Gathering Storm on Long Island Sound

The simplicity of line, form and arrangement that marks Kensett's late coastal landscapes lends to most of them an appealing repose. Here the mood shifts to subtle tension, in the dialogue between the spiny limbs of the vigilant pines and the enclosing sky. Kensett was a master in the expressive, if understated, use of trees. In this painting, their iconic, even anthropomorphic, qualities, silhouetted against the brooding firmament, evoke Rembrandt's etching, "The Three Trees," a classic of western landscape imagery that Kensett would have known well.

Credit: Gift of Thomas Kensett, 1874