The Art Gallery at the Athenaeum contains one of America’s unique collections of 19th century American paintings. Each week we will feature a different work on this page. We hope educators will use this link as a tool to enrich their art curriculum. Vermonters and other citizens throughout the nation can now visit our gallery in this new, intimate, and informative way.
The text describing each painting was written by Mark D. Mitchell, Assistant Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the National Academy Museum. The digital images were prepared by Robert Jenks of Jenks Studio of Photography in St. Johnsbury, VT.
Please note that the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum prohibits the use of images from its collection in public exhibition, broadcast, electronic reproduction or publication in any form without prior written permission from the institution. If you would like to reproduce any of the Art Gallery images in any form, contact Irwin Gelber at 748-8291, extension 307.
Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait (1819-1905), British-American
Coming Home, 1872
OIL ON CANVAS , 13 1/2 X 21 1/2inches
Gift of Horace Fairbanks
Genre painters such as Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait often excelled at recounting stories in visual form. In this scene, the artist has arrayed his subjects from the upper right, where a mounted herdsman rides behind his cattle on their way home from pasture for the evening, around to the lower left where a minor drama unfolds. The lead cows have come across a group of ducks, and the ducklings' mother flaps her wings in defense of her family. Tail's animal scenes, such as this one, enjoyed great popularity with American audiences, which was only enhanced by his works' frequent reproduction and widespread sale in print form by the publishing house of Currier & Ives.