Summertime on Chain Bridge Road
Oil on canvas
26 1/8 x 34 inches
Now on view: USC Upstate, University of South Carolina, Spartanburg, South Carolina
As published in: Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection
As exhibited in: Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, 2015–2018, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina
By 1908, John Ross Key was engaged in making and hand-coloring photographs of significant sites in the Washington vicinity. There were only two bridges between the city and Virginia at the time: the small Chain Bridge north of Georgetown and the multi-purpose Fourteenth Street railroad bridge. The former bridge’s curious name derives from the chain suspension system initially used when the span was constructed in 1808.
Several contemporary critics commended Key’s late landscapes, describing them as “rich and beautiful in color.” In Summertime, the pastoral elements—meandering cows tended by a lone figure—and the sun-splashed road receding in a curvilinear fashion offer an evocative and intimate view of the Washington area.
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