TitleWandering Thoughts
Artist
George Henry Boughton
(American, 1833 - 1905)
Date1865
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 16 1/4 × 13 1/4 in.
Framed: 21 1/2 × 18 1/2 × 1 3/8 in.
SignedSigned lower left: "G. H. Boughton"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of James A. Suydam, 1865
Object number139-P
Label TextThis painting was among the first of expatriate George Henry Boughton's genre scenes depicting American colonial life-the subject for which he would become best known-and among last that Suydam acquired before his death. This portrayal of a chaste young Puritan contemplating a flower is made more haunting by the ghostly contours of other figures around her that the artist appears to have painted out, but whose presence in the woman's thoughts is suggested by the cut flower's short-lived beauty. Painted at the conclusion of the Civil War, Wandering Thoughts reflects wistfully on a simpler time in American history.
