William Trost Richards (American, 1833-1905)

The Otter Cliffs, Mount Desert Island, Maine,1866
Signed and dated lower right ""WM T Richards / 1866""
Oil on panel backed canvas

36 1/4 x 29 inches

Provenance:This painting was purchased by the present owners father at a small country auction in Vermont in the mid 1960's.

William Trost Richards returned from Germany in the spring of 1866. He traveled to Mount Desert Island, Maine, perhaps encouraged by fellow artists Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Jervis McEntee and William Stanley Haseltine. This is one of the few paintings extant from that trip. It signifies an important transition from pure landscape painting to his signature coastal scenes, a subject that would occupy him for the rest of his prolific career.

Estimate: $40,000-100,000

The property of a Georgia Family

It seems that the painting has never been restored. It may have received a few extra tacks around the edges, but the painting has certainly never been cleaned and there has been no apparent restoration to the surface. The stretcher has a wooden panel incorporated between the stretcher bars, which is unusual but has been seen in more notable pictures from this period. In this case, a fairly common phenomenon known as staining has occurred to the paint layer. This is caused by interference by the sizing of the canvas, which has become more prominent and visible on the surface. This staining can be seen on the left side of the canvas in the sky as well as to a considerably lesser degree on the right side in the rocks and in the lower left corner. The painting certainly does not need to be lined. It is dirty and will respond well to cleaning. There are also a couple of scuffs to the varnish in the upper portion of the picture that have not disturbed the paint layer itself. These scuffs will easily be removed during cleaning. When it is cleaned, some retouching will probably be required, despite improvements that can be made to the visual effects of the staining during cleaning. The work is in lovely condition. -Simon Parkes, May 2012