Haymaking

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TitleHaymaking

Artist Dwight William Tryon (1849 - 1925)

Datec. 1881-1882

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 24 × 35 7/8 in. Framed: 38 5/8 × 50 3/4 × 3 1/2 in.

SignedSigned at lower left: "D. W. TRYON. / EAST-CHESTER NY"

SubmissionNA diploma presentation, January 8, 1892

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY

Object number1266-P

Label TextThe farm and peasant scenes which Tryon executed in France under the influence of Barbizon painters preoccupied him during his first two summers back in the United States following study abroad. The works painted in 1881 and 1882 at Eastchester are generally seen as early attempts of the artist to "find himself" in a remote New York village which never wholly appealed to him. By 1883, he had left Eastchester for his beloved Massachusetts shore.
With the exceptions of the brushy trees and scratchy foreground, "Haymaking" is firmly structured by slick, squared-off brushstrokes. Although the anecdotal figural element would soon disappear from Tryon's work, other aspects of the composition look forward to his better known tonalist landscapes. The foreground, for example, is left deep and open, and the flat forms of the middleground are composed of interlocking geometric shapes kept parallel to the picture plane.
Tryon showed three landscapes in the Society of American Artists exhibition of 1883; one, shown under the title "Haymaking, East Chester, N.Y." is probably the painting now in the Academy collection. The reviewer for the New York Daily Tribune commented on the group of Tryon's works in the 1883 Society exhibition, noting that they looked a bit like the landscapes of Abbott Thayer. He concluded with the insightful comment, "There is a quality which appears to be indecision in this work, as though the artist were groping for a way and not yet quite sure of his path." Buyers were apparently equally ambivalent, for Haymaking remained in Tryon's hands until he offered it as his diploma work nearly a decade later. This painting had been known simply as Landscape in Academy records, until an old label on its stretcher giving the painting's title as Haymaking was noticed in the course of conservation work done in 1980.

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