Thomas Worthington Whittredge

Summer Pastorale (View of Kallenfels), 1853

oil on canvas

38 ¾ x 32 3/8 in.

Daniel P. Erwin Fund

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Worthington Whittredge, as he called himself after 1855, was born on a farm in Springfield, Ohio.  He moved to Cincinnati in 1837, worked with his brother-in-law as a house painter, and taught himself to paint portraits and landscapes.  He experimented with daguerreotypes in Indianapolis, opened a portrait studio in Charlestown, West Virginia, and then returned to Cincinnati.  From 1843 on, he devoted himself to landscapes.  Through the efforts of wealthy Cincinnati art patron Nicholas Longworth, Whittredge was able to study for five years in Düsseldorf, Germany.  He also spent five years in Rome before returning to the United States in 1859. Düsseldorf was nearing its peak as an art center.  He studied with several teachers who encouraged him to base his landscapes on accurate outdoor sketches.

Summer Pastorale derives from studies made in the Harz Mountains of Central Germany.  The painting is probably a compilation of two views recorded in sketches and skillfully joined in the final picture by the band of trees at mid-canvas.  It was painted for E. J. Mathews of Cincinnati in the style of Whittredge’s teacher Johann Schirmer, the leader of the Düsseldorf landscape school.  Noteworthy is the play of light throughout the landscape, which evokes the atmosphere of a summer day to perfection.  Whittredge recalled, “My summers were spent in Westphalia, in the Harz Mountains or in the more immediate neighborhood of Düsseldorf.” Much of the work Whittredge sent back to Cincinnati contained motifs from these travels, especially his trips to the Harz Mountains in late summer 1852 or the dramatic landscape near Kallenfels in the Nahe Valley.

Reference

Anthony F. Janson.  New York: Worthington Whittredge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN-13: 978-0521324328