White Mountains, NH (Mount Madison)

Dr. Edward Ruggles (New York, 1817?-1867)
Oil on board
Circa: 1860
Size: 4 3/4" x 6 5/8" (sight) | 8 1/2" x 10 1/2" (frame)
A fall view of Mt. Madison from the Androscoggin River, (Mt. Washington is the hump to the right). Ruggles captures the famous fall foliage of New England and a beautiful light as it comes through some clouds and hits the mountain. Ruggles was a successful Brooklyn doctor who retired from practice to become a painter. His small, luminescent paintings were known as "Ruggles' Gems." He was a family friend and physician to Walt Whitman.

From New York Times, March 12, 1867 "He [Ruggles] appreciated nature and American scenery as few artists have had the soul to do; and he put them on the canvas with the delicacy, brilliancy and purity never surpassed....His relentless hatred of charlatanism, in art as well as in life; his fierce denunciations of pretenders, his pride and independence of spirit, were well-known to all who met him, whether artist or not."

Notes: The Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia has a John Frederick Kensett that shows a similar view. A writer in the Boston Traveller in 1897 wrote of this view, "It is one of the loveliest pictures not only in the White Mountain region, but anywhere in the world."

Provenance: Mr. Finley J. Shepherd & Helen Gould Shepherd, 579 5th Ave, NY, New York. Helen Gould was the daughter of the infamous railroad developer Jay Gould. Click here to learn about the Gould Mansion at 579 5th Ave.

Condition: Excellent. Framed in modern gold gilt frame.

Price: SOLD

ALL ITEMS GUARANTEED AS REPRESENTED