Lake George

For my research paper, I chose John Frederick Kensett's Lake George, which is a landscape painting which was painted in 1869. The foreground of this painting shows a close up of the lake shore. Some rocks and a fallen tree trunk or branch is shown in the right hand corner of the painting. The foreground is very dense and uses darker browns and green hues. These colors are used to show a murkiness associated with the beginning of the water and the end of the land shore.

The middle ground of this work is the lake itself with a couple small islands. Some islands may have been omitted from the painting by Kensett the show more of the lake itself from his vantage point. Again, the water is shown as being murky with a brownish hue. The artist does a good job of showing the reflection of the islands on the water. The water in the middle of the painting isn't as murky as the water on either side of it, shown with a little blue and some white coloring. It must have been a bit breezy on the day that Kensett did this painting because ripples can be seen on the water in the middle ground.

In the background, mountains are shown, with the sky above. There is an overcast shown which may explain the unusual murkiness of the water in the fore and middle ground. Some blue sky is poking through the clouds in the left hand corner. A variety of blues, grays and whites are used in the clouds. The mountain farthest away from the vantage point can easily be identified as being far away due to the slightly lighter colors used. Kensett also portrays the shadows cast by the clouds on the top of the mountain with darker colors. The tall grasses on the opposite shoreline can also be seen in the background at the base of the mountains.

As far as implied line is concerned, the painting zig zags from foreground to background. The lake shore is on the bottom right hand corner, the middle ground shows the islands on the left, and the background shows the mountains mostly to the right and the sky above them. Kensett most likely wants the viewer to move his/her eyes across the entire painting to take it all in one stage at a time.

This painting is very realistic considering it is a landscape portrait. The painting is very detailed in showing the colors in the sky and the reflection of the islands on the water. The mountain farthest away from the vantage point also uses less dense coloring to show how far away it is. This painting is not abstract at all everything is shown just as it was probably seen at the time the work was done.

This painting does not show a whole lot of brush strokes. It's about as real as it gets as far as a landscape goes. The texture is fluid and not very rigid in depicting the scenery.

The painting itself was done in 1869, which was just after the end of the civil war; The entire nation was changing around him. Even after all the blood shed from the war, he was still able to illustrate the beauty of this country in his painting. There were so many battlefields and historic sites that he could have painted, but he chose to paint Lake George. Reconstruction was taking place in the old South with newly elected democrat Ulysses S. Grant in office. Relations between the south and north were still very shaky during this time which might explain why Kensett's work was primarily focused in northern America

Kensett was originally an engraver, which was taught