Item #AT-0135 "Summer Storm Hudson River " After George Gunther Hartwick

Also known as Gunther Hartwick (dates unknown death 1899), the artist was active between 1847 and 1869 but painted up to the late 19th Century. Hartwick carried on the landscape traditions of the seventeenth-century Dutch, George Henry Durrie and Thomas Birch. He was in New Haven, Connecticut in the 1840s. Outstanding compositions, contrasting textures and considerable animation distinguish his works. He achieved a great, powdery softness when brushing in areas of fallen snow on trees. One particular motif that Hartwick used was a hole cut through a frozen river surrounded by small blocks of ice. His later works took on look of the upcoming tonalist works of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He exhibited two landscapes in the American Art-Union in 1849.

Hartwick’s canvases may be found in the following institutions: the Chicago Historical Society, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the Malden (MA) Public Library, but most are in private collections.