KENSETT, John Frederick (Cheshire, 1816 – New York, 1872)
Following his training as an engraver in his father’s workshop, Thomas Kensett turned to landscape painting in the early 1830s in New Haven. In 1843 he travelled to Europe with Asher B. Durand, John Casilear and Thomas Rossiter to study the works of art there. In 1847 he returned to New York where he was elected a member of the National Academy of Design.
Once again with Durand and Casilear, Kensett travelled along the Hudson River in 1849 to the village of Catskill, where Thomas Cole had lived, and made sketches of the same spots that Cole had painted.
Kensett’s early works reflect the influence of Cole and of the English landscape painters, particularly John Constable. Around 1850 his work becomes more precise and meticulous, and from 1855 his painting shows the influence of Luminism, a style which was then at its height. Kensett started to paint landscapes of the New England Coast, conveying the harmony with nature in the luminous reflections of the sea and sky.
Kensett generally painted small-format works and unlike his contemporaries such as Church and Bierstadt, he did not travel to remote parts in search of inspiration. Rather he dedicated himself to painting ever more simplified variants of nearby locations: Lake George, Newport and Beverly, among others, which he reinterpreted in different compositions and under changing light. These works were enormously popular. His death in 1872 was considered an authentic national tragedy.
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