Summer Day on Conesus Lake

Kensett’s tranquil scene on Lake Conesus, the westernmost of New York State’s eleven Finger Lakes, creates a setting suited to genteel society who enjoyed boating, picnicking, and promenading. The area around the lake was transformed over a century of industrialization as Indigenous Seneca communities were forcibly removed from their land during the American Revolution, and white settlers flocked to the region attracted by the fertile soil and abundant forests suitable for timber. Lake Conesus became a popular summer resort, which Kensett visited with his friend and patron Robert M. Olyphant, a railroad executive, who owned a home there.