John (Frederick) Kensett

Painter, born in Cheshire, Connecticut, USA. He began his career as an engraver, printing maps and banknotes in New York City. In 1840 he travelled in Europe, returning to New York in 1847. From then on he painted the detailed and luminous landscapes which made him a leader of the Hudson River School from 1850–70, as seen in ‘Lake George’ (1869).

Artist John Frederick Kensett was born on March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, and died on December 14, 1872 in New York City. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, after which he went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City.

In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe in order to study painting.

After establishing his studio and settling in New York, Kensett traveled extensively throughout the Northeast and the Colorado Rockies as well as making several trips back to Europe.

Kensett is best known for his landscape of upstate New York and New England and seascapes of coastal New Jersey, Long Island and New England.

In 1851 Kensett painted a monumental canvas of Mount Washington that has become an icon of White Mountain art. Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway was purchased by the American Art Union, made into an engraving by James Smillie, and distributed to 13,000 Art Union subscribers throughout the country. This single painting by Kensett helped to popularize the White Mountain region of New Hampshire.

Kensett's style evolved gradually, from the traditional Hudson River School manner in the 1850s into the more refined Luminist style in his later years. By the early 1870s Kensett was spending considerable time at his home on Contentment Island, on Long Island Sound near Darien, Connecticut. It was during this time that Kensett painted some of his finest works. Many of these were spare and luminist seascapes, the prime example being Eaton's Neck, Long Island (1872) now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Kensett contracted pneumonia (perhaps during the attempted rescue of the wife of his friend and fellow artist Vincent Colyer in Long Island Sound) and died of heart failure at his New York studio in December of 1872.