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John Frederick Kensett
(American, 1816 - 1872)
Cliffwalk, Newport
1871
10 1/2 × 18 1/2 in. (26.7 × 47 cm)
2016.11.12
Richard M. Scaife Bequest, 2015
Not on view
Kensett was drawn to the coast of New England, building a summer studio in 1867 on Contentment Island, just off the coast of Darien, Connecticut, where he specialized in marine painting. The artist worked frequently in Newport, Rhode Island, a fashionable resort that provided scenic seascape vistas and where a large group of wealthy patrons summered. In this depiction of Cliff Walk promenade, as in many of his paintings, Kensett created a remarkably smooth surface, sublimating individual brush strokes. The figures of tourists in the foreground lend monumentality to the rocky cliffs that separate the cerulean tones of the wind whipped sea and the blue-to-rose gradation of crystalline sky. Kensett often created several paintings of the same landscape. Cliffwalk, Newport is closely related to an earlier work.