William Louis Sonntag, Sr. (1822-1900) Lived/Active; Ohio and New York
Landscape View of Mountains and Inlet
Signed (l.l.): Sonntag
Oil on canvas
12 ½” x 27”, 20” x 32 ½” with frame
Over-all in excellent condition, retaining original incised gilt frame.
Provenance: Private collection, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
William Sonntag was primarily self-taught, yet became one of the central figures of the Hudson River School. His early landscapes were executed during painting excursions from Cincinnati to the Ohio River Valley and in Kentucky and West Virginia (1856-1859).
By the mid-1860s he was painting Mt. Adams, the Alleghenies, Shenandoah, Bethlehem (NH), and the Adirondacks. At the end of his life, he painted throughout the White Mountains.
This panoramic view depicting cattle with a figure along an inlet and a luminous sky exemplifies Sonntag’s work.