“A Lake in a Mountain Valley” is typical of Thomas Doughty’s idealized American landscapes. The topography, with rolling mountains and steep banks, corresponds closely to the features seen in Doughty’s paintings of the Palisades on the Hudson River, and may also represent that area. From 1832-37, Doughty took a number of sketching trips along the northern coast of Massachusetts and New Hampshire and to the Adirondacks and the Catskills with other Boston painters. He may have drawn inspiration for this painting from one of these excursions, however very few of his sketches and sketchbooks exist due to a catastrophic fire that destroyed the Doughty family records.

The centrally positioned barren tree, with its twisted limbs lit from behind by a pink sky, and the cluster of small sail boats placed in the distance to emphasize scale, are common dramatic pictorial conventions. As he so often did in his paintings, Doughty here tipped the perspective of his landscape, thus increasing both the depth of the work and the panoramic effect of the view. The viewer is unsure of his own vantage point in the scene. Doughty presents his painting as a window or vista to be viewed, rather than a location to be physically or subjectively occupied by the spectator. With the inclusion of the sailboats, which represent both commerce and recreation, “A Lake in a Mountain Valley” both effectively illustrates Doughty’s mastery over traditional painterly conventions and represents man’s harmonic relationship with the natural world.

Naomi H. Slipp

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