[Young girl at the forest spring]

Little known even in his lifetime, Fussell produced a body of stunning landscapes that make clear the artist's reverence for nature. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Fussell lived and worked in the Philadelphia area for most of his life. As a young man he studied with the history painter Peter Frederick Rothermel and in 1864 enrolled in classes at the Pennsylvania Academy. It was there that he met Thomas Eakins, and the two remained lifelong friends. Fussell never married, and he lived with his parents until their death, supporting them, for a time, by farming in New Jersey. His attempts to gain fame as a painter of Rocky Mountain scenes went largely ignored, and Fussell had only slightly better luck making his name with landscapes of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Later in his life, Fussell settled in Philadelphia's western suburb of Media, where he lived with his sister and his aunt, the artist Graceanna Lewis. He worked largely in watercolor during this period, and his depictions of the groves and springs around Media combine an almost obsessive observation of stones, roots, and foliage with a brilliant palette of greens, a glowing quality of light, and contemplative sense of quietude, as in this image of a solitary figure overwhelmed by natural grandeur.