Lot 113: FRANCIS SHEDD FROST Am. 1825 -1902

FRANCIS SHEDD FROST Am. 1825 -1902 Fishing in a Mountain Stream Oil on canvas 16 × 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)

16 × 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)

Oil on canvas

Footnote to an article in American Art Review, vol. 6, no. 4, 1994, pp.146 -157: For many years it was thought that Frost's middle name was Shedd, which is incorrect. For biographical information, see Jourdan Houston, American Art Review, vol. 6, no. 4, 1994, pp. 146 -57. Review [Barridoff Galleies thanks Michel Hersen for this reference when the artist's name first appeared on the auction home page.] From the a forementioned article: Francis Seth Frost was a well-respected landscape painter who worked during the second half of the nineteenth century. His reputation appears to have been overshadowed by his one-time teacher and traveling companion, the artist Albert Bierstadt, whose painting Echo Lake, Franconia Mountains, New Hampshire, 1861, is in the Museum's collection. Frost's style and his connection with Bierstadt link him to the Hudson River School of landscape painters. Both Frost and Bierstadt painted scenes of the American West as well as the mountain regions in and around New England. Although only one photograph taken by Frost has come to light, he was also known as a highly proficient photographer. Born in West Cambridge, Massachusetts, Frost ventured to California in 1849 at the age of 23, drawn there by the discovery of gold the year before. Besides accumulating a large amount of gold dust worth four years' wages, he made sketches of his travels, which he brought back upon his return to Massachusetts in 1851, exhibiting paintings based on them in 1855. Frost also traveled extensively throughout the northeast, painting scenes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Mainecoast, the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River Valley of New York State. Currently, the location of all but about a dozen of Frost's paintings is unknown.