Figure in a Forest Clearing

• Gouache and watercolor over traces of pencil on paper laid down on paperboard
• Signed

Louis C. Tiffany began sketching as a child. He first took informal lessons while in high school in the mid-1860s at the Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he studied with American landscape artist George Inness (1825–1894). During this period, Tiffany also took drawing classes at the National Academy of Design in New York, where he met Samuel Colman (1832–1920), a landscape painter of the Hudson River School. Tiffany was influenced early in his career by the work of both men.

Landscape paintings by Tiffany are very rare. His work as a colorist far surpassed his talent in figure work, which may explain why he focused on the trees and ground cover rather than the person in this painting. Even in this early work, he already showed a concern for the effects of light. From the beginning of his career, he had an affinity for watercolors.

Tiffany began exhibiting his work at the National Academy in 1867. He then showed his work at the 1868 Paris Salon and at the Brooklyn Art Association’s exhibition in November 1868. On November 2, 1869, a journalist wrote in the Utica Weekly Herald: “Mr. Louis C. Tiffany, the young artist whose pictures received such commendation at the Academy last year, has just returned from the Adirondacks with a full portfolio of original studies, which he is industriously perfecting at his beautiful home on the Hudson. No young artist has given greater promise of a successful career.” This painting is most likely one of his Adirondacks studies.