John Frederick Kensett Art

Monogramed and dated lower right: JF.K. / ‘64.

John Frederick Kensett White House and Trees, circa 1853 Oil and gouache on paper 6 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches Provenance: Estate of Vincent Colyer (1824 - 1888) By descent Paul Magriel Collection Private Collection, Long Island Exhibited: New York, The Finch College Museum of Art; Southampton, New York, The Parrish Art Museum; New Orleans, Louisiana, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art; Norfolk, Virginia, Norfolk Museum of Art; Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair Art Museum; New London, Connecticut, Lyman Allyn Museum; Manchester, New Hampshire, The Currier Gallery of Art; Providence, Rhode Island, Rhode Island School of Design; Youngstown, Ohio, The Butler Institute of American Art, American Drawings (Benjamin West to the present) from the Paul Magriel Collection, June 1961 - December 1962. Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, April 14 - May 15, 1963. Boston International Fine Art Show at the Cyclorama, Lincoln Glenn, October 19 - 23, 2022. In the 1850s through 1860, John Frederick Kensett, painted a series of at least five landscapes of the "Shrewsbury River" (now the Navesink River) along the New Jersey shore. Art historians have described Kensett’s paintings of the river as having evolved from a trip in the fall of 1853 at the invitation of Kensett's friend, author and lecturer George Curtis. However, letters viewable at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website make it clear that Kensett had become acquainted with the area over a year earlier, most likely in connection with fellow artist and friend Thomas Prichard Rossiter. Kensett and Rossiter had been friends since at least the 1830s. As aspiring artists, they had traveled to Europe together in the 1840s. In 1851 Rossiter married Anna Ehrick Parmly, then in her early 20s, and Kensett attended the wedding. Anna was one of four daughters of Eleazer and Anna Maria Parmly. Eleazer, one of the major figures in American dentistry history, was a wealthy and accomplished member of New York society. When not in the city, the Parmly family gathered at Bingham Place, a sprawling estate on 275 pastoral acres spanning the peninsula between the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers along the New Jersey shore. The Bingham Place estate encompassed much of what is now Rumson, then known as Oceanic, N.J. It was a wide-open landscape of ocean views, orchards, lawns, and cattle-dotted pastures. There the Parmlys opened their doors to family, friends, and the summer breeze. Rossiter, newly-married into the Parmly family, was likely the reason that Kensett paid a social visit to Bingham Place in the summer of 1852. On July 11, 1852, having reluctantly departed, Kensett wrote Rossiter who was still at Bingham Place: New York to me now is that of a deserted place…marking a dismal contrast to the green lawns at Bingham Place. I saw the receding shores of Shrewsbury & the line of dust which marked your homeward course & finally the last glimpse of the Locust trees that shade the pleasant mansion & happy inmates at Bingham with any thing but a joyous spirit. A major figure in the American luminist tradition and one of the most renowned painters of the Civil War era, John Frederick Kensett was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1816. He was the son of Thomas Kensett, a British immigrant engraver, and it was in his father's New Haven firm that Kensett first learned to draw. After mastering the rudiments of the graphic arts, he worked as an engraver in print shops in New Haven, Albany, and New York throughout the 1830's. During this period, he began to paint on his own, encouraged by a friend and fellow artist, John W. Casilear. In 1838, he made his first submission, a landscape, to the annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design. Desirous of continuing his training, Kensett traveled to Europe in 1840. For the next seven years, often in the company of artists such as Casilear and Asher B...

JOHN FREDERICK KENSETT (1816-1872) Woodland Waterfall Oil on canvas 14 x 12 inches Signed lower right

John Frederick Kensett (1816 - 1872) Portrait of an Italian Fencer, circa 1845-47 Watercolor on wove paper 13 1/8 x 8 1/8 inches Signed with initials and inscribed lower right "J.F.K. Rome" From October 1845 through the spring of 1847, Kensett lived in Rome. He attended classes where he sketched from live models, and he sketched in the countryside outside Rome and around Florence, Perugia, and Venice, places he visited with his artist friends. He fulfilled commissions for paintings from Americans in Italy, and by 1847 his career was well established. Son of an English immigrant engraver, John Kensett lacked enthusiasm for that medium and became one of the most accomplished painters of the second generation of Hudson River School painters. His reputation is for Luminism, careful depiction of light, weather, and atmosphere as they affect color and texture of natural forms. He was particularly influenced by the painting of Asher Durand in that he focused on realism and detail rather than the highly dramatic views associated with Thomas Cole. Going to the western United States in the mid 1850s and the 1860s, he was the first of the Hudson River School painters to explore and paint the West. Kensett was born and raised in Cheshire, Connecticut, and learned his engraving from his father, Thomas Kensett with whom he worked in New Haven, Connecticut until 1829. He continued working until 1840 as an engraver of labels, banknotes and maps and was employed part of that time by the American Bank Note Company in New York City. There he met Thomas Rossiter, John Casilear, and other artists who urged him to pursue painting. In 1840, he and Rossiter, Asher Durand, and Casilear went to Europe where Kensett stayed for seven years and supported himself by doing engraving but became accomplished in landscape painting. Having sent canvases of Italian landscapes back to New York, he had a reputation for skillful painting that preceded him. When he returned to New York City in 1847, he was an "instant success" and very sought after by collectors. Two of his Italian landscapes had already been purchased by the American Art Union. By 1849, he was a full member of the National Academy of Design and was generally popular among his peers. His studio was a gathering place with travelers stopping by to see his canvases and to identify "precise locations in the Catskills or Newport or New England in the oil sketches and drawings that covered his walls." (Zellman 170). For the women, he was a popular bachelor, "romantic looking with high forehead and sensitive expression." (Samuels 262) He was also sought after by many organizations. Among his activities were serving on the committee to oversee the decoration of the United States Capitol in Washington DC, and becoming one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. An inveterate traveler, Kensett spent summers on painting excursions away from New York City. One of these trips was a special painting excursion with fifteen other artists sponsored by the B & O Railroad from Baltimore, Maryland to Wheeling, West Virginia. Unlike many of the Hudson River painters...

Monogrammed and dated lower right: JF. K. 63

Leading Hudson River School Painter Famous for New England Views.

Leading Hudson River School Painter Famous for New England Views