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Harbor Landscape

Thomas Doughty

American Art

Thomas Doughty was one of the first American artists to devote himself solely to landscape painting. Landscape after Ruisdael is based on a painting by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jacob van Ruisdael that Doughty copied during a visit to the Louvre in Paris. Copying played an important educational role for this self-trained artist.

His earlier Harbor Landscape presents a pleasing, albeit formulaic, vista of a calm lake framed by trees in the foreground. Rather than depicting any specific American locale, the painting reflects Doughty’s dependence on drawing manuals and European landscape traditions as models for his work.
MEDIUM Oil on canvas
DATES 1834
DIMENSIONS 26 1/4 x 35 15/16 in. (66.6 x 91.3 cm)  (show scale)
SIGNATURE Signed lower right: "T. DOUGHTY / 1834"
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 14.571
CREDIT LINE Caroline H. Polhemus Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Thomas Doughty (American, 1793-1856). Harbor Landscape, 1834. Oil on canvas, 26 1/4 x 35 15/16 in. (66.6 x 91.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Caroline H. Polhemus Fund, 14.571 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.14.571.jpg)
IMAGE overall, CUR.14.571.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2016
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