Label
Aaron Draper Shattuck, American, 1832-1928
Untitled, 1857
oil on canvas
Gift of Dorothy Fuller, between 1975 and 1992
Aaron Draper Shattuck was among the second generation of Hudson River artists, a group of New Yorkers who painted up the Hudson and in other locations in New England. The first of this group was Thomas Cole, who began his career as a landscape artist with a trip to the Catskill Mountains in 1824. Shattuck carefully studied the writings of Asher B. Durand, the second most prominent Hudson River painter. Durand encouraged the careful rendering of natural forms, as can be seen in the foreground of this Shattuck painting. Moreover, Shattuck also associated with a number of other Hudson River artists, many of whom, like Shattuck, worked in the Tenth Street Studio Building, the center of New York’s art world. In the summers of 1856 and 1857, Shattuck visited a number of northeastern mountain ranges including the Catskills, Adirondacks, Shawangunk Mountains, White Mountains and the mountains of West Virginia. Many of these mountains sit alongside rivers or lakes, thus making it difficult to identify the exact setting of this scene. Regardless of the specific locale, the painting depicts the American wilderness, which the Hudson River painters valued highly as God’s untouched creation. According to Cole, “Those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep-toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the Creator, they are His undefiled works; and the mind is cast into contemplation of eternal things.”
For further reading: John Walker Myers. “Aaron Draper Shattuck, 1932-1928, Painter of Landscapes and Student of Nature’s Charms.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, 1981.Label
"Endangered Art: Reclaiming a Legacy," 2025
Both of these works recently returned from conservation treatment. The frame of Early Morning at Ossipee was cleaned, and ornamentation that had broken off was cast and replaced. After cleaning the painting of a dog, conservators inpainted areas of loss. It was given a new coat of varnish, then installed in its cleaned and restored frame.