William Trost Richards (1833-1905)

Nantucket Shore

Details

William Trost Richards (1833-1905)
Nantucket Shore
signed and dated 'Wm T. Richards. 1865.' (lower center)
oil on panel
10 ¾ in. x 20 in. (27.3 x 50.8 cm.)
Painted in 1865.

Provenance

John D. Rockefeller III, New York, by 1973.
Godel & Co., Inc., New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1997.

Exhibited

Brooklyn, New York, The Brooklyn Museum; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, William Trost Richards: American Landscape and Marine Painter, June 20-October 21, 1973, p. 64, no. 38.
Charleston, South Carolina, Gibbes Museum of Art; Alexandria, Louisiana, Alexandria Museum of Art; Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville Museum of Art; Lakeland, Florida, Polk Museum of Art, Painting a Nation: Hudson River School Landscapes from the Higdon Collection, December 2, 2016-May 19, 2018, pp. 14-15, 36, pl. 15, illustrated.

Brought to you by

William Haydock

whaydock@christies.com 212-636-2140

Lot Essay

William Trost Richards began sketching and painting shorelines between New Jersey and New England in the 1860s. He spent the summer of 1865 on the island of Nantucket and produced the present panoramic view of the coastline. As demonstrated by this example, nineteenth-century art critic George William Sheldon described Richards' Nantucket paintings as "remarkable works--remarkable for their loving and elaborate reproduction of surf, breaker, wave, and sand." (American Painters, New York, 1879, p. 62)

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