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Sunset on the Sea

1872
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 761
The group of paintings called "The Last Summer's Work," left behind in Kensett's summer studio at Darien, Connecticut, at his death in December 1872, was the subject of great wonder and fascination among the artist's admirers, friends, and eulogists who gathered in tribute to him later that month at the Century Club. Their wonder was a factor partly of sheer novelty, for none of the works had been seen before, and as a body they were interpreted to be Kensett's ultimate testament of his vision and sensibility. To the assembled, however, none of those pictures better represented the absolute expression of the artist's distilling and suggestive eye than this, in which he eliminated any evidence of landfall but, in a way reminiscent of few artists but J. M. W. Turner, introduced a radiant sun suspended above the open ocean. "It is pure light and water, a bridal of the sea and sky," averred one of the eulogists, and asked, "Is it presumption in a poor novice in art like me, to say that this is a great picture?"

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Sunset on the Sea
  • Artist: John Frederick Kensett (American, Cheshire, Connecticut 1816–1872 New York)
  • Date: 1872
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 28 x 41 1/8 in. (71.1 x 104.5 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of Thomas Kensett, 1874
  • Object Number: 74.3
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

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[Photographs of paintings by J. F. Kensett]
John Frederick Kensett
1874 (?)
Lake George, 1872, John Frederick Kensett American, Oil on canvas, American
Lake George, 1872
John Frederick Kensett
1872
Seated female figures, train in left background, ship in right background (bank note design)
John Frederick Kensett
ca. 1835–72
Bank Note Element: A Woman in Classical Robes Embracing a Large Broken Stone Letter "I", with a Distant Sailing Ship to the Left and a Factory to the Right
John Frederick Kensett
1835–72
Bank Note Element: Three Cupids with Tendrils
John Frederick Kensett
1835–72

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