Waterfall in the Woods with Indians

Of the present work, Janice Simon writes: "John F. Kensett...immerses the viewer in the details of the forest directly before him; the ghostly falls preside over the lushness below. In his attention to the modest wonders of the Catskills, Kensett participated in the mid-century shift to quieter, more intimate responses to the place...perhaps in homage to [Thomas] Cole, Kensett populated the middle ground with a group of Indians, creating a nostalgic image of the falls as a wilderness untouched by white civilization." ("Sanford R. Gifford's Kaaterskill Falls: A Place of Intimate Immensity," Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, vol. 67, no. 4, 1993, p. 6)