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The White Mountains from Shelburne
Samuel L. Gerry (1813–91)
Signed, lower right: “GERRY”; undated, 1860
Oil on canvas (14 1/4 x 22 in.)
Courtesy of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, gift of Matthew Vassar
1864.1.32
The Rev. Elias Lyman Magoon commissioned this painting from Gerry in 1860 for his growing art collection. Magoon was born in New Hampshire but moved to Albany, New York, to lead a congregation there. He was a well-known collector of works by American artists and eventually sold his art collection to Matthew Vassar, a brewer from Poughkeepsie, to start an art gallery at Vassar College. A similar view identified as Mounts Madison and Washington from the north is pictured twice in Thomas Starr King’s book, The White Hills, to which Gerry referred when writing to Magoon about the commission.
