Landscape with Trees (from Sketchbook VII)
Medium
Graphite on off-white wove paper
Dimensions
5 x 7 1/2 in. (12.7 x 19.1 cm)
Classification
Drawing
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Gifts in memory of Stephen D. Rubin, 1992
Accession Number
1992.2.1n recto
Tags
Art Historical Context
Created in 1886, *Landscape with Trees* is a delicate graphite drawing from William Trost Richards’s Sketchbook VII. Measuring just five by seven-and-a-half inches, the small sheet captures a quiet stand of with careful, economical strokes off-white wove paper. Such intimate studies reveal Richards’s lifelong habit of working directly from nature, using his sketchbooks as portable laboratories to record light, form, and texture. As an American artist deeply engaged with the natural world, Richards valued these modest drawings as essential steps toward larger studio compositions. The work now ...
About the Artist
William Trost Richards · 1833–1905
William Trost Richards (1833–1905) was a prominent American landscape and marine painter born in Philadelphia, where he attended Central High School before beginning his artistic training. Between 1850 and 1855, he studied part-time under the German-born Hudson River School artist Paul Weber while working as a designer and illustrator of ornamental metalwork. He exhibited his first works at the Pe...