This small, highly finished oil on board painting may have been an unsold work painted for sale from Miller’s studio, or it could have been one of the many paintings in his own collection that were passed down in his family following the artist’s death.
The loose paint application is nevertheless highly wrought, with several colors layered on one another to create the trees, grass, and water. Miller also varies textures, so that the impasto on the trees contrasts with the thinner layers of blended colors in the sky. His handling of the foreground rocks as gray masses with a thin layer of white across the top for highlights, and his elaborate layers of foliage resemble stylistically his work for Alexander Hargraeves Brown now in the Public Archives of Canada (see, for instance, catalogue number CR# 368C, Approaching Buffalo) and suggest that this oil was completed around the same time (ca. 1867).
The artist; by descent to Louisa Whyte Norton; [Old Print Shop, New York, NY, 1947]; [Edward Eberstadt and Sons, New York, NY]; William R. Coe, Oyster Bay, MD; present owner by gift
