NGA | John Wilmerding Collection

John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872), An Ilex Tree on Lake Albano, Italy, 1846, oil on canvas, John Wilmerding Collection

Although Kensett is best known for his American landscapes, he also created a number of important works while residing in Europe from 1840 to 1847. This painting is one of a series of plein-air or outdoor oil sketches Kensett made during a tour of sites south and west of Rome during the summer of 1846. Such works were never intended for exhibition, but later in the century were made more widely available at memorial exhibitions like the one held for Kensett in 1873 at the National Academy of Design in New York, where An Ilex Tree on Lake Albano, Italy, was shown publicly for the first time.