Henry Pember Smith (1854-1907)
Old Homestead on the Turnpike, c. 1889
Oil on canvas, 12 x 16”
Signed lower left

Smith, a Waterford native, often depicted Venetian palazzos but returned to Connecticut to paint idyllic country scenes. Several are strikingly similar, including a Dutch Colonial house, a dooryard with stone wall or fence, sheltering trees, and ducks or geese ambling down a dirt road. Clearly, this image struck a chord with the public or Smith could not have sold so many variants of it.

Americans were exulting in the belief that the nation would become a world power but worried that the principles of the Founding Fathers might erode as a result. Old homesteads had survived, went the thinking, and so, too, would America’s independent spirit if people held fast to the old values.