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The Birches of the Catskills
Worthington Whittredge (born Springfield, OH 1820-died Summit, NJ 1910)
ca. 1875
- Medium
- oil on canvas mounted on paperboard
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 13 1/4 x 7 3/4 in. (33.5 x 19.8 cm)
- Culture
- New York
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William Katzenbach
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Worthington Whittredge found it difficult to adjust to painting the New England landscape after almost ten years abroad. He described the forests as “a mass of decaying logs and tangled brush wood” that were completely different from the “well-ordered” European views he was used to. (The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge, 1942, reprinted in Janson, Worthington Whittredge, 1989) The broad brushstrokes of The Birches of the Catskills suggest that Whittredge painted the small canvas on the spot. The disordered view of tall trees, fallen branches, and undergrowth emphasizes the untamed quality that had initially unsettled the artist.
