Dry Brook

McEntee remained loyal to the linear technique of the Hudson River School throughout his career, even when American landscape painting became dominated by the subjective expression of George Inness and his followers. He preferred to execute his drawings in pencil with touches of white gouache to suggest, as here, dappled and filtered sunlight penetrating the forest cover to highlight the tree trunks and relieve their forms. Like most Hudson River School artists, McEntee was attracted to the pale and pliant character of the white birch, which could be exploited to such telling effect in the foreground of landscape paintings The “Dry Brook” mentioned in the inscription refers either to a tributary of the east branch of the upper Delaware River in the southern Catskills or to a section of the town of Hardenburgh, which McEntee visited frequently after 1872.