John Frederick Kensett, Elm, 1862
John Frederick Kensett (American 1816–1872)
Elm, 1862
Graphite on paper, 11 1/8 × 8 1/8 in (28.26 × 20.64 cm)
Carnegie Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. George R. Gibbons, Jr. Fund, 84.10
Drawings tend to appear in groups when a bunch of them from an artist’s estate come up for sale. For a brief time, they’re easily obtainable and then they become virtually impossible to find. When a large group of drawings by John F. Kensett came up for sale, all the major museums and collectors of 19th-century art descended on Babcock Gallery to purchase one. Some of the best were already gone by the time I arrived, but nonetheless, what was left was very nice. I remember spending several hours with the Carnegie’s assistant curator, Liz Prelinger, a wonderfully discriminating and exacting connoisseur, looking through the group trying to pick out the very best. After endless deliberations and changes of mind, we settled on this one. The manager of Babcock galleries was a quiet, polite, somewhat elderly gentleman named Michael St. Clair. I later learned that he had studied painting as a young man with Thomas Hart Benton, but didn’t know enough to ask him about that at the time.
Bibliography
Henry Adams, American Drawings and Watercolors, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, exhibition catalog, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, May l985, pp. 46-48.