Brenton's Cove, Newport, Rhode Island

• Oil on Panel
• Signed

In the spring of 1859, John La Farge relocated from New York City to Newport, Rhode Island, to study at the studio of William Morris Hunt, giving up a lucrative career in law. La Farge continued to live and paint in Newport until about 1873. He quickly struck out on his own, developing a unique style. He embraced plein-air landscape painting. He gained a reputation for being a gifted colorist. He focused on air, light, and space. He also painted portraits and still life.

Starting in 1868, when creating landscapes in oil, La Farge worked on a small scale and on wood panels, choosing modest motifs, as in the case of this painting. He achieved an artless simplicity by painting as he called it “at a blow.” He would make a careful and finished drawing of something in the world around him, and then soon after, he would complete the actual painting. These paintings were meant to look like nature as seen every day, not like art that was purposefully arranged or infused with symbolic meaning. His sketchbooks from the late 1860s are filled with studies of sites used in his small sketchy landscapes.

Although this approach was spontaneous, La Farge by this time had had years of experience, especially in color theory, allowing him to render such effects rapidly. He also often painted as much from instinct as from study. In the handling and tonalities of such pictures, La Farge made his closest approach to the style of the future French Impressionists. In this painting, the loose handling and rich palette of greens and browns is reminiscent of French Barbizon art.