Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910)
A Farmer’s Garden in Simsbury, c.1875
Oil on canvas, 15 x 9 5/8”
Signed lower left

Whittredge, a Hudson River School and Western artist, painted this Simsbury scene in about 1860, while visiting a patron. The canvas is bed ticking, so he may not have come intending to paint. The work is a sharp departure for him both in subject matter and design. Perspective lines stop short of the horizon. The cabbage row rushes the eye to the convergence point, then up a tree to the sky, while the line of trees exerts a counter thrust to the right.

Three decades later, Connecticut Impressionists would regularly create designs that play fast and loose with traditions about focal points, symmetry, and spatial depth. In Simsbury, Whittredge may have been in a holiday mood that inclined him to experiment.