The Summit of the Cliff, Smoky Mountains vs. The Summit of the Cliff (Western NC)

Like his near-contemporary Winslow Homer, the Baltimore-born Alfred Wordsworth Thompson began his career working as a Civil War “special artist” for Harper’s Weekly, before seeking further training in Paris. He returned to America, in 1868, and established a studio in New York, where he came to specialize in scenes of both contemporary rural life and historical subjects—especially in Virginia. The Summit of the Cliff plein-air sketch—so different from Thompson’s meticulously academic studio productions—apparently relates to an ambitious “large landscape of western North Carolina scenery” that an anonymous reviewer observed on a visit to the artist’s New York studio. Identifying the all-but-finished canvas as representing a broad valley with Mount Pisgah and Cold Mountain in the background, the writer praised his technique: “Mr. Thompson combines in his style much of the solidity of the French with the charming detail of the American school, and in all that he does he gives evidence of the thorough training he has received in his preliminary studies.” It is likely that The Summit of the Cliff is one such study for this now unlocated composition. Reconstruction-era paintings of Southern Whites are rare in the history of American art.