Title"Metempsychosis of the Pine"
Artist
William Trost Richards
(American, 1833 - 1905)
Date1854
MediumGraphite on buff illustration board
DimensionsSheet size: 15 3/16 × 12 1/4 in.
SignedSigned in graphite at lower center: "William T. Richards"
MarkingsBlindstamp at TL: "EXTRA SUPERFINE / LONDON BOARDS".
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of Mrs. William T. Brewster, daughter of the artist, 1952
Object number1982.2503
Label TextFew works by Richards of the 1850s have surfaced. His landscapes of the early part of the decade appear to have derived principally from literary sources or his imagination. In late 1853, the artist began work on a projected series of graphite drawings of “the most beautiful and characteristic Landscape descriptions of a number of American poets.” He planned to “select one poem of each poet, the most beautiful and characteristic . . . for illustration . . . .” Richards hoped the set would be engraved and form a volume of landscape poems titled “The Landscape Feeling of American Poets.” He anticipated publication in 1855 or 1856 by E. H. Butler & Company in Philadelphia, but no evidence exists that the volume ever appeared. Among the poets chosen were William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Alan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Bayard Taylor, whose work was the source of inspiration for the drawing in the National Academy’s collection. Inscribed at the lower right in the Academy’s drawing are the words: “I was a towering Pine,/Rooted upon a cape that overhung/The entrance to a mountain gorge/whereupon/The winter shadow of a peak was flung/Long after rise of sun./Bayard Taylor.” All the surviving examples are meticulously and minutely drawn in an oval format, and reflect the artist’s lifelong facility and mastery even at an early age at working on a very small scale. The series was modeled after the example of works by James M. W. Turner and Thomas Cole. Over the course of his career Richards would never stray far from the romantic landscape tradition, and would continue to view nature as a manifestation of god’s presence.
