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."
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.
