UNIVERSITY PARK, PA.- The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State announced the gift of a stunning landscape painting by William Louis Sonntag (1822-1900) from Hilary Peery Vesell. Hilary donated Autumn Landscape, 1864, in honor of her late father Dr. Elliot Vesell, who served for thirty-two years as the founding chair of Pharmacology at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and twenty-two years as assistant dean of graduate studies at the Penn State College of Medicine. He was recognized as an Evan Pugh Professor, the University's highest honor, and later a professor emeritus. Dr. Vesell published more than 350 articles on pharmacogenomics and received many awards and honorary degrees including an honorary degree from Penn State University.
Dr. Vesell also edited several books and was a scholar of American art. His first publication on American art was written the summer between graduating from Harvard College and starting Harvard Medical School. He wrote the introduction to the Life and Works of Thomas Cole, published by Harvard University Press.
“We are honored to add this major painting by a key figure in the Hudson River School to our collection of American art,” said Erin M. Coe, Director of the Palmer. “Visitors from across Pennsylvania and beyond can experience this extraordinary gift, which greatly enhances our collection of nineteenth-century American landscape paintings.”
Painted in 1864 during the ravages of the Civil War, Autumn Landscape offers a serene counterpoint to the weight of national strife at the time.
Characterized by a vivid palette, intricate brushwork, and subtle light and atmosphere, Sonntag’s Autumn Landscape, spanning over four feet in length, is now one of the largest American landscape paintings in the museum’s collection. This outstanding example of Sonntag’s mature style will be on view in the museum’s Benjamin and Lillian K. Snowiss Galleries of American Art beginning July 2.
Born in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, Sonntag grew up in Cincinnati, traveled around Europe in the early 1850s, and settled in New York by 1857. His career flourished in subsequent decades as he annually exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the leading venue for the nineteenth-century landscape painters known as the Hudson River School.
Sonntag’s sketching trips to Virginia and New England in the early 1860s resulted in some of his finest compositions. His landscape scenes are generally composite compositions, rather than depictions of identifiable sites. Autumn Landscape presents many of the hallmarks that characterized Sonntag’s paintings of the period and elicited praise from viewers. Key elements of his style, such as the variegated foliage surrounding a central body of water, a pair of fishermen on a rugged outcropping at the shoreline, and a rustic log cabin, are all featured in this painting and are similar to Sonntag paintings held by other major public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
