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Stream in the Valley

Stream in the Valley

Artist: William Louis Sonntag Sr. (American, 1822 - 1900)

Date: 1860 - 1870
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Canvas: 15 x 25 in. (38.1 x 63.5 cm)
Framed: 25 7/8 x 36 x 4 3/16 in. (65.7 x 91.4 x 10.7 cm)
Credit Line:Gift, Mrs. William L. Savage
Object number: 1921.232.1

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.

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