Beschreibung:

Robert Havell Jr. American, 1793-1878 View of the Old Dutch Church, Tarrytown, New York Oil on canvas 22 x 30 1/8 inches Provenance: Henry Peck Havell, grand-nephew of the artist Thence by descent to the present owner In 1857, Robert Havell Jr. moved his family from Sing-Sing, New York, farther south to Tarrytown (today known as Sleepy Hollow), in Westchester County. Building a home with as commanding a view of the Hudson River as in his prior residence, he is said to have painted from his bedroom window. Dating from the seventeenth century and constructed of fieldstone, the Old Dutch Church figured prominently in Washington Irving's short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Another, closely related, version of this subject by Havell, View from Tarrytown on the Hudson River, Old Dutch Church and Beekman Manor House, was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1866. Presenting the historic church building from a slightly different vantage point, the present work most likely dates from about the same period. The Old Dutch Church was an especially appropriate theme for the artist, who was buried in the adjacent cemetery. Although Havell is thought to have painted as many as one hundred fifty paintings in his lifetime, these were generally executed for his own pleasure. Descending in his family, The Old Dutch Church, Tarrytown is rendered in a charmingly naive manner, quite different in sensibility from the artist's majestic vistas of the Hudson River. C
Lined. Flattened craquelure and cupping. Scattered inpaint, as well as inpaint along edges where frame caused rubbing. Varnish layer appears to have been selectively cleaned, most evidently in foliage of second tree from left. Frame is 19th-century.