The Hay Wain, Granby, Connecticut

Aaron Draper Shattuck began his career as a portrait painter in Boston, Massachusetts and by 1852 moved to New York to study at the National Academy of Design. While at the National Academy of Design, Shattuck turned to landscape painting and would become a renowned member of the second generation of the Hudson River School. By the 1870s, Shattuck turned his focus from the untamed landscape to pastoral subject matter inspired by summer trips to upstate New York and throughout New England. The artist also sought inspiration from the environs in and around his farm in Granby, Connecticut. The present work, executed circa 1870, illustrates the artist's fascination with natural detail and the effects of soft light and creates a poetic image of nature indicative of the later artists of the Hudson River School.