Background
John Frederick Kensett was born on March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, United States. The son of Thomas Kensett, an English engraver who had immigrated to America, and Elizabeth Daggett.
John Frederick Kensett was born on March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, United States. The son of Thomas Kensett, an English engraver who had immigrated to America, and Elizabeth Daggett.
Kensett attended school at Cheshire Academy and studied engraving with his father, later with his uncle, Alfred Daggett, a banknote engraver.
Kensett worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, then went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City.
He gradually took up painting, a bent greatly stimulated by travel abroad. He accompanied Asher Durand to Europe in 1840 and remained there after Durand's return, spending several years in England and Italy. Kensett exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, in 1845.
On returning to America in 1848 he began a successful career as a landscape painter. Showing more variety than many of his contemporaries commanded, he took an interest in stark beach scenes and rocky coasts in the neighborhood of Newport, Rhode Island, as well as in the many aspects of the Catskill Mountains. His early work showed the careful technique of his training as an engraver; but in later years he became more interested in hazy, atmospheric effects, immersing the viewer more deeply in the spirit of nature. In 1851 Kensett painted a monumental canvas of Mount Washington that has become an icon of White Mountain art.
Kensett's style evolved gradually, from the traditional Hudson River School manner in the 1850s into the more refined Luminist style in his later years. By the early 1870s Kensett was spending considerable time at his home on Contentment Island, on Long Island Sound near Darien, Connecticut. Many of his works from 1870-1872 were unfinished.
Kensett contracted pneumonia and died of heart failure on December 14, 1872 in New York City, United States. He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, United States.
John Frederick Kensett was best known as the leader of the second generation of the Hudson River school artists. He was widely acclaimed and financially successful during his lifetime. His most noted work was "Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway".
Currently, his works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, District of Columbia, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, among others.
Lake George
Paradise Rocks, Newport
Upper Mississippi
Trout Fisherman
Sunset with Cows
Eaton's Neck, Long Island
Lake George
The Old Pine, Darien, Connecticut
Lake George
Near Newport, Rhode Island
Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway
View from Cozzen's Hotel near West Point, N.Y.
View of the Beach at Beverly, Massachusetts
View of the Shrewsbury River, New Jersey
Hudson River
Kensett was a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1859, the founder and president of the Artists' Fund Society, and a founder and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870.
In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe.
