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Mounts Madison and Adams
Horace Wolcott Robbins Jr. (1842-1904)
Signed lower right: H W Robbins
Not dated, probably 1863-65
Oil on canvas, 30 x 54 inches
Private collection
Horace Wolcott Robbins depicted life in the White Mountains as a civilized Eden. A close interpreter of nature, Robbins created a luminous, early fall scene of cleared hillsides overlooking the winding Androscoggin, with houses nestled in the trees and a luggage-laden stagecoach carrying tourists toward Jefferson. Beneath the jagged silhouettes of Mount Madison and Mount Adams, the road, stagecoach, dwellings, and cleared fields stand as symbols of the civilizing works of man existing in harmonious unity with nature. Artists' depictions of White Mountain wilderness as a sun-filled, bucolic countryside, removed from the squalor of cities and devoid of reference to the harsh realities of mountain life, established a pastoral and picturesque ideal in the popular imagination that became synonymous with the region.
