Unlike other landscape painters of his generation, Sonntag was fortunate not to fall out of public favor, largely because of his ability to adapt to changing tastes. By the late 1870s, Sonntag had begun to work in the style of the Barbizon School, a group of French artists who advocated painting directly from nature. Whereas the Hudson River School was known for its detailed realism, Barbizon aesthetics offered–in the words of scholar William Gerdts–“more generalized and poetic interpretations of landscape.” A superb example of Sonntag’s adoption of the Barbizon style, “A View on Darby Creek” was painted during a visit a to Upper Darby Township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Sonntag would have had reason to visit the area, as two of his sisters–Euphrosyne and Louisa–had settled there after marrying members of the locally prominent Sellers family.
- Titles A View on Darby Creek (Proper)
- Artist William Louis Sonntag, Sr., American, 1822 - 1900
- Medium oil on canvas
- Dimensions 12 1/4 × 20 1/8 in. (31.1 × 51.1 cm) frame: 23 3/4 × 31 5/8 × 3 in. (60.3 × 80.3 × 7.6 cm)
- Credit Line Museum purchase, 2010.119
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- Provenance Auctioned in Catalogue of Paintings by William Sonntag, N. A., and Henry A. Ferguson A. N. A., Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York, January 31, 1893 - February 1, 1893, no. 49. The Club, Inc., Birmingham, Alabama, by 1977 [see note 1]; purchased by the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 2010
1. Recorded in their collection inWeeks, Ted. “National Park scenes reflected at Museum.” Fine Arts. Birmingham News. June 1977 [exact date unknown].