TitlePennsylvania Cornfields
Artist
William Trost Richards
(American, 1833 - 1905)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 16 × 26 in.
Framed: 19 5/8 × 29 3/4 × 1 7/8 in.
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of Mrs. William T. Brewster, daughter of the artist, 1952
Object number1528-P
Label TextIn 1884, Richards traded his house in Germantown, Pennsylvania for the Oldmixon Farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The 140 acre property provided a living for Richards’ eldest daughter Eleanor and her husband William Price, who established a poultry business. The move helped renew the artist’s interest in landscape painting, and inspired him to paint the harvest fields, wooded hills and winding streams of the Brandywine region. His plein air studies served as the basis for a group of monumental landscapes. The studies were painted on artist board or wooden panels, which were cut to consistent sizes for the convenience of transport on a springboard wagon and use in the field. In Chester County, Richards favored a broad and direct manner of working in keeping with the aesthetic of the French Barbizon School, which included among its leaders Theodore Rousseau and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Richards’ Chester County interlude ended in 1890, following a disastrous fire. As a result, Richards and his wife decided to settle permanently in the Newport area.
