Although very little is known of George Brevitt Way's career as a landscape painter, he attended the United States Naval Academy and later studied art in Paris. Way’s work was represented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annual exhibition in 1877 and from 1880 to 1882. According to Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography and other sources, examples of Way’s paintings were given titles such as Village Scene in Brownsville, Twilight on the Susquehanna and On the Upper Potomac, which reveal that he found inspiration for his landscapes among the central Appalachians, and particularly the northern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Upper Potomac was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1881 and illustrated in the accompanying catalogue.

More information about this painting...

Provenance:

Private collection, Arlington, Massachusetts

With Vose Galleries, Boston, inventory no. 32424, April 1998

To private collection, Gainesville, Georgia, July 2000 to present

Labels:

1. Previous Vose Galleries label, inventory no. 32424
2. (on frame) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts label from 1883 for a different painting by the artist (A Mountain Village)

Exhibitions:

Fifty-Second Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, April 4 – May 29, 1881, No. 190 as Upper Potomac (illustrated in the catalogue)