Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1951)
Garden Path, 1897
Oil on canvas, 19 x 29”
Signed lower right

DuMond was both a noted artist and charismatic teacher. In the winters, he was a fixture at the Art Students League in New York. He taught summer classes at Old Lyme, Kent, Essex, and elsewhere.

The close viewpoint of his subject makes an abstraction of the path and greensward. Touches of the wild have nonetheless intruded into this cultivated space. The American frontier was declared closed in 1890 and wilderness areas were shrinking into park sites, but respect for the wild lingered in the national psyche.