William Trost Richards

Private Collection (acquired by descent from the artist)

Beacon Hill Fine Art, New York (acquired from the above)

Acquired from the above in May 1998 by the present owner

New York, Beacon Hill Fine Art, William Trost Richards: Rediscovered — Oils, Watercolors, and Drawings from the Artist's Family, 1996-97, no. 66, p. 23, illustrated in color

Born in Philadelphia in 1833, William Trost Richards emerged as one of the most rigorous naturalists of nineteenth-century American art. Although often associated with the Hudson River School, Richards was equally shaped by the American Pre-Raphaelite movement and its adherence to the aesthetic philosophy of John Ruskin. Ruskin preached that “the truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike” (John Ruskin, Modern Painters (Library ed.), vol. I, London, 1903, pp. 145-46). His sentiments deeply resonated with Richards and informed his lifelong dedication to precise natural observation.

In 1881, after many years spent traveling and recording the New England coast, Richards established a permanent home in Jamestown, Rhode Island, where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. The surrounding coastline became the foundation of his mature work, providing the shifting tides, luminous skies, and atmospheric effects that he studied with exceptional rigor. Jamestown, Looking Toward Newport depicts the waters directly north of his home, with the town of Newport visible at the right edge of the composition.

Richards presents a tranquil moment at an isolated pier, where two figures prepare to board a sailboat. A smaller skiff rests at the left, and another sailboat drifts beyond them on the calm water. The serenity of the scene reflects Richards’s methodical approach to studying coastal light and maritime movement. The present lot exemplifies the refined naturalism that distinguishes Richards within nineteenth-century American landscape painting. Rather than adopting the overt romanticism associated with many Hudson River painters, Richards pursued a clarity rooted in close observation and factual precision. The result is a work that unites meticulous detail with atmospheric subtlety and that stands as a compelling example of his late Rhode Island period.