Lake of the Mountains
Thomas Doughty (1829)
What is authenticity?
Among the earliest landscapes in the Museums’ collection, Lake of the Mountains shows Doughty at his most ambitious and accomplished. The subject is a calm wilderness in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, featuring a placid lake and a mountain that resembles Mount Washington—Mount Chocorua’s companion peak—seen through the darkness of the quiet woods. The “authenticity” of the scene is bolstered by its inclusion of two Native American figures, who are dwarfed by the wilderness around them.
\ Artist
Thomas Doughty
American
Born:
1793
Died:
1856
Death place:
New York City, New York
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].”
\ About
Medium
Oil on canvas
Credit
Museum purchase, Martha Faull Lane Bequest Fund and the Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Income Fund