John Frederick Kensett (American, 1816–1872)
Rocky Coast
INV-1458
John Frederick Kensett (American, 1816–1872)c. 1860
paintingamerican arts
Date
c. 1860
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
35.6 × 61 cm (14 × 24 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Brooks McCormick
Like the Impressionists, who emphasized light effects, painters of the Hudson River School focused on temporal conditions of the landscape to suggest specific atmospheres. In Rocky Coast, John Frederick Kensett depicted the shoreline on a hazy day, with calm water and gentle waves. The careful treatment of nature by the Hudson River School artists has been linked to the writings of Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote in Nature (1836): “Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all.” The horizon line of Rocky Coast illustrates this idea, as the uninterrupted water appears infinite, suggesting that the ocean continues beyond the vision of the viewer.
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