Washington ALLSTON - Landscape with lake (1804)

 

Landscape with lake
1804
Oil painting on canvas (96,5x130 cm)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Massachusetts)

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Our eye is accompanied along the path until we reach the lake where a figure observes the rugged landscape. A sense of silence and emptiness seems to permeate the landscape.

Alliston is considered the greatest romantic painter of the Americas, a title rightly conferred thanks to his considerable ability to render in the smallest details what he paints, trees and gnarled trunks have an almost photographic definition.

The pictorial training of this American is pleasantly European, he studied in London and Rome, his first landscapes were strongly influenced by the French Claude Lorrain and later he developed a sublime melodramatic aspect following in the footsteps of Joseph Turner and John Martin.

The portraits of him and the biblical canvases were highly acclaimed by the public; his poems, on the other hand, aroused little enthusiasm.

Comparing artists: Bierstadt, Lorrain, Cozens, Hodler, Martin, West, Turner