Palms

Inscriptions

Dated, lower right: Jan 1856; on reverse of sheet is a faint graphite sketch of lake scenery, with smaller inset sketch of trees on a bank, above a stream

Label

Philadelphia artist William Trost Richards was one of America’s most prolific 19th-century draftsmen. His early career as a designer of ornamental metalwork, coupled with his allegiance to the Pre-Raphaelite teachings of British aesthetician John Ruskin, inspired him to produce natural subjects with painstaking realism. He created this scrupulously detailed sketch during his travels abroad in Florence, where he likely observed this clump of palms in a local conservatory. Viewed from below, the palms in the above image take on a majestic, stately appearance, reflecting the quiet awe with which Richards viewed the natural world.

Richards seemingly never tired of sketching trees, viewed from every possible angle and distance. In the image below, looking upward, he delineates a tree’s roughly textured trunk, gnarly branches, and abundant foliage, rendered with both broad, energetic strokes and fine outlines. As art historian Rebecca Bedell has observed, Richards tended toward introspection and melancholy, making it natural that he would identify with trees that, as he wrote, “are twisted and curved and give evidence of a fight for their lives.”

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

SART 15, Drawing I, Edward del Rosario, Spring 2015

SART 15, Drawing I, Edward del Rosario, Spring 2015

SART 15, Drawing I, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2019

SART 15.02, Drawing I, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2021

SART 15.02, Drawing I, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2021

SART 15.02, Drawing I, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2021

SART 15.02, Drawing I, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2021

SART 15.02, Drawing I, Karol Kawiaka, Spring 2021

SART 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka, Fall 2021

SART 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka - OPEN HOURS, Fall 2021

SART 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka - OPEN HOURS, Fall 2021

SART 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka - OPEN HOURS, Fall 2021

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

SART 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka, Fall 2022

Exhibition History

American Works on Paper to 1950: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Friends and Owen Robertson Cheatham Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 22-December 9, 2007.

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

Marks of Distinction: Two Hundred Years of American Drawings and Watercolors from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 29-May 29, 2005; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 24-September 11, 2005; National Academy Museum, New York City, New York, October 20-December 31, 2005.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–April 11, 2022.

William Trost Richards: Rediscovered / Oils, Watercolors, and Drawings from the Artist's Family, Beacon Hill Fine Art (in association with Jill Newhouse), New York, New York, no. 7, November 29, 1996-January 11, 1997.

Publication History

William Trost Richards: Rediscovered / Oils, Watercolors, and Drawings from the Artist's Family, New York: Beacon Hill Fine Arts, no. 7, illus. p. 32, 1997.

Barbara J. MacAdam, Marks of Distinction: Two Hundred Years of American Drawings and Watercolors from the Hood Museum of Art, American Art Review, Vol. XVII No. 2, April 2005, pp. 86-93, ill p. 88

Provenance

The artist; to Theodore Richards (son); to Grace Thayer Richards (daughter); to her son and daughter-in-law, Ellen and Theodore Richards Conan (1926-2015), Hanover, New Hampshire, about 1980; to Beacon Hill Fine Art, New York, New York, 1997; sold to present collection, 1997.

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Subjects