• About the Work of Art

• Activities for On the Cache La Poudre River, Colorado
   

   

Born on a farm near Springfield, Ohio, Worthington Whittredge began his professional career as a house and sign painter in Cincinnati and worked briefly as a photographer and portraitist in Indiana and West Virginia. He turned to landscape painting in 1843. Sponsored by a group of Cincinnati patrons, whom he repaid with paintings, Whittredge traveled through Europe, visiting London, Paris, Antwerp, and Düsseldorf. Though he never actually enrolled at the renowned Düsseldorf Academy, he studied independently with two of its masters, Emmanuel Leutze and Karl Friederich Lessing. From 1854 to 1859, he worked in Rome, afterward settling in New York City where he painted views of rural New York and New England. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Design in 1861 and served as that organization’s president, first in 1865 and again from 1874 to 1877.

By the time Whittredge was painting landscapes, civilization had begun to encroach on the Hudson River valley in New York. Whittredge soon journeyed west to Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory, and then to the Rockies to find inspiration in the natural wilderness. In 1866 Whittredge and fellow artists Sanford Robinson Gifford and John Frederick Kensett accompanied Major General John Pope from Leavenworth, Kansas, up the south branch of the Platte River through Denver, then south along the eastern Rockies into New Mexico Territory. Unlike other artists who went on government expeditions, Whittredge was particularly inspired by the vastness of the plains and prairies.

The artist made three trips into the West, producing about forty oil sketches and studio paintings based on western subjects. Most of the large canvases were painted in his New York City studio from sketches he had made during his first journey to the West in 1866.

On the Cache La Poudre River, Colorado was executed after his third and final trip to the West in 1871, where Whittredge again sketched along the river. He also made studies along the Platte, Thompson, and St. Vrain Rivers, demonstrating his interest in the serene, expansive plains and river scenery. Later in his career, Whittredge served two terms as president of the National Academy of Design and played a central role in the development of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He wrote an autobiography at age eighty-five.

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