This painting shows a snowy landscape with boats on a pale green river. Closest to us, there are thin, leafless trees in a snow-covered field, and on the other bank beyond the river are more thin trees with pale, hazy buildings visible in the distance. In the center, a gray-and-white house appears to sit on the edge of the water, one of the boats resting on the land next to it. A curving fence separates the white field, extending from the house towards the lower right corner of the painting. There are some more indistinct objects on the land in shades of red and black. The sky above the scene is a pale blue-gray that is almost the same color as the snowy ground. The brushstrokes in the painting are small dots and dashes of different colors that all overlap, giving the scene a slightly blurred impression.
Read the visual description

This painting shows a snowy landscape with boats on a pale green river. Closest to us, there are thin, leafless trees in a snow-covered field, and on the other bank beyond the river are more thin trees with pale, hazy buildings visible in the distance. In the center, a gray-and-white house appears to sit on the edge of the water, one of the boats resting on the land next to it. A curving fence separates the white field, extending from the house towards the lower right corner of the painting. There are some more indistinct objects on the land in shades of red and black. The sky above the scene is a pale blue-gray that is almost the same color as the snowy ground. The brushstrokes in the painting are small dots and dashes of different colors that all overlap, giving the scene a slightly blurred impression.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Boathouse, Winter, Harlem River

Ernest Lawson

Date
c. 1916
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 102.55 × 127 cm (40 3/8 × 50 in.) framed: 141.61 × 166.37 cm (55 3/4 × 65 1/2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
2014.136.9
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 1916)
Time span
1901 to 1925
Department
CAB

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • American
  • Acquired after publication of American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I [A-L]
  • Realist
  • Harlem River
  • landscape
  • Boathouse
Provenance

(Charles Daniels, New York); purchased 1916 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Inscription

lower right: E. Lawson

NGA object ID 195433. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.