Marie Theresa Gorsuch Hart (1829-1921)
View on the River, Farmington, 1866
Oil on canvas, 10 3/4 x 20 1/8”
Signed and dated lower left

Marie Theresa Gorsuch, a Baltimore native, spent the summer of 1865 in Farmington painting with the prominent New York artists James Brevoort and James McDougal Hart. In August, the announcement of her engagement to Hart thrilled the village. The two married the next year.

This painting exemplifies the preference of the late Hudson River School for closer viewpoints and smaller, more humanized scenes. The hushed air of tranquility in such paintings may be linked to the nation’s collective sigh of relief when the Civil War finally ended. After her husband’s death in 1901, the artist lived out her very long life in Lakeville, Connecticut.