John Bunyan Bristol Pasture Scene

John Bunyan Bristol (1826-1909)

Born in Hillsdale, New York, John Bunyan Bristol trained under Henry Ary (who was also Sanford Robinson Gifford’s teacher) but was mostly self-taught. Early in his career, this landscape artist painted along the Eastern coastline, capturing scenes as far south as St. Augustine, Florida. Bristol was mainly known, however, for his Northeastern lake, river and mountain vistas executed in the Hudson River Valley, Adirondacks, Berkshire Mountains (where he settled in 1892) as well as in Maine. Samuel Isham in The History of American Painting stated: "No one constructs a landscape more firmly than he; the solidity of the earth, the level of
the lake, the plane of the distant hills, the enveloping of all by the summer sky with sunlit clouds - all are given with an absolute sureness...".