A Rare Sight

In a previous blog here, I discussed the sketch below by Frederick Church 

and compared it to a photo I took from the same viewpoint. 

I was not familiar with this scene, as it has not been frequently depicted by other artists. 

I checked my go-to resource, whitemountainart.com here. There are thirty-seven artworks on their page for Crawford Notch here compared to over one-hundred paintings and drawings of Chocorua, and Mount Washington on their website.  

I could not find the location from which Church recorded these mountain profiles among the items for Crawford Notch. 

I did find a similar composition of Crawford Notch from a lookout point at the top Mt Willard. However, that spot is over a mile away from the site I located. I try not to be led astray.  

Using those images from Mt. Willard as a guide, I knew it had to be near there but further south looking in a similar southward direction below the gate of the notch. 

I had to search around to find this vantage point and eventually found it. 

Church made a dozen or more sketches in the White Mountains and some of these are now in the collection of Church's home Olana, now a museum in Hudson NY. 

Here are some details for the study. 

Frederic Edwin Church White Mountain Notch (Crawford Notch), NH, July 1850

Pencil, gouache on paper (11 13/16 x 14 7/8 inches)

New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation,

Olana accession #249r

2026 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Church and the artist has been celebrated throughout the year at numerous museums with exhibits and special events. FMI see this link here. 

In Victoria Johnson's fabulous new biography of Frederic Church, Glorious Nation, (available at the Conway Public Library) she covers his July 1850 trip to New Hampshire with Regis Gignoux and Richard Hubbard. 

Thanks to the work of White Mountain art collector, researcher and co-author at whitemountainart.com, Benjamin E. Clark, you can find a transcript of an article published in November of that year about this trip here.

Since I posted my blog in July more connections to this view have come to my attention. 

In August 2026 the site was captured by contemporary artist Patricia Sweet as part of a plein art paint group excursion to the White Mountains (more information on this group below). 

This photo is from her Facebook post here. 

FMI see her website here. 

Her finished rendering resulted in this misty and evocative monochromatic image. 

Patricia helped organize and promote the plein air event. The group is known as "PAPA" which stands for "Preserving a Picturesque America." 

To learn about this group, you can see their website here and their Facebook here. 

The banner below was copied from one of their Facebook posts here. 

As you can see, our own local artist, Erik Koeppel is part of the group, seen here with PAPA founder Scott "Doc" Varn. FMI about Erik and his work see his website here. 

As part of their artistic adventure the group developed a guide with 15 "vantage points" based on prints published in the 1872 book Picturesque America. You can read the section on the White Mountains online here, (vol 1, pp. 150-172). 

You can see images from PAPA's guide here.  

Here is the scene from their guide that relates to the view. 

Their booklet shows the original print from the book with a map, a satellite view, GPS coordinates, and other helpful information.  

In the book Picturesque America the print can be found on p. 15 and is entitled "The Willey Slide" 

The text associated with the print was written in the flowery language of the nineteenth century by William Cullen Bryant and can be found on pp. 158-159. 

 

I find it interesting that they do not actually talk about the story of the Willey Slide in the book. You can learn more about that event in my previous blog here. 

At a recent art show in Effingham I was pleasantly surprised to see that not one, but two artists had painted the same view. 

More on this in a future blog. 

A Sketch in Time

This sketch of Crawford Notch by Frederic Church has recently come to my attention. 

The location of the view is easy to identify. 

It can still be seen today from a parking lot at the south end of Saco Lake. 

A Google street view roughly matching the sketch can be seen here.

When comparing the sketch with the photo you need to realize that the opening through the notch for the Saco River, the road and railroad tracks has been widened and reshaped since the sketch was made.

However, even with those changes, the comparison is clear due to the unique and definitive geological formations and the shapes of the mountain profiles such as Mount Willard on the right and Mount Webster with Elephant Head and Bugle Cliff on the left. A Google map of the area with these landmarks can be found here and a state park map with other useful details here. 

In her article, The Gate of the Notch, Catherine Crawford Campbell lists 27 other artists who depicted this scene in sketches, paintings, prints, and photographs.

Thanks to Victoria Johnson we can add Frederic Church to that list. Her fabulous new biography of Church, Glorious Nation, covers his 1850 trip to New Hampshire with Regis Gignoux and Richard Hubbard. 

Church made a dozen or more sketches in the White Mountains and some of these sketches are now in the collection of Church's home Olana, now a museum in Hudson NY. 

Here are the details for the sketch above

Frederic Edwin Church White Mountain Notch (Crawford Notch), NH, July 1850

Pencil, gouache on paper (11 13/16 x 14 7/8 inches)

New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation,

Olana accession #249r

2026 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Church and the artist is being celebrated throughout the year at numerous museums with exhibits and special events. FMI see this link here. 

This view of the gate of the notch in Crawford Notch was and continues to be a well-known spot for landscape artists. It has often been mistaken as the spot of the infamous Willey slide of August 28, 1826, two hundred years ago. However, it is not. FMI see my previous blog here. 

While the location for sketch above is well known, the location for another sketch he did has not been frequently depicted by artists and is a little harder to identify immediately.  

However, after looking around a bit, I believe that the view Church sketched from where this parking area is now, just a few miles south of Saco Lake. 

I look forward to working with more of Church's New Hampshire sketches and will post my research in this blog as I do.

Rocks in his Head...

 

... that is what some people say about me

I have to admit it is true. 

Today for example, we stopped by the White Mountain Museum and Gallery in North Conway NH. Among the extensive display of White Mountain art, I was particularly struck by the painting above by Byran Carr. It is a large painting (24" x 30") of Champney Falls along the nearby Kancamagus Highway. The falls themselves are named after local artist Benjamin Champney whose works can also be seen (and purchased) in the gallery. 

I was taken by the color and modeling of the rocks, the amazing patterns of dappled light, the illusion of depth, the depiction of flora, and the animated sense of the water as it drizzles over the stone. 

FMI see this link to the museum and gallery here. 

While I was there, I talked with gallery owner Paul Mayer a lot about rocks, including ochre villages and flumed waterside stone quarries in France, Frederic Church's renowned photographic memory of rock colors and another local artist Erik Koeppel's mountain sculpting glacier painting with a view of Mount Washington, complete with a paleontologically accurate mastodon skeleton and evidence of ancient indigenous life. 

 

The painting is called “Dawn of the Holocene” and depicts his vision of Mt. Washington 12 to 13 thousand years ago when it was emerging from the glacier. On his Facebook page, Koeppel writes that the scene comes from much geological discussion with experts and has an element of moving through time as the viewer moves through space. The painting is 56" x 102."  While this commissioned painting is now in a private collection, you can view and purchase Erik's work at the gallery. You can learn more about Erik and his work through his website here. 

We also went to an exhibit opening at the Bartlett NH Historical Society which commemorates the 200th anniversary of the infamous Willey slide in nearby Crawford Notch in which rocks killed a family but spared their home which later became a tourist attraction. FMI see this link to the museum here and my previous blog about the art of the event here. 

I will be presenting a program on the Willey slide on Wednesday, August 19th, 2026 at the Conway Public Library. 

FMI follow this link here.

I will present the same program on Thursday, August 27, 2026 at the White Mountain Museum & Gallery in North Conway for those who can't make the first program. FMI see this link here. 

If you want more rocks, I am leading a tour of the Redstone quarry on Wednesday, July 15. FMI see this link here. 

I hope to see you at one or more of these events and I can put some rocks in your head too.