Fanciful Landscape

Thomas Doughty

National Gallery of Art

A wide, placid river winds through a hazy landscape with a grassy bank to the left and a sheer rock formation to the right in this horizontal painting. The water tumbles down step-like rapids near the center of the composition in the middle distance. To our right, a ruined building nestled among trees stands atop a rocky outcropping that extends about a third of the way across the painting. Two tall, spindly trees grow on a lower, grassy bank to the left. A waterfall pours from a narrow gap in more rocky cliffs to the left, farther back than the rapids. Craggy, pointed mountains are pale purple in the deep distance. In the top third of the canvas, smoky-purple clouds curve along the corners around a sky glowing pearl white. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had inscribed the information on the base of the cliff near the lower right corner of the composition: “T. DOUGHTY BOSTON 1834.”