Westchester Hills

Pale stones interrupt the near ground, a road curves away through the fields, and a wooded ridge closes much of the distance. Homer Dodge Martin’s Westchester Hills gives ordinary countryside an unusually sustained presence. Its different parts suggest a place shaped by use, while the broad sky and open slopes leave room for a quieter, less determinate response.

Frank Jewett Mather placed the painting probably in autumn 1887, during a visit to George Butler’s farm at Croton Falls, New York. Elizabeth Gilbert Martin recalled sitting beside her husband as he worked on it outdoors. The illustration here comes from Mather’s 1912 book; its monochrome tones convey the arrangement without recording the painting’s original colors. ^{[1] [2]}

A broad view of altered countryside

The landscape contains few large isolated objects. A low wooded ridge extends across the upper middle, while uneven fields occupy the ground below it. Nearer the viewer, stones and rough vegetation make smaller interruptions. The composition depends on the relationship between these different scales rather than on one commanding tree or mountain.

The foreground is visibly divided. A line of pale stones enters from the lower left toward the center; another, darker concentration of stones and growth occupies the right. Between them, the ground opens into a curving route that leads toward the fields. Those divisions make the near space feel traversable, even where its surface remains rough.

The view invites recognition of a worked landscape without identifying every boundary’s practical purpose. Stones have been gathered, a road crosses the ground, and the fields differ from the wooded slope beyond. These visible distinctions establish the presence of human use more clearly than any single figure would.

Mather read a feeling of abandonment in the scene, describing ground no longer fully occupied by people but not wholly reclaimed by nature. That interpretation belongs to his account of the picture. The image supplies the fields, stones and road through which such a reading can develop; it does not itself document the history of a particular farm family. ^[1]

Foreground stones and the route through the fields

The pale faces of the foreground stones are among the strongest accents in the reproduction. Their irregular sizes prevent the line from becoming a simple geometric border. Dark growth gathers between and around them, allowing the stones to remain distinct while connecting them with the rougher ground.

The road follows a different movement. It enters near the lower center and bends away, meeting a lighter passage across the middle ground. Its curve gives the eye a way past the foreground obstacles. The picture’s breadth is therefore experienced through movement as well as through the long ridge.

The two features have complementary roles. The stone line gives a measure of distance through repeated near forms, while the road carries attention toward larger, less differentiated fields. A viewer can move from individual stones to open ground without losing a sense of the space between them.

The darker right-hand bank balances the paler stone line on the left. Together they frame an opening into the landscape, but they do not form a perfectly symmetrical entrance. Their unevenness keeps the route connected with the particular ground rather than making it feel like a diagram imposed upon it.

The wooded ridge and open sky

The ridge gathers many individual trees into one broad mass. Its outline rises and falls gently, with a stronger crest toward the left and a descent toward the right. The sky extends above this uneven boundary, giving the more closely worked earth a relatively open counterpart.

Smaller changes within the wooded mass suggest variations in growth and depth. The trees remain sufficiently grouped to be read together, unlike the separate pale stones in the foreground. Martin gives near and far elements different degrees of separation, helping the viewer judge their distance.

The rightward descent allows the view to continue beyond the ridge into a lighter, less distinct distance. The composition thus combines enclosure with an opening. The wooded hill holds much of the scene, while one side permits the eye to travel farther away.

This balance differs from the mountain wall in Upper Ausable Lake . There, water separates the viewer from the major distant forms. In Westchester Hills , the route through fields maintains a more continuous connection between near ground and wooded height. The countryside’s scale is built through successive changes in the land itself.

An unusually large outdoor project

Elizabeth’s recollection is unusually specific about the painting’s making. She remembered sitting nearby on many days, reading aloud or knitting while Martin worked. Her account identifies Westchester Hills as a major exception to his usual reliance on slowly absorbed impressions and subsequent development. ^[2]

Mather likewise describes the canvas as painted entirely outdoors, associating the work with the visit to Butler. His probable autumn 1887 date gives the episode a place within the career, while retaining uncertainty about the exact season. Neither account requires the painting to have been completed in one sitting. ^[1]

Outdoor practice itself was not new to Martin. Elizabeth describes an oil sketch made during their 1861 visit to Connecticut. Brooklyn Museum also identifies the small 1884 Normandy Coast as outdoor work. The distinction here concerns the scale and sustained execution of this particular canvas, rather than a first discovery of painting before nature. ^{[2] [8]}

The memoir adds a human measure to the long view. Reading or knitting beside the painter suggests repeated periods of attention in the same setting. The finished landscape could bring together many observations while preserving the coherence of one broad arrangement.

A landscape after the return from France

The painting belongs to the period following Martin’s return from Normandy. The Met’s scholarly catalogue describes the later American years as a time when French experience and renewed American subjects overlapped. Canvases begun abroad remained in progress, while older landscape interests received changed treatment. ^[13]

That overlap prevents a simple division between French subjects made one way and American subjects another. Westchester Hills was associated with direct work outdoors, while a French subject such as Old Manor of Criqueboeuf continued through years of revision. Its museum date, about 1882–92, spans the Normandy residence and later work in America. ^{[6] [13]}

The two pictures also offer different kinds of enclosure. The manor’s house sits within a close group of trees, repeated in a pond; the Westchester landscape spreads across fields toward a broader ridge. Their moods emerge through different distributions of land, vegetation and open space, rather than through nationality alone.

The France and Normandy account follows the travel history. In this American landscape, the importance of that history lies in the flexibility of Martin’s practice: outdoor work, remembered subjects and studio reconsideration continued alongside one another.

The story Mather associated with the road

Mather reports a discussion in which Martin was challenged to explain how his landscape could tell a story. In response, Martin suggested that the old home had been deserted and its family had gone west along the road. Mather treats the reply as partly humorous and partly expressive of the picture’s feeling. ^[1]

The anecdote gives the road a possible narrative direction. A feature that leads the eye through space can also suggest departure, allowing an apparently empty landscape to imply earlier inhabitants. The story depends on absence rather than on a visible scene of people leaving.

It remains a reported remark, not a verified account of a household represented in the painting. Nor does it identify a documented migration route. Its value lies in the way Martin could answer a question about storytelling through the existing forms of his landscape.

Mather’s interpretation develops from that possibility toward a broader sense of time and change. Fields, stones and trees can hold traces of use without disclosing the whole sequence of events that shaped them. The picture allows those traces to remain suggestive rather than resolving them into an illustrated incident. ^[1]

Recognition and the years after Martin’s death

Mather records the painting at the National Academy in 1888 and describes Butler keeping it with a view to buying it. The work nevertheless remained unsold during Martin’s lifetime. The Archives of American Art’s biographical note also identifies Westchester Hills among the important canvases still unsold when he died. ^{[1] [14]}

Elizabeth remembered the first eventual purchase at one thousand dollars, followed by resales at $4,750 and $5,300. Mather’s fuller sequence places William T. Evans’s purchase two years after Martin’s death, the $4,750 auction in 1900 and the $5,300 Milliken sale in 1902. These are historical accounts of transactions, not present valuations. ^{[2] [1]}

Mather names Daniel Guggenheim as the purchaser at the latter sale. That statement belongs to the ownership history reported in 1912. It does not establish the painting’s location today. His larger argument concerns the striking contrast between difficulty selling the canvas during Martin’s life and the demand that followed his death. ^[1]

Mather also distinguished the shortage of buyers from an absence of critical praise. He named several newspaper and magazine writers who had responded favorably to Martin before his death. His account therefore presents an uneven reception: admiration could coexist with difficulty finding a purchaser. The later sales should not erase the earlier viewers who already valued the painter’s work, or turn the canvas into a simple story of total neglect followed by unanimous discovery. ^[1]

The sequence gives the work a history beyond its making. A landscape associated with extended, patient observation became a conspicuous example of changed public appetite. Its later prices reveal something about reception, while the fields and road retain their own demands on a viewer’s attention.

Reading a historical reproduction today

The historical illustration supports examination of the composition’s broad relationships: pale stones, curving road, open fields, wooded ridge and sky. Its original printed tone remains visible. It cannot establish the painting’s precise colors, the condition of its varnish or the structure of individual paint layers.

That limitation leaves much worth seeing. The passage from the near stone line toward the right-hand distance remains intelligible, as does the contrast between irregular foreground detail and the grouped trees beyond. The biography supplies the wider career; this view makes a sustained encounter with ordinary countryside its particular subject.