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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
William Louis Sonntag

Fishermen in the Adirondacks

ca. 1860 - 1870
Oil on canvas.
91.4 x 142.2 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1981.21
)
Room 31
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
When William Sonntag set up a studio in New York in 1857, the Hudson River School was at its height, and he not surprisingly fell under its influence. Following Thomas Doughty, Thomas Cole, and Asher B. Durand, the Cincinnati artist conveyed a belief in the wonder of nature in idealised views: grand sweeps of landscape done in detailed brushwork. By the 1860s he reached the peak of his powers and maturity in what has been called his "classic phase", exemplified by Fishermen in the Adirondacks. Working in a large, panoramic format he created a number of scenes that correspond to a Claudian composition: a central body of water is flanked by trees at left and right and a hill behind. They go by titles that indicate regional identity. In truth, however, there is little to distinguish them in terms of geographic specificity but the character of the hills or the configuration of the body of water: in the Adirondacks, lake scenes and angular peaks; in the White Mountains, serene silhouettes; and in numerous Catskill paintings, the famed Hudson. And he almost never portrayed a specific peak or other landmark, as did most of his contemporaries. Rather these pictures are intended to evoke a particular state of nature, not a place. Raised in Ohio, Sonntag was acutely sensitive to the balance between man and nature found on the frontier, which he signified by a variety of formal motifs found in this picture.

On the far shore of the scene there appears a log cabin with a curl of smoke, the primary symbol of man's encroachment into the wilderness. It appears in a clearing marked by ax-cut stumps, a frequent landscape motif which Barbara Novak has interpreted as an additional reference to man's conquest and settlement of the land. What became Sonntag's signature symbol is the figure of the fishermen, prominent here on the rocky outcropping along the lakeshore in the central foreground. One stands and the other sits and holds a long fishing pole. These stock figures, which populate a large percentage of his panoramas, provide a key to the meaning of his landscapes.

When Sir Isaak Walton's enormously popular book The Complete Angler came out in an American version, its editor Rev. George Bethune clarified its terminology: "an angler, kind reader, is not a fisherman, who plies his calling for a livelihood, careless in what way he gets his scaly rewards." Similarly, Sonntag's figures are not struggling to catch enough fish to eat, or to earn a living; instead they take their recreation. Angling is meant to soothe, to refine. The figures stand with their backs to the viewer, contemplating the glories of the peaceful landscape, and communing with one another through this encounter with nature. The viewer's study of the canvas, in turn, is meant to evoke a similar chain of responses.

Katherine E. Manthorne

19th Century19th Century. North American Painting. LuminismPaintingOilcanvas
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Fishermen in the Adirondacks. Pescadores en los Adirondacks, c. 1860-1870
Fishermen in the Adirondacks
William Louis Sonntag

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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Fishermen in the Adirondacks. Pescadores en los Adirondacks, c. 1860-1870
Fishermen in the Adirondacks
William Louis Sonntag

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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