Sunset

John Frederick Kensett

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Like Kensett's "Sunset on the Sea", both this work and "Sunset Sky" probably represent sunrise, since such would have been more readily observable over open water from the artist's studio near Darien, Connecticut, facing Long Island Sound to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Indeed, this work seems an essay departing directly from "Sunset Sky", which in turn looks like directly recorded aerial phenomena or, perhaps, simply an abandoned composition. The obvious relationship between the two works gives rise to the speculation that at least some of the artist's coastal subjects, especially those done in the privacy of his island studio, evolved from transient light and atmospheric effects captured, then shaped into paintings by adding foregrounds contrived of generic-looking terrain that may or may not have been typical of that fronting the water near his property.

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