Lake of the Mountains

Born in Philadelphia in 1791, Thomas Doughty was listed as a painter in the city directory by 1816. He was probably mostly self-taught; he copied European landscape pictures and made sketching trips to record details for his paintings. Doughty later came to be known as a founder of the American landscape tradition, and his paintings were recognized for their realism—he recorded some of his works as being “from nature,” and others as “from recollection” or “composition[s].”