Dead Tree Trunk, Lake Millinocket, Maine
Classification
nature studies
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Gift of Louis P. Church
Accession Number
1917-4-74-b
About this artwork
Research in Progress
Art Historical Context
Frederic Edwin Church, a leading figure of the Hudson River School, the rugged beauty of the American wilderness in *Dead Tree Trunk, Lake Millocket, Maine* (1877). This nature study, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum reflects Church's lifelong fascination with the raw details of the natural world. Painted during a period when he increasingly focused on intimate observations amid his travels through New England's lakes and forests, the work depicts a weathered tree trunk at Lake Millinocket, symbolizing nature's cycles of decay and resilience. As a master of luminism and precise real...