WHITTREDGE, WORTHINGTON

born May 22, 1820, Springfield, Ohio, U.S. died Feb. 25, 1910, Summit, N.J. in full Thomas Worthington Whittredge American landscape painter who, unlike most of the Hudson River school painters, selectively composed his landscape scenes, rather than painting precise patches of nature. Though originally a house painter, Whittredge became a portraitist and also began painting landscapes. He spent five years in Dsseldorf and five years in Rome, where he posed for Emanuel Leutze, who painted him as Washington in Washington Crossing the Delaware. On his return to the U.S. (1859), the varied and rich American landscape awakened his deepest sentiments. In 1865 he went on a 2,000-mile government inspection tour of the Rocky Mountains with the landscape painters John Frederick Kensett and Sanford R. Gifford. His observations on this journey resulted in huge canvases of vast panoramic views like Crossing the Platte (1870; Century Association, New York City). His most characteristic works are his poetic forest interiors with their depths of feathery fern and mossy rocks dappled with leaf-filtered light; e.g., The Trout Pool and Camp Meeting (both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). Whittredge did not paint landscapes for nature's sake alone but chose places he loved, giving his works a personal subject matter.