Study, North Conway, New Hampshire (1851): Art, History and Details

Study, North Conway, New Hampshire (1851) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is David Johnson (American, 1827–1908).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Johnson’s devotion to carefully observing nature is evident in his detailed rendering of a riverbed. Located in a village that provided a popular jumping-off point for tourists visiting the White Mountains, this untamed site features a haphazard arrangement of angled boulders, slippery moss, splintered tree branches, and dense undergrowth. Contemporary travel guidebooks often cautioned against the physical challenges—and the potential for injury—encountered by venturing into such inner recesses of the woods; one warned that “wild forest-clambering” could be akin to “fighting a phalanx of porcupines.”

Object facts

• Title: Study, North Conway, New Hampshire
• Date: 1851
• Creator attribution: David Johnson (American, 1827–1908)
• Culture: United States
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 63.8 x 74.3 x 7 cm (25 1/8 x 29 1/4 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 43.2 x 53.3 cm (17 x 21 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1967.125

A detail from the museum

North Conway, New Hampshire, markets itself as the birthplace of American skiing.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (December 1967): 302–346.
• Talbot, William S. “Visions of Landscape: East and West.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 3 (March 1983): 112–135.
• Adams, Henry. What's American about American art?: a gallery tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.