John Frederick Kensett was a leading mid-nineteenth-century landscape painter and a major figure in New York art circles. He began his career in New Haven, Connecticut, in the late 1820s as an engraver with the firm of his father, Thomas Kensett (1786-1829), and uncle, Alfred Daggett (1799-1872). He later worked with the firm of Peter Maverick in New York and with the banknote engravers Hall, Packard, and Cushman in Albany.
After deciding to become a painter, Kensett traveled to Europe in the company of Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), John Casilear (1811-1893), and his longtime friend Thomas P. Rossiter (1818-1871). Kensett spent seven years in England, France, and Italy, sketching and also studying old master paintings and contemporary art in public and private collections. Shortly after his return to New York in 1847, he exhibited The Shrine: A Scene in Italy, 1847 (Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Katz, Naples, Florida) at the National Academy of Design, obtaining immediate success. Thereafter he received numerous commissions for American landscapes and became a leading exponent of the Hudson River school.
Around 1855 his art began to change; his subject matter became coastal scenes instead of mountain views, and he developed a more austere, controlled painting style. With his images of the New England coast Kensett became a major practitioner of the style now known as luminism. He gradually expanded his repertoire of locales, traveling in 1856 to Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales and in 1870 going as far West as Colorado and the Rocky Mountains with WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE and SANFORD R. GIFFORD. Daringly abstract seascapes, presumably painted during the last summer of his life, were found in his studio on Contentment Island, in Darien, Connecticut, after his death.
Despite his numerous commissions, Kensett took time from his hectic schedule to aid the cause of the American artist, raising money for the National Academy of Design’s new building, serving on the three-member presidential commission to review the decoration of the United States Capitol, chairing in 1864 the artists’ committee for the Metropolitan Fair of the Sanitary Commission, and in 1870 sitting on the first board of trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albany, New York State Library, Edwin D. Morgan Collection, John Frederick Kensett Correspondence § John K. Howat, John Frederick Kensett, exh. cat. (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1968) § University Park, Pennsylvania State University, Museum of Art, John F. Kensett Drawings, exh. cat., 1978, text by John Paul Driscoll § Mark White Sullivan, "John F. Kensett: American Landscape Painter," Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1981, with bibliography § Worcester (Mass.) Art Museum and others, John Frederick Kensett: An American Master, exh. cat., 1985, ed. Susan E. Strickler (copublished with W. W. Norton, New York), with essays by John Paul Driscoll, John K. Howat, Dianne Dwyer, and Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, appendix listing pictures in artist’s estate and "last summer’s work" given Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bibliography.
