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Gathering Storm on Long Island Sound

1872
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774
The simplicity of line, form and arrangement that marks Kensett's late coastal landscapes lends to most of them an appealing repose. Here the mood shifts to subtle tension, in the dialogue between the spiny limbs of the vigilant pines and the enclosing sky. Kensett was a master in the expressive, if understated, use of trees. In this painting, their iconic, even anthropomorphic, qualities, silhouetted against the brooding firmament, evoke Rembrandt's etching, "The Three Trees," a classic of western landscape imagery that Kensett would have known well.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Gathering Storm on Long Island Sound
  • Artist: John Frederick Kensett (American, Cheshire, Connecticut 1816–1872 New York)
  • Date: 1872
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 34 1/4 x 27 1/4 in. (87.6 x 69.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of Thomas Kensett, 1874
  • Object Number: 74.39
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

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[Photographs of paintings by J. F. Kensett]
John Frederick Kensett
1874 (?)
Lake George, 1872, John Frederick Kensett American, Oil on canvas, American
Lake George, 1872
John Frederick Kensett
1872
Seated female figures, train in left background, ship in right background (bank note design)
John Frederick Kensett
ca. 1835–72
Bank Note Element: A Woman in Classical Robes Embracing a Large Broken Stone Letter "I", with a Distant Sailing Ship to the Left and a Factory to the Right
John Frederick Kensett
1835–72
Bank Note Element: Three Cupids with Tendrils
John Frederick Kensett
1835–72

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