THOMAS DOUGHTY (1793-1856)

Sally Mills writes, "Doughty's view of landscape was a reflective one; avoiding the wilding and tempestuous side of nature, he chose more often to portray her moods of lyrical calm, as evidenced in his View of the St. Croix River. His vividly painted glimpse of that river, which flows as the border between Maine and New Brunswick, seems based in observation. Yet, the composition, in its simple contrasts of light and dark, land and water, foreground and distance, conforms to standard late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century notions of the picturesque." (The American Canvas: Paintings from the Collection of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, New York, 1989, p. 64)