The following description for has been prepared entirely by the current owner, Roberts S. Fastov, Esq., and, at the collector’s request, has not been edited by Sloans & Kenyon

Note 1) Per Askart.com:

Biography from Hollis Taggart Galleries (Artists, E-O):

John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872)

John F. Kensett is considered one of America’s most important 19th-century landscape painters. Deeply influenced by the aims and technique of Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole, Kensett is viewed as an heir to Cole in his leadership of the Hudson River tradition. Kensett was born in Cheshire, Connecticut on March 2, 1816, the son of Thomas Kensett, an engraver, and Elizabeth Daggett. By age twelve, he was working in his family’s engraving and printing business in New Haven. At some point, possibly in 1829 when he was thirteen years of age, he went to New York to work for Peter Maverick, then America’s leading engraver. In Maverick’s shop Kensett met John W. Casilear, five years his senior, who would also become a painter and who would remain Kensett’s lifelong friend.

Following his father’s death, Kensett returned to New Haven to work for his uncle in the family firm, then named Daggett and Ely. Kensett was employed engraving business cards, brass door plates, and maps--all extremely time-consuming and tedious work. Casilear wrote often, encouraging his friend to paint and praising his talent, but Kensett could not afford the art instruction he needed. In 1837, he went to work as a banknote engraver for Harr, Packard, Cushman & Co. of Albany, New York. The following year, he submitted a painting to the National Academy of Design--a painting that not only was chosen for exhibition, but also was favorably critiqued.

In early 1840, having set aside money for travel, Kensett returned to New York City to prepare to go to Europe. On June 1, he set sail for London with Asher B. Durand and his friends Casilear and Thomas Rossiter, a young painter whom Kensett had met in New Haven. Arriving in London, Kensett traveled on to Hampton Court to meet his English relatives, his paternal grandmother and uncle. He visited London’s art galleries and painted and sketched in the nearby countryside. Before the summer was over, he and Rossiter had settled in Paris. He secured a contract to provide engravings for a Philadelphia firm as his means of livelihood and devoted the rest of his time to improving his draftsmanship. He took classes at the Ecole Préparation des Beaux-Arts and studied the drawing collections in the Louvre.

On visits to England made in 1841 and 1843, Kensett sketched avidly, filling notebooks with views made in the vicinity of Richmond, Hampton Court, and Windsor Castle, and setting a pattern of sketching in the countryside that he would follow every summer for the rest of his life. In the British galleries, he studied the works of the Dutch Old Masters and John Constable and began to use these as models for his own paintings.

From October 1845 through the spring of 1847, Kensett lived in Rome. He attended classes where he sketched from live models, and he sketched in the countryside outside Rome and around Florence, Perugia, and Venice, places he visited with his artist friends. He fulfilled commissions for paintings from Americans in Italy, and by 1847 his career was well established.

In November 1847, Kensett returned to the United States to open a studio in New York City. The five paintings he exhibited at the National Academy of Design the following spring were pronounced by one critic to be of higher quality than work exhibited either by Durand or Frederic Edwin Church. Kensett’s participation in this exhibition resulted in his election as an associate of the National Academy. One year later, in May 1849, he was made an aåcademician.

Kensett’s entree into artistic circles in New York and his acceptance into high society were won almost instantaneously. He was called upon to fill many important roles in the art world. He was a founder and president of the Artists’ Fund Society, an organization dedicated to the support of indigent artists, their widows, and orphans. He was chairman of the Art Committee of the Sanitary Fair, which opened in New York in 1864, and he was a founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the virtual height of this exemplary career, Kensett suffered a fatal heart attack in his New York studio on December 14, 1872.”

Per Askart.com, works by Kensett are held by 90 museums, including the t collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, a division of the Smithsonian Institution, and The White House Collection, all in Washington, D. C.; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri.”

Note 2) Suffice it to say, Kensett was among the best of the first generation of Hudson River School landscape painters and his works command very high prices at auction. Four Kensett views of Bish-Bash Falls have, per Askart.com, sold for excellent prices since December 20, 1988: $289,000 on November 29, 2007, as lot 74; was 18 in. x 22.2 in. and was unsigned, by Christie’s, NY; $198,400 on December 1, 2004, as lot 88; was 22 in. x 18 in. and was signed with a monogram, by Sotheby’s, NY; $186,700 on May 18, 2004, as lot 17; was 22 in. x 18 in., but unsigned, by Christie’s, NY. All three of these paintings were slightly larger and more dramatic than this painting being offered for sale. A fourth Kensett view of Bish Bash Falls sold for $68,200 on December 20, 1988, as lot 36, which was an oval, 19 in. x 16 in., but unsigned, sold by Christie’s, NY. It is identical in exterior dimensions of 19 in. x 16 in., as this painting, that is being offered for sale, but is slightly smaller than this painting, as Christie’s painting is an oval, whereas, this painting is a rectangle. However, the Christie’s painting is similar in perspective, composition and dramatic impact to the painting that is being offered for sale, but unlike this painting, which is signed with a Kensett monogram, the Christie’s painting was not signed.

This Kensett Bish-Bash Falls painting up for auction is very similar in technique and composition to the following Kensett painting of Bish-Bash Falls, which is 18 in. x 15 in. and appears on the oil paintings-sales.com website for John Frederick Kensett’s Bish-Bash Falls oil paintings, of which several are depicted and a Picassa.com website for 44 Kensett paintings, but is painted from a position much closer to the falls; and hence, the little bridge appears in this painting, but does not appear in the painting that is being offered for sale.

Another Kensett rendering of the lower pool of Bish-Bash Falls, executed in 1857, which is painted from a spot that is even closer to the falls, than the preceding painting; hence, a more detailed rendering of the falls and the little bridge.

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Boston Museum of Fine Arts-Bash Bish Falls Massachusetts 1855, John Fredrick Kensett. According to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Kensett’s painting was “enhanced by [his] choosing a low vantage point from the lower pool” of the Bish-Bash Falls to execute the painting.

Per Christie’s, NY, Lot 74 in its November 29, 2007 sale sold for $289,000 and was described as “a nice landscape by John F. Kensett (1816-1872) of Bash-Bish Falls. An unsigned oil on canvas, it measures 18 in. by 22 ¼ in. in. Kensett did many versions of this scene, most vertical compositions. It has an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000 (Emphasis added.)”

Note 3) For all of the foregoing considerations, the presale estimate of $75,000-$175,000 for this Kensett painting of Bish-Bash Falls is reasonable and justifiable.