Provenance

William Wilson Corcoran

Corcoran, William W.

American, 1798 - 1888

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Two pale-skinned men in a marshy landscape look at a wide-eyed dog, which holds a dead duck in its mouth in this horizontal landscape painting. One man kneels facing our left in profile and holds one hand out toward the dog. The man has short, dark hair and a dark beard with no mustache. He wears a beige-colored jacket trimmed with red, dark brown pants, and knee-high brown boots. He holds a rifle by its barrel with his other hand so the stock rests on the ground in the lower right corner of the painting. Four dead ducks lie by his foot, where hobnails lining on the sole and heel gleam. The second man stands just behind and to the left of the kneeling fellow. The standing man is clean-shaven and wears a red, brimless, high-crowned cap on his dark hair. His jacket is golden brown, his pants are marine blue, and boots are pale brown. He loads or cleans the barrel of his rifle with a rod. He looks down at the dog, who looks intently at the kneeling man. The dog is mostly brown with long fur and white spots on its nose and down the front of its neck. The animal sits at attention with the bird’s wing clamped in its mouth. Tall marshy grasses and cattails grow around the men and dog, and around a narrow body of water in the near distance to the right. A larger body of water stretches to the horizon, which comes almost two-thirds of the way up the composition. The sky is streaked with pink along the horizon and blanketed with purple-tinged, gray clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting on the bottom edge, “W Ranney 1850.”
William Tylee Ranney, The Retrieve, 1850, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2014.79.29

The Retrieve

William Tylee Ranney · 1850 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.79.29

From a high vantage point, we look across hills, trees, and a body of water and into the deep distance in this horizontal landscape painting. A shed-like structure with an overhanging roof protecting an image of a woman holding a baby is near the left edge of the composition. In front of the structure, a person wearing a white head covering, red vest, white sleeves, and long blue skirt kneels on the dirt path, and a basket of flowers is near her knees. Two other people, all tiny in scale, stand nearby. One of them wears a brown cape, cassock, and hood, and the other wears a high-crowned hat, a red coat, gray pants, and holds a walking stick. Across the composition, a man sits and a woman stands, facing each other, on the far side of a boulder in the lower right quadrant of the painting. The man wears a burnt-orange jacket, slate-blue pants, a high-crowned hat, and holds a long staff. The woman has brown hair and wears a yellow dress over white sleeves and white lining across the neckline. They both have pale, peachy skin. A sailboat is reflected in the placid body of water that lies far below us, and a complex of buildings tops the hill on the opposite bank. The peanut-brown land flattens and ripples gently back to pale blue mountains lining the horizon, which comes just over halfway up this composition. White clouds pile up over the right side of the horizon, and a few thin clouds drift higher up. The upper corners of the canvas are darkened, suggesting that at one point this was displayed with an arched top. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had written the information on the face of rocks in the lower right corner: “C.P. CRANCH 1852.”
Christopher Pearse Cranch, Castle Gondolfo, Lake Albano, Italy, 1852, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2015.19.110

Castle Gondolfo, Lake Albano, Italy

Christopher Pearse Cranch · 1852 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.19.110

This painting shows a scene with people engaged in a sport or game. The people wear vibrant clothes in shades of brown, orange, yellow, pink, and green, embellished with feathers and silver jewelry. The people all have light brown skin and long dark hair, and many of them have feathers in their hair. All the people in the middle of the painting hold sticks with small nets at the end, and they all appear to be lunging towards a small ball on the ground. In the background is a dramatic landscape with tall purple mountains, green hills, and large pink-and-white clouds sweeping across the blue sky.
Seth Eastman, Ball Playing among the Sioux Indians, 1851, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2014.79.46

Ball Playing among the Sioux Indians

Seth Eastman · 1851 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.79.46

This painting shows a small stream surrounded by brown rocks and green foliage. Golden sunlight illuminates the scene, highlighting the vegetation, trees, hills, and sky in various shades of green, blue, and brown. The water of the stream is clear, showing the brown ground beneath while also reflecting some of the nearby greenery. The sliver of sky above the distant green mountain is bright blue, with a few wispy white clouds.
Paul Weber, Scene in the Catskills, 1858, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2014.136.108

Scene in the Catskills

Paul Weber · 1858 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.136.108

Honey-gold sunlight from low along the horizon to our left falls across the copper and bronze-colored canopies of trees that frame our view of a stone church with stained glass windows and ornate spires in this horizontal landscape painting. We look down onto the scene from a height, and from a distance. On a dirt path across the front of the picture, an armored man is carried on a red cloth-draped stretcher, which is supported over the shoulders of four men. The armored man has a black beard and hair, and his face is turned from us. The men carrying him wear togas in white, rose pink, slate blue, and mustard yellow. Three of them wear armored breastplates and helmets. A white horse draped with a gold, lattice-like blanket walks behind them. An empty saddle is strapped to its back, and the reigns rest around its neck behind the lowered head. A bit behind this grouping, to our left, another armored man holding a spear rides a brown horse, and, farther back along the path, a man holding a crooked staff and a woman stand near the base of a tall, narrow plinth. The plinth is backlit so ornate carving along the roof-like top creates a spiky silhouette. A sculpted person stands at the peak of the roof, a halo around the head. The area beyond the plinth is layered with trees and bushes extending into the distance, lit sage green by the setting sun. The path with the horses and men runs parallel to a ravine, so the grassy embankment closer to us is in deep shadow. At least two brown goats walk along in the shadows of the ravine near the white horse. Four more white goats, one with black spots, stand and lie near a tree that rises nearly the height of the painting along the right edge. The tree has rust-red leaves, and the trunk leans away from us, to our right. One massive branch has been shorn off, and the exposed wood is caramel brown against the darker, gnarled trunk. The church is beyond the path, to our right of center. Tall stained-glass windows, several stories high, are ablaze in red, orange, and topaz blue. Birds, painted with short strokes of black, flock around the church roofline. A procession led by a man wearing blue and red vestments and a tall, split cap emerges from the main, arched doorway. Another man wearing a brown robe stands near a sun dial between us and the procession coming from the church. The wide brim of that man’s hat is fastened at the front with a gold object. He lifts one hand and holds a long staff with a black knob at its center with his other. More people walk near the church, sit on a bench under a tree, and move through the landscape deep into the distance. All the people have light skin. Beyond the moss-green, grassy area around the path and church, a river winds under an arched bridge. A tan-colored building complex sits on a low hill to our left of center. Across the back of the scene, smokey purple and muted mauve-pink mountains line the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The vivid yellow sun is low on the horizon to our left. A few light gray clouds skim across the sky, which deepens from pale yellow along the horizon to light blue along the top of the painting. The artist signed and dated the work on a stone near the man next to the sundial: “T. Cole 1837.” He also signed the front face of the tall pedestal to our left with the same text, though it is difficult to make out.
Thomas Cole, The Return, 1837, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2014.79.12

The Return

Thomas Cole · 1837 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.79.12

Carved from creamy white marble, a nude woman stands next to a hip-high support, perhaps a low post. In this photograph, her body faces us, and she looks down to our right in profile. Her wavy hair is tucked behind her ear and drawn back in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her weight rests on her left leg, on our right, and her other knee is bent. Her left arm is angled in front of her body so her hand covers her groin. Her other hand, on our left, rests on the post. Chains hang from shackles encircling her wrists. The post is covered with a cloth that gathers around the top and spirals to the ground beneath her feet, the edge trimmed with tassels. A cross and medallion peek out from under the cloth near her hand. She stands on a circular base.
Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, model 1841-1843, carved 1846, Seravezza marble, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1873), 2014.79.37

The Greek Slave

Hiram Powers · model 1841-1843, carved 1846 · Seravezza marble ·  Accession ID  2014.79.37

A free-standing, white marble sculpture shows the head and upper chest of a woman whose face is covered by a light veil. In this photograph, the chest is squared toward us, and the woman looks down and to our right. The veil has vertical folds over her face but we can still make out the hollows of her eyes, her straight nose, and her small mouth. Her wavy hair is pulled loosely back into a bun at the back of her crown. The veil gathers on either side of her face and crosses over neck to drape over her chest. The sculpture curves down in a wide U from near her shoulders, and is supported on a white marble pedestal. The background behind the sculpture is pale gray in this photograph.
Italian 19th Century, Giuseppe Croff, Veiled Bust ("The Veiled Nun"), c. 1863, marble, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1873), 2014.136.265

Veiled Bust ("The Veiled Nun")

Italian 19th Century, Giuseppe Croff · c. 1863 · marble ·  Accession ID  2014.136.265

In this painting, three men are depicted in a rustic interior space. A man on the far left faces away from us, sitting on the ground and leaning against a wooden block or stool. He wears a gray hat and a brown vest, and a vivid blue blanket is wrapped around him. He is looking up at a man standing upright near the center of the painting. This man is holding a rifle, the bottom of which rests against the ground. This man has light skin with red cheeks, a long, straight nose, and a dark mustache and beard. His dark hair is hidden by a gray hat, and he wears a light gray coat over a darker gray tunic, with a bright red shirt poking out around his neck. He wears black pants with brown slippers and bright red socks. A white-and-brown dog sits next to his feet. The man on the right is kneeling, and gesturing towards a deer with sizable antlers that lays on the ground. This man has light skin, red cheeks, a light brown beard and mustache, and he looks up at the men across from him. He wears a brown jacket with tassels over a light blue shirt and has a bright red cloth wrapped around his waist over brown pants, as well as a red hat with a brown fur border. The room's walls are painted in shades of dark gray, brown, and yellow ochre, and various tools and leather saddles hang on them. The floor in front of the men is scattered with hunting-related items, such as metal tools and the bodies of small birds.
John Mix Stanley, The Trapper's Cabin, 1858, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2014.79.44

The Trapper's Cabin

John Mix Stanley · 1858 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.79.44

We look across a palm-tree lined river winding into the distance before a monumental, snow-covered mountain at the center of the composition in this horizontal landscape. The spit of land along the riverbank in the lower left corner is filled with lush vegetation, including waving ferns, vines, leafy trees, and palm trees. At the bottom center of the composition, along the shoreline, a boat with a pointed prow is occupied by three people wearing white pants. Two of the men are bare-chested and the third wears a red shirt. The boat is covered with a rounded, hut-like structure and tendrils of white paint, perhaps indicating smoke from a fire, waft up in front of the opening to the structure. The placid river widens beyond the boat and across from us, the distant shore is lined with white buildings with brown thatched roofs and a white church with two spires and a red tile roof. Trees around and beyond the buildings fill in the space before brown hills that eventually lead to the snowy peaks of the central mountain. The earthy moss and sage green and tawny brown of the vegetation and river closer to us fades to pale caramel and pinkish-tan in the hazy distance. A few birds fly across the pale blue sky to our left, and wisps of light gray clouds float in from our right. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower left corner: “Church 1854.”
Frederic Edwin Church, Tamaca Palms, 1854, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1869), 2014.79.11

Tamaca Palms

Frederic Edwin Church · 1854 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.79.11

Hiram Powers, Proserpine, model 1844, carved 1846 or later, marble, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1873), 2015.19.3807

Proserpine

Hiram Powers · model 1844, carved 1846 or later · marble ·  Accession ID  2015.19.3807