The Aberjona River, Winchester

In his many paintings of the Aberjona, Cole was most influenced by the Barbizon School artist Charles-François Daubigny, whom he had met at Charles-Emile Jacque’s Paris studio. Like Daubigny, Cole worked outdoors and suggested the features of the landscape with a broad painterly style. He recorded the reflection of the turbulent pink clouds in the river as had Daubigny in numerous waterway images. However, the quick strokes of green and yellow, rendering the effects of light on the vegetation in the foreground, reveal that Cole was also aware of French Impressionist techniques. Thus Cole, near the end of his career, recorded his native landscape in a style derived from both Barbizon and Impressionist art.

Cole exhibited a painting entitled Abbajona River, Mass. at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. It is likely, however, that this was the larger (but almost identical) canvas now owned by the Winchester Public Library, Massachusetts, rather than the MFA’s picture.

This text was adapted from Janet L. Comey’s entry in Erica E. Hirshler et al., Impressionism Abroad: Boston and French Painting, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005).