Cleveland Museum of Art

View of a Lake

Thomas Doughty

Date

c. 1830s

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

America

Department

American Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Contrasting the many American landscape painters who conveyed nature's power through raging storms and blasted trees, Doughty emphasized the quiet power of the outside world in his idyllic paintings. Largely self-taught, he often drew from nature and skillfully transformed his detailed observances into soft, poetic depictions of the landscape. This work exhibits Doughty's penchant for inserting small figures in the center of the middle ground. The scale of the two boys on the lake's edge allows the viewer to focus on the expansive scenery, thereby emphasizing the diminutive nature of humankind in relation to the vast landscape.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.