Bayside, New Rochelle, New York

David Johnson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Johnson began his career in the late 1840s taking informal lessons with contemporary American landscape painters, including John Frederick Kensett and Jasper Cropsey. Although his early works reflect the influence of the so-called Hudson River School, by the 1880s, Johnson had adopted a more intimate and tonal approach to nature. Inspired by the Barbizon School in France, he favored quiet, melancholic scenes, often featuring small-scale figures contemplating the landscape, as seen here. Based on a graphite sketch completed two years prior (1980.115), this painting depicts an inlet off Long Island Sound with a large oak tree silhouetted against a cloudy sky.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art