THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE | THE OLD HOMESTEAD, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND

Kennedy Galleries, New York, by 1970

Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1970’s

Anthony F. Janson, Worthington Whittredge, Boston, Massachusetts, 1989, p. 142, illustrated fig. 108

New York, Kennedy Galleries, An Exhibition of Oil Paintings, March 1970, no. 5

Framed. After spending his early adult years, from 1849 to 1859, traveling through Europe, Thomas Worthington Whittredge returned to the United States and established his career as a landscape painter. His focus on natural subjects and the acute attention to detail he achieved in his compositions often affiliated him with the painters of the Hudson River School, who privileged similar artistic concerns in their own work. In the late 1860s, Whittredge found inspiration in beaches and bodies of water of Newport, Rhode Island. The artist was also captivated by the colonial architecture—then enjoying a popular revival—that he observed there, and which he had first discovered as a young child.

In The Old Homestead, Newport, Rhode Island, Whittredge offers a panoramic view of the Newport coastline with a shingled farmhouse nestled in the foreground. Although the house in this painting has not been concretely identified, this structure features often in the artist’s Newport pictures. Though Whittredge renders the farmhouse, figures and other signs of human presence with meticulous details, his composition undoubtedly emphasizes the vastness and grandeur of the Newport landscape, indicating that this is his primary subject. Indeed, The Old Homestead, Newport, Rhode Island portrays nature as a powerful and prominent entity, consistent with the message of Whittredge’s most important works.