Monadnock in Winter

Monadnock mountain rises impressively near the property once occupied by Abbott Thayer at Dublin, New Hampshire. Thayer was profoundly attracted by the mountain, spending many hours on its wooded slopes studying the flora and fauna of the region.

The artist preferred to paint Mount Monadnock during the early morning hours when its peak was struck by sunlight. He emphasized the distant drama of the rising sun by leaving the foreground of the canvas broadly painted and cast into shadow. The artist's distinctive violet and green tones in this area convey a sense of extreme stillness and cold.

Like many of his contemporaries, Thayer studied the seasonal changes as they were reflected in nature, and he recorded them in numerous paintings of Monadnock Mountain.  While he was executing this canvas, for example, he described how he wanted to capture the exact "value of the trees and snow." Thayer's belief in such fidelity to nature was expressed in a letter to Freer in which he called this painting "a winter portrait of Monadnock at sunrise."

The artist was, nevertheless, an expressive painter who depicted far more than just the facts of visual reality. He wanted his works to grip the viewer and convey to him the same emotions felt by the artist in the presence of nature. Thayer told Freer in fact, that he "dreamed" that Monadnock in Winter was "one of my most vivid landscapes or perhaps the vividest."