Jonathan Sturges

American, 1802 - 1874

Explore Selected Works

A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.
John Frederick Kensett, Beach at Beverly, c. 1869/1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1978.6.5

Beach at Beverly

John Frederick Kensett · c. 1869/1872 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1978.6.5

Cool light filters through a thick, verdant forest in this vertical landscape painting. Most of the trees have high canopies with celery, matcha, and olive-green leaves. Moss carpets the trunks of five trees looming over us from across a narrow brook. Dead, sienna-brown tree limbs with sharp, broken branches lie scattered in the dense vegetation on the forest floor. The trees and undergrowth recede into the distance where a gap reveals a glimpse of a blue-gray mountain silhouetted against a milky sky. The artist signed the lower right, “ABD.”
Asher Brown Durand, Forest in the Morning Light, c. 1855, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1978.6.2

Forest in the Morning Light

Asher Brown Durand · c. 1855 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1978.6.2

We look across a dark, aquamarine-blue body of water at a bulky, stony outcropping to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition, and the sky above is pale blue, lightening to almost white along the horizon. Close to us, gentle waves break over rocks and boulders along the beach. The face of the rocky outcropping to our right rises vertically from the water and is tan and caramel brown, with some dark green vegetation growing in its crevasses. At its foot, down by the water, a lone fisherman with a pole stands on a rock casting his line. He wears a red shirt and brown pants, and is tiny in scale next to the rock formation. Farther in the distance, to our left along the horizon, a spring-green spit of land extends into the water. White boats with full sails are visible in the distance. One boat is silhouetted against a far, sunbathed shore.
John Frederick Kensett, Beacon Rock, Newport Harbor, 1857, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1953.1.1

Beacon Rock, Newport Harbor

John Frederick Kensett · 1857 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1953.1.1

We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”
Thomas Cole, A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch), 1839, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1967.8.1

A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch)

Thomas Cole · 1839 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1967.8.1

Francis William Edmonds, The Bashful Cousin, c. 1841-1842, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1978.6.4

The Bashful Cousin

Francis William Edmonds · c. 1841-1842 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1978.6.4

John William Casilear, View on Lake George, 1857, oil on canvas, Gift of Frederick Sturges, Jr., 1978.6.1

View on Lake George

John William Casilear · 1857 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1978.6.1

Gilbert Stuart, Dr. William Hartigan (?), c. 1793, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1942.8.16

Dr. William Hartigan (?)

Gilbert Stuart · c. 1793 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.8.16

Bibliography

1856

  • "Our Private Collections, No. II." The Crayon 3 (February 1856: 57-58.

1874

  • The New York Times. 30 November 1874: 5 [obituary]

1973

  • Dickson, Joanne August. "Patronage of Nineteenth Century American Painters: Jonathan Sturges and His Associates." Typescript, 1973. NGA curatorial files.