Signed and dated lower right: “BRYSON BURROUGHS / 1933 / DOGTOWN COMMON”. Inscribed in pencil on stretcher, “July 4, 1933 / CREMNITZ WHH”

Provenance:

Bryson Burroughs (d. 1934) to his widow Louise Burroughs (d. 1980) to Bryson Burroughs’s daughter-Betty Burroughs Marsh Woodhouse (d. 1988) to Lilla Woodhouse (Mrs. Brierly S. Woodhouse, son of Betty Woodhouse, d. 1985) to Virginia von Schlegell (agent) to Childs Gallery.

Exhibited: Painting Summer in New England, Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts 2006.

Published: Painting Summer in New England, Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts 2006: No. 77 in catalogue.

Burroughs often painted a series of pieces with a common theme. Throughout his career, Burroughs executed a group of paintings illustrating the myth of Venus and Adonis. In this particular work Venus appears before Adonis who sits atop his horse ready to depart for a hunt. This scene portrays the undying love that Venus had for the mortal prince, Adonis. In addition, this painting exemplifies Burroughs’s tendency to use a local landscape setting that reflects the unique beauty of his native New England. He has here chosen the well-known artists’ site of Dogtown Common, which is located in the center of Cape Ann in Massachusetts, for the foreground and juxtaposed it with a distant landscape of the Camden Hills from the island of North Haven in Maine. He makes a small visual pun with the inclusion of the foxhounds over the inscription “Dogtown Common.”