Summer Day on Conesus Lake

John Frederick Kensett

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The smallest and westernmost of the eleven Finger Lakes of New York State, Conesus Lake was a popular summer resort visited frequently by Kensett to socialize with Robert M. Olyphant, one of his ardent friends and patrons, who owned a home there. The artist's portrayal of the scene, a counterpoint of lake surface and recumbent terrain supporting towering trees, creates a classic stage suited to the genteel parties—boating, picnicking, promenading, or simply relaxing—in and out of the groves sheltering the bank. Kensett's artistic training in Britain in the 1840s seems revealed by the evocation here of earlier English views along the Thames River, for example, below Richmond Hill.

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