Sketches, Maples

About this artwork

Research in Progress

Art Historical Context

Samuel Colman’s “Sketches, Maples,” created in September 1917, offers a quiet glimpse into the final years of an artist whose long career helped shape American landscape traditions. Born in 1832, Colman worked across painting, watercolor, and etching, often turning to nature for inspiration. This drawing, made when he was eighty-five, captures maple trees in what appears to be a series of quick studies, reflecting a lifetime of observing the changing seasons. As a work on paper now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the piece highlights the importance of drawings as both preparatory tools and intimate records of an artist’s hand. Its classification as a drawing invites viewers to consider the immediacy of line and observation rather than finished color or detail. Donated by Mrs. Samuel Colman, the sheet also carries personal resonance, preserving a late moment of creative attention from one of the nineteenth century’s versatile American artists. Though research on the work remains in progress, its presence in the national collection underscores Colman’s enduring contribution to how Americans have pictured their natural surroundings.