Art Institute of Chicago

Solitude

Joshua Shaw (American, born England, c. 1777–1860)

Date

1818

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

United States

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Joshua Shaw was one of the earliest landscape painters to work in America, practicing in Baltimore and Philadelphia upon emigrating from England in 1817. Shaw excelled at painting Romantic scenes of imaginary Arcadian landscapes. In Solitude , a male figure reclines in the foreground, with the contemplative pose and seminude state of a poet or philosopher inspired by the beauty of nature. In addition to idealized compositions such as this one, Shaw painted landscapes in watercolor based on observations of various locales along the Eastern Seaboard. Shaw was a generation older than Thomas Cole and other artists of the country’s first school of landscape painting, the Hudson River School, which emerged in the second quarter of the 19th century.

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