underscore this complexity of the scene as well as Kensett's choices to juxtapose man and nature.