Mt. Ktaadn
Mt. Ktaadn
1853
Frederic Edwin Church
Oil on canvas
36 1/4 x 55 1/4 in. (92.1 x 140.3 cm)
On view in the American Art before 1900 galleries
Frederic Edwin Church traveled to northern Maine soon after the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Ktaadn and the Maine Woods.” In this canvas, Church brings the landscape that Thoreau called “exceedingly wild and desolate” subtly under control by imagining its civilized future. Cattle, sawmill, bridge, buggy, and men harmoniously coexist, domesticating the landscape without appearing to disturb its natural beauty. The soaring mountain remains outside the bounds of such cultivation. Church optimistically evokes the divine destiny of a young country by bathing the land in the sunset’s spiritual glow.
1969.71
Yale University Art Gallery, Stanley B. Resor, B.A. 1901, Fund