Tree Study

Inscriptions

Dated, lower left, in graphite: Sept 8th 1859-

Label

Philadelphia artist William Trost Richards was one of America’s most prolific 19th-century draftsmen. His early career as a designer of ornamental metalwork, coupled with his allegiance to the Pre-Raphaelite teachings of British aesthetician John Ruskin, inspired him to produce natural subjects with painstaking realism. He created this scrupulously detailed sketch during his travels abroad in Florence, where he likely observed this clump of palms in a local conservatory. Viewed from below, the palms in the above image take on a majestic, stately appearance, reflecting the quiet awe with which Richards viewed the natural world.

Richards seemingly never tired of sketching trees, viewed from every possible angle and distance. In the image below, looking upward, he delineates a tree’s roughly textured trunk, gnarly branches, and abundant foliage, rendered with both broad, energetic strokes and fine outlines. As art historian Rebecca Bedell has observed, Richards tended toward introspection and melancholy, making it natural that he would identify with trees that, as he wrote, “are twisted and curved and give evidence of a fight for their lives.”

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–April 11, 2022.

Provenance

The artist; to his son, Theodore William Richards (1868-1928); to his daughter, Grace Thayer Richards Conant (1898-1985); to her son and daughter-in-law, Ellen P. and Theodore Richards Conant (1926-2015), Hanover, New Hampshire, about 1980; to present collection, 2016.

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Subjects