Landscape with Curving River

Doughty’s abandonment of a prosperous leather business at a young age to take up professional painting suggests an intense relationship with natural phenomena, one that privileged elements in nature over human experience. One of three paintings bequeathed to the Academy by the artist’s brother in 1879, Landscape with Curving River features both dramatic natural phenomena and quiet pastoral beauty. Doughty dramatically paints wide-open spaces, radiating foliage and quiet, pastoral beauty in great detail, with the artist’s careful pencil under-drawing peeking through the brightly lit clouds