Stream in the Valley

Sonntag was born in suburban Pittsburgh and, although he is categorized as a Hudson River School painter, he never painted the Hudson. Instead, he recorded the lesser-known picturesque views of the rolling mountains of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. This work features the typical figure of a country dweller, wearing a broad straw hat and red vest, perched high along the bank of the waterway observing the natural surroundings, un-touched by humans. Contemporary essayist Washington Irving summed up this approach to the landscape by observing:

Here are locked up mighty forests that have
never been invaded by the axe; deep umbrageous
valleys where the virgin soil has never been out-
raged by the plough; bright streams flowing in
untasked idleness, unburdened by commerce, un-
checked by the mill dam. This mountain zone is in
effect the great poetical region of our country; re-
sisting, like the tribes which once inhabited it, the
taming hand of civilization.

Sonntag effectively conveys the vast expansiveness of the scene by using aerial perspective to suggest a pristine landscape without end.