Interpretation
Moore’s exquisite watercolor landscapes and nature studies were inspired by the teachings of John Ruskin, who singled out watercolor as the ideal medium with which to celebrate nature—specifically and accurately—as the embodiment of the divine. Created relatively early in Moore’s career, while he was living in the Catskill Mountains, Snow Squall expressively captures a wintry landscape at twilight, with the arc of clouds above signifying a passing storm. The same undulating forms reappear in the later and more minutely rendered Mount Washington, where the iconic New Hampshire peak rises with quiet grandeur above an idyllic valley as observed in late autumn.
Thanks to the persistence and dedication of pioneering director Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (1922–46), the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading repositories of Moore’s work, together with Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, where Moore served
as its first director (1896–1901).
as its first director (1896–1901).
Information
- Title
- Mount Washington
- Object Number
- x1955-69
- Medium
- Watercolor and touches of graphite
- Dates
- 1872
- Dimensions
- 16 × 23 cm (6 5/16 × 9 1/16 in.) mat: 27.9 × 35.6 cm (11 × 14 in.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Miss Elizabeth Huntington Moore, the artist's daughter, presented by Mrs. Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
- Culture
- American
- Place depicted
- North America, United States, Washington
- Signatures
- Artists monogram and dated in purple ink, lower center (on rock in foreground): CHM '72
- Inscriptions
- Inscribed, on verso of cardboard mount: CHM | 1869 E.H.M [in Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.'s hand]
- Materials
The artist's daughter Elizabeth Huntington Moore; Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
- "Recent acquisitions," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 15, no. 1 (1956): p. 26-27., p. 27
- Frank Jewett Mather, Charles Herbert Moore, landscape painter, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957)., p. 39, fig. 23
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 129, cat. no. 26; pp. 130–131 (illus.); p. 336, checklist no. 780
- West to Wesselmann: American Drawings and Watercolors from the Princeton University Art Museum (October 16, 2004–July 23, 2006)
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