Questroyal 2009

Captivated by the Catskills After returning from ten years of study in Europe, T.WorthingtonWhittredge struggled to find a thoroughly American subject. Desperate for inspiration, he retreated to the Catskills. While in upstate New York, the artist was mesmerized by the beauty of the mountains and forest. He declared in his autobiography, “How different was the scene [of the Catskills] before me from anything I had been looking at for many years!” 3 This fascination with the American countryside, which was sustained by later trips to the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, fueledWhittredge’s career as a successful landscape painter. — sjs Whittredge’s paintings are featured in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1 T. WorthingtonWhittredge, The Autobiography of WorthingtonWhittredge , manuscript, 1902 – 1910 , WorthingtonWhittredge Papers, microfilm roll d28 , frame 17 , Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 2 Sadayoshi Omoto, “The Sketchbooks of WorthingtonWhittredge,” Art Journal 24 , no. 4 (Summer 1965 ): 331 . 3 T . WorthingtonWhittredge, The Autobiography of WorthingtonWhittredge , ed. John I.H. Baur (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum Press, 1942 ), p. 42 . 4 Ibid. His reputation and standing are well established and there are few who would denyWhittredge his rightful place in the history of American painting. sadayoshi omoto, art historian, 1965 2 Plate 40 The Glen, detail