Pasture with Cows

Object ID: 75.051
Creator: Thomas Hewes Hinckley
Title: Pasture with Cows
Date: 1859
Culture: American
Period: Realist
Dimensions: 32 x 52″
Materials: Oil on canvas
Credit: Gift of Mrs. Thomas O. (Mary Rich) Richardson
Provenance: 1859, commissioned from the artist by Richard Baker, Jr. (Boston, MA and Newport, RI); 1875, inherited by his wife, Mrs. Richard (Ellen Maria) Baker (Boston, MA and Newport, RI); 1896, inherited by their daughter Mrs. Thomas O. (Mary Rich) Richardson (Boston, MA and Newport, RI); 1922, donated to Wheaton College.

Provenance research conducted by Kate Bartel, Alexander Bull, and Natalie Glazer, Class of 2017 and by Kayla Malouin, Class of 2010

Thomas Hewes Hinckley was born in Milton, MA in 1813. After moving to Philadelphia, Hinckley studied art with William Mason. He was inspired by the work of Sir Edwin Henry Landseer and, while visiting Europe in 1851, the Flemish masters. He first found employment in Milton as a sign painter and later as a portraitist, but Hinckley’s greatest success came from his painted representations of domestic and game animals. The appeal of Hinckley’s work to hunters and farmers meant that his paintings sold quite frequently without the need to be exhibited. In 1858, however, London’s Royal Academy exhibited two of Hinckley’s hunting scenes. His paintings were also exhibited at the Boston Art Association (1844), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1848 & 1855), The National Academy of Design (1846), The Boston Athenaeum (1863), the Boston Art Club (1873), the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (1874), and many others. His work is held in numerous private and museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Museum of American Art.