|
Echo Lake, FRANCONIA
Sylvester Phelps Hodgdon (1837–1908)
Signed and dated lower right: S. P. Hodgdon / 1858
Oil on canvas, 34 x 48 inches
John J. and Joan R. Henderson
Boston artist Sylvester Phelps Hodgdon likely exhibited Echo Lake, Franconia twice in 1858, the year it was painted—at the Boston Athenaeum and at Albert Bierstadt's show in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In Boston, patronage of the fine arts was still tentative, artists often struggling to sell their works. Benjamin Champney, Sylvester Phelps Hodgdon and other hard working painters found that reproducing their paintings as prints for eager tourists not only provided some income, but also enhanced their reputations as landscape painters. Hodgdon produced three lithographs, two of which, "Old Man of the Mountain" and "The Flume, Lincoln, New Hampshire," depicted White Mountain haunts favored by tourists.
