TitleOn the Saco, North Conway
Artist
Aaron Draper Shattuck
(1832 - 1928)
Date1857
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 14 × 26 1/4 in.
Framed: 18 1/2 × 30 1/2 × 1 1/2 in.
SignedSigned lower right: "A.D. Shattuck/18[ ]"; lower center: "ADS 57"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of James A. Suydam, 1865
Object number1227-P
Label TextJohn I. H. Baur, the scholar who single-handedly rediscovered Suydam's works in 1950, initially attributed this painting by Aaron Draper Shattuck to Suydam. Although that attribution has since been reversed, the sympathy between the techniques of the two painters remains clear. Though over a decade Suydam's junior, Shattuck began exhibiting his White Mountain subjects at the National Academy's Annual Exhibitions at the same time that Suydam did, and the two were aligned in the eyes of one critic as part of a group of "young and little-known men" who showed great promise as landscape painters during the mid-1850s. Whereas Suydam moved decisively to the coast for subject matter around 1860, however, Shattuck continued to make the White Mountains his primary destination, permanently associating him with the region in the minds of collectors and critics alike.
1855-1857
