Rowing on a Mountain Lake

Inscriptions

Signed, lower left: T. DOUGHTY

Label

Thomas Doughty distinguished himself as one of the first American artists to concentrate solely on landscape painting. This luminous canvas dramatizes Echo Lake in Franconia Notch, with the cliffs of Cannon Mountain in the background. Reflecting late 18th century British aesthetic theories, Doughty’s carefully balanced composition exhibits a central, mirror-like body of water that leads our eyes into the distance, strong contrasts between lights and darks, and a mixture of rough and smooth contours. Its vertical format and low vantage point accentuate the height of the rocky precipices, which dwarf the small boating figure. The blasted tree and the threatening clouds over Cannon Mountain add further tension to this otherwise placid composition, emphasizing the awe-inspiring, sometimes destructive, forces of nature.

From the 2019 exhibition American Art, Colonial to Modern, curated by Barbara J. MacAdam, Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art

Course History

WRIT 7, Religion and Literature: Revisioning the Invisible, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

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

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2015

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2015

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2016

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2016

SART 25.01, Painting I, Viktor Witkowski, Winter 2022

SART 25.02, Painting I, Viktor Witkowski, Winter 2022

Geography 7.02, Into the Wild, Coleen Fox, Spring 2023

Geography 7.20, Into the Wild, Coleen Fox, Spring 2024

Exhibition History

A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven: Artists in the White Mountains, 1830-1930, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 10-October 30, 1988.

American 19th Century Paintings, Beaumont-May Galleries, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 4-31, 1974.

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Art, Colonial to Modern, Israel Sack Gallery and Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-September 12, 2021.

Carpenter Gallery, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 16, 1981-May 1982.

Carpenter Gallery, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 31, 1978-1979.

Hail, Holy Land: the Idea of America, Strauss and Barrows Galleries, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 27-September 7, 1980.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 23, 2006-May 8, 2007.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 7, 2010.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 12, 1990-June 22, 1997.

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

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-September 14, 2003..

Light in Art, Jaffe-Friede, Strauss and Barrows Galleries, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 2, 1977-January 29, 1978.

Natural Paradise: Paintings in America 1800-1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, September 29-November 30, 1976.

New Selections from the College Collection, Carpenter Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 23-June 30, 1979.

Publication History

Davidson and Lytle, "American Journey, the Quest for Liberty, first edition, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Publishing, 1992.

Sylvia McNair, America the Beautiful: New Hampshire, Chicago: Childrens Press, 1992, ill. p. 81.

Griffin, Susan M. "The Historical Eye: The Texture of the Visual in Late James." Boston: Northeastern University Press, page 134, figure 11.

The Dartmouth Institute, Title Page, Fall Issue

Interciencia. Journal of Science and Technology of the Americas: Caracus, Venesuela: CROMOTIP, Jan-Feb, 1990; Cover Illustration

Sanctuary: Painters and Place. Lincoln, Massachusetts: The Journal of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, July/August 1990.

Robert L. McGrath and Barbara J. MacAdam, "A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven", Artists in the White Mountains 1830-1930, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1988, p.42, no.2.

Barbara J. MacAdam, "American Paintings in the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College", Antiques Magazine, November, 1985, p. 1023.

Treasures of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hudson Hill Press, New York, 1985, no. 98.

Robert L. McGrath, Gods in Granite: The Art of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001, 216 p., color plate no. 7.

Barbara J. MacAdam, Marks of Distinction, Two Hundred Years of American Drawings and Watercolors from the Hood Museum of Art, Manchester, Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 2005, pp. 16, ill. p. 17, fig. 10.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 36, no. 17.

Provenance

Vose Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts; sold to present collection, 1967.

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