19th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2001 by Allison Fckardt Ledes

Nineteenth-century American landscape painters traveled constantly to find new and challenging subject matter. Frequently an artist would find a location to which he returned again and again over the years, painting landscapes that in many cases can still be identified today John Frederick Kensett was one of these artists, and late in his life his chosen spot was Contentment Island off Darien, Connecticut. An exhibition that explores the works he executed there is on view at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury Connecticut, from September 15 through November 17. It is entitled Images of Contentment: John Frederick Kensett and the Connecticut Shore and contains more than twenty paintings and drawings as well as historical photographs, maps, and mariners' charts.

Kensett was introduced to Contentment Island in 1867 by his friend and fellow artist Vincent Colyer, who had purchased land there the preceding year. Kensett must have been totally enchanted by it, for he bought property--the only land he ever owned--from Colyer that year At this time Kensett was at the apex of his career and a leader of the New York artistic community, as is evident in his membership in institutions such as the National Academy of Design, the Century Association, the Sketch Club, the Artist's Fund Society, and the United States Capitol Art Commission. He was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Contentment Island had the advantage of being less than two hours by train or steamboat from New York City where Kensett lived. And because the Connecticut shoreline does not front the Atlantic Ocean, the water is calmer, the winter more temperate, and the land and buildings are less likely to be destroyed in rough weather.

Period photographs and other documents reveal that Colyer built a commodious house on the island, and while Kensett intended to build one too, he never did, preferring to stay with Colyer and his wife. Several of Colyer's paintings are on view in this exhibition.

Many of Kensett's surviving drawings and paintings of the landscape on and around Contentment Island are dated between 1868 and 1871. He painted some sixty views of the Connecticut shore, some of which have been misidentified as Rhode Island or Massachusetts. Colyer's house was winterized, making it possible for Kensett to paint there throughout the year. Titles of some fifty of his paintings incorporate place names along the Connecticut shoreline, revealing that Kensett must have spent more time there than has previously been recognized by art historians. Many works depict identifiable natural landmarks on Contentment Island. Some views were clearly painted as series, for they show the same landscape at different times of day under changing light-- something that always interested Kensett. He painted landscapes and seascapes from the studio on the third floor of the house and possibly from the cupola that surmounted it.

As is so often the case with identifiable nineteenth-century landscape paintings, those familiar with the view today will marvel at the changes that generations of inhabitants have made to these once-pristine locations. Kensett's beguiling canvases from his Contentment Island period are at once serenely beautiful works of art and reminders of man's negligible imprint on this bucolic location more than a century ago.

The catalogue of the exhibition with essays by Ann Y Smith and Janice Simon may be ordered from the museum at 203-753-0381, extension 10.