Solitude

1818

Joshua Shaw
American, born England, c. 1777–1860

Joshua Shaw was one of the earliest landscape painters to work in America, practicing in Baltimore and Philadelphia upon emigrating from England in 1817. Shaw excelled at painting Romantic scenes of imaginary Arcadian landscapes. In Solitude, a male figure reclines in the foreground, with the contemplative pose and seminude state of a poet or philosopher inspired by the beauty of nature. In addition to idealized compositions such as this one, Shaw painted landscapes in watercolor based on observations of various locales along the Eastern Seaboard. Shaw was a generation older than Thomas Cole and other artists of the country’s first school of landscape painting, the Hudson River School, which emerged in the second quarter of the 19th century.

Status: On View, Gallery 169
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Joshua Shaw
Title: Solitude
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1818
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 54.5 × 78.7 cm (21 1/2 × 31 in.)
Credit Line: Through prior acquisition of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection; the George F. Harding Collection
Reference Number: 2004.489
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/183293/manifest.json

Annual Report (Art Insitute of Chicago, 2004–2005), p. 16.

Estate of Ms. Betty Washington Whiting, Baltimore, MD, until 2003; with Christie’s New York, March 30-31, 2004, lot 34; private collection; with Menconi & Schoelkopf FIne Art, New York, 2004; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2004.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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