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.
Henry A. Loop (1831-1895), American
Idle Fancies, 1874
OIL ON CANVAS , 34 1/2 x 27 inches
Gift of Horace Fairbanks
Known primarily as a portraitist, Henry Loop gained critical recognition for his idealized genre scenes as well. Transcending the concerns of the everyday, these compositions evoke emotion and intimate symbolic meaning rather than telling a story or portraying an individual sitter.
In Idle Fancies, a young Italian peasant woman waits by a fountain while her pitcher fills. Lost in contemplation, she doesn't notice that it is already overflowing. In the background, a distant landscape and sunset suggest the content of her thoughts: time's passage and faraway places.