Study, North Conway, New Hampshire
David Johnson (American, 1827–1908)
1851
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 63.8 x 74.3 x 7 cm (25 1/8 x 29 1/4 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 43.2 x 53.3 cm (17 x 21 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Johnson’s devotion to carefully observing nature is evident in his detailed rendering of a riverbed. Located in a village that provided a popular jumping-off point for tourists visiting the White Mountains, this untamed site features a haphazard arrangement of angled boulders, slippery moss, splintered tree branches, and dense undergrowth. Contemporary travel guidebooks often cautioned against the physical challenges—and the potential for injury—encountered by venturing into such inner recesses of the woods; one warned that “wild forest-clambering” could be akin to “fighting a phalanx of porcupines.”
