“In painting a bit of the forest I do not always paint literally all that I see, but my one great aim is to put on the canvas the soul of the place at a time when the inspiration seizes me, and, beyond all, to give to my subjects the life in the woods – what the artists call ‘values’ – which is generally known as an atmosphere.”[1]

                                                                                                                – Roswell Morse Shurtleff

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The landscapes resulting from Roswell M. Shurtleff’s sojourns in the Adirondacks garnered praise from critics and collectors alike when shown at the Brooklyn Art Association, the Boston Art Club, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the National Academy of Design, which made Shurtleff an Associate in 1880 and a full Academician ten years later. Today, his transcriptions of the forests and glades of upstate New York that charmed him for decades can be found in several museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, the Smith College Museum of Art, in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Adirondack Experience: The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake in New York.

Provenance:

Collection of George R. Wallace, Fitchburg, Massachusetts
Gifted to Fitchburg Public Library, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, by 1910
Eventually deaccessioned, and to private collection, Brookline, Massachusetts
With Vose Galleries, Boston, inventory no. 30685, July 1992
To private collection, Barrington, Rhode Island, September 1996 to present

Labels:

1. Previous Vose Galleries label, inventory no. 30685
2. (old handwritten label on top stretcher) Fitchburg / P–(illegible) / no frame 5