The Valley of the Brandywine, Chester County (September)

Over the course of his career, Philadelphia-born William Trost Richards was an avid traveler in the United States and Europe. Beginning in the mid-1870s and until 1890, he divided his time between Newport, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania—where he first lived in a house in Germantown, followed by Oldmixon Farm in Chester County, which he purchased in 1884. From there he created a series of paintings of Chester County farms, their change of seasons, and the annual harvest, seen here in a composition that juxtaposes the two small farmers with the majestic sweep of landscape in which they toil. Writing of the inspiration provided by the Brandywine Valley, Richards remarked: "Everywhere there are pictures which make me impatient for next summer."