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Mount Washington
Ann Sophia Towne Darrah (1819-81)
Signed and dated lower right: 1857/ S. T. Darrah
Oil on canvas, 26 x 38 inches
Dr. and Mrs. Ronald C. Oliver
More than one hundred women artists produced White Mountain scenes in the period 1840 to 1940, their work appearing in galleries and museums. Ann Sophia Towne had been exposed to art at an early age through her father, John Towne, a Philadelphia art collector and patron. After her marriage to Robert Kendall Darrah of Charlestown, New Hampshire, in 1845, Sophia Towne became interested in painting, taking classes from the German-born artist Paul Weber. Darrah furthered her art education through travel in Europe. A plein-air painter, she exhibited work in Philadelphia, Boston, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, by the mid-1850s. This dramatic painting is most likely the Mount Washington that the artist exhibited "for sale" in 1858 at the Boston Athenaeum.
