The Trout Pool

Worthington Whittredge

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in Ohio, Whittredge began his career as a sign and portrait painter in Cincinnati, where he attracted the attention of local patrons whose support enabled him to travel abroad. After a decade of study in Europe, he returned to the United States in 1859, settling in New York City to pursue landscape painting. Likely a view in the Hudson Valley, this work reveals the influence of artist Asher B. Durand, whose forest interiors (15.30.59 and 95.13.1) inspired Whittredge’s vertical composition. However, unlike Durand, Whittredge adopted dramatic lighting effects, juxtaposing shadowy foreground trees with a brightly illuminated middle ground to emphasize nature’s expressive qualities.

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