William Morris Hunt

Niagara Falls

1878
charcoal and brush and charcoal wash; framing lines in charcoal

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In the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland · as of July 2026

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

Hunt studied with the famous French painter of peasant scenes, Jean-Francois Millet (1814–1875), and played a major role in introducing the loose brushwork of advanced French painting into American art. In 1878, only a year before his tragic suicide, Hunt visited Niagara Falls. There he produced a remarkable group of pastels, charcoal drawings, and paintings in which the physical particulars of the scene appear to dissolve into a near-abstract pattern of water and mist.

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