Pine Tree, New Hampshire

This beautiful digitally remastered vintage tree sketch drawing is available in a variety of print sizes and custom frame options! Printed with professional museum quality inks for accuracy and longevity, this piece is perfect for your home! Stunning wall art for living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom or study!

About This Piece:
Pine Tree, Conway, New Hampshire is a finely rendered drawing created around 1851 by the American landscape artist David Johnson, a prominent member of the second generation of the Hudson River School. Executed in graphite with pen and brown ink on warm beige wove paper, the artwork showcases Johnson’s meticulous attention to natural detail. The study focuses on a single pine tree, its branches and textures carefully observed, reflecting the artist’s practice of sketching directly from nature during his travels through New England. Drawings like this were essential to Johnson’s process, serving both as independent works of art and as preparatory studies that informed his larger, more complex landscape paintings.

The mid-19th century was a period of growing American fascination with the wilderness, fueled by Romanticism and a sense of national identity rooted in the natural environment. Johnson was deeply engaged with this movement, yet unlike many artists who favored sweeping vistas, he often turned his attention to the intimate beauty of individual trees and quiet woodland interiors. His work is closely tied to the principles of Luminism, a style characterized by delicate light, tranquil atmospheres, and refined surfaces, all qualities that can be sensed even in this modest study.

David Johnson (1827–1908) was born in New York City and trained at the National Academy of Design, also studying briefly with the noted landscape painter Jasper Francis Cropsey. Early in his career he gained recognition for his precise, luminous landscapes, eventually becoming a full academician of the National Academy. As his style evolved in the 1870s, he absorbed influences from the French Barbizon School, adopting a moodier and more tonal approach, though his early naturalist sensibilities remained evident throughout his life. He exhibited widely, received awards—including a first-place medal at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition—and today is represented in major museum collections.

This drawing exemplifies Johnson’s extraordinary ability to capture both the structure and spirit of the American landscape. Serving as a window into the working methods of one of the Hudson River School’s most skilled naturalists, Pine Tree, Conway, New Hampshire remains a compelling and intimate study of the beauty found in a single tree, standing quietly in the New England woods.