This summer visitors to the National Academy Museum in New York City have the chance to see dozens of pieces by William Trost Richards, an important plein air artist from the 19th century, on public display for the first time.

In 1954, the estate of Anna Richards Brewster, Trost Richards’s daughter, gave the National Academy more than 100 oil paintings, watercolors, and other works on paper. The current show, which is on view until September 8, includes a selection from this bequest, plus four Trost Richards paintings from private collections and a portrait of Trost Richards painted by Anna Richards Brewster.

“This exhibition offers the academy the opportunity to highlight for the first time the full breadth of the stunning group of work by Richards given by the artist’s daughter, and reveal his unique vision and mastery of his craft, which has served to place him in the forefront of American landscape painters of past centuries,” says Bruce Weber, senior curator at the National Academy.

Among the pieces on display is a group of drawings from life of plants found on the artist’s travels through the Adirondacks and the Catskill Mountains, and in the area around his home in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Trost Richards drew them from ground level, in graphite.

Weber will give a talk on the show, titled “William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea,” on July 12 from 3 to 4 p.m. at the museum. For more information, visit the museum’s website.


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