Below Mount Monadnock

Inscriptions

Signed, lower right: A H Thayer; signed and inscribed on front panel of frame: To- / James Allison / in gratitude and / veneration / from / A.H.T.; gummed label on reverse: MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS [printed] / ; handwritten in ink on label: Thayer / 13.23 / lent by [?--not entirely legible] / Miss Annie M. Alli....[edge missing]

Label

It has often been said that Abbott Thayer “worshipped” Mount Monadnock, which he painted repeatedly from his studio in Dublin, New Hampshire. This intimately scaled version captures the peak at dawn, with the sun just catching the summit and the ground covered with a blanket of snow. Here, Thayer reversed earlier landscape traditions by rendering the distant peak of the mountain in sharpest focus, while loosely delineating the spruces with powerful calligraphic strokes inspired by Asian ink paintings. Thayer’s bold composition and expressive manner evoke the peak’s transcendent powers.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

"This modestly sized painting is one of my favorites in the collection. A gift from the artist to a friend, it is strikingly personal and intimate. It’s small scale and gilded border make it look like a religious icon; a depiction of a holy figure used for devotion. Except here is the mountain bordering Abott Thayer’s home. Beyond his work as a painter, Thayer was highly interested in camouflage particularly in how animals are concealed through their coloration and patterning, what he called concealed coloration. Devoted to preserving Mount Monadnock, Thayer seems to employ some of those techniques here, a dense forest of spruce trees form a dark green curtain in front of the mountain, obscuring its base and perhaps, symbolically protecting it from development and deforestation."

--Thomas Price, Former Curatorial Assistant for American Art and current Art History PhD Student at University of Delaware

Audio file transcrption from the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Mary Coffey, Winter 2014

GEOG 7.13, New England’s People and their Landscapes, Past and Present, Abigail Neely, Spring 2015

WRIT 7 , Religion and Literature: Re-visioning the Natural, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2015

ENGL 52, Vox Clamantis: Wilderness in 19th Century American Literature, Michael Chaney, Winter 2020

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Exhibition History

"Not Theories but Revelations": The Art and Science of Abbott Handerson Thayer, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, March 11-August 21, 2016.

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-April 12, 1998.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 29, 2000-May 8, 2007.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 2, 2009-November 28. 2010.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 14-June 22, 1997.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 28, 1998.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-January 16, 1998.

Monadnock, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, September 26, 1999-January 9, 2000

possibly exhibited while on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, 1923-1926

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–July 22, 2022.

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, March 24, 2016-June 30, 2018.

Publication History

Robert L. McGrath, Special History Study: Art and the American Conservation Movement, Boston, Massachusetts: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2001, fig. 11, ill. p. 60.

PaulTuller, Producer, [Video] The Dublin Art Colony: Collection at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, Dublin, New Hampshire: Barn Door Video Productions, September 2002.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 71, no. 51.

Barbara J. MacAdam, Building on Dartmouth's Historic American Collections: Hood Museum of Art Acquisitions since 1985, The Magazine Antiques, November 2007, New York: Brant Publications, color ill. p. 142.

Elizabeth L. Lee, "Therapeutic Living in Dublin', in The Medicine of Art: Disease and the Aesthetic Object in Gilded Age America, London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022, pp. 83-120, ill. p. 98, fig. 3.8.

Provenance

James Allison (1830-1914), Dublin, New Hampshire, ca. 1913; Annie Allison (1859-1944), his daughter, by descent, 1914 [she died in Miami, FL] (lent by Annie M. Allison to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1923-1926); Public Collection in Miami, Florida; Ezio Sufat, Middleburg, VA (for publications, etc., use "Private Collection, Virginia"); Jordan-Volpe Gallery, Inc.; sold to present collection, 1997.

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