Study of Beeches

Study of Beeches, painted in 1872 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, represents an unusual departure from Kensett's characteristic open landscape and water subjects into the close observation of specific trees. Beech trees have distinctive smooth gray bark and elegant branching structure that had attracted the attention of American painters interested in precise botanical observation. In his final year, Kensett worked in multiple modes — the reductive Luminist lake and sea paintings coexisting with this more detailed, naturalistic woodland study. The study format signals this as an exercise in observation rather than exhibition work, part of the careful practice that underlay even his most atmospheric finished canvases.

Oil on canvas with more textural attention than Kensett's open-water Luminist paintings — the beech bark's smooth gray surface and the leaves' varied fall light requiring different handling than the flat horizontal expanses of lake and sky. The woodland setting creates dappled light conditions quite distinct from his characteristic open-air luminosity.