Black Mountain
Oil on canvas
29 5/8 x 40 1/4 inches
As published in:
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection
As exhibited in:
Farm to Table: American Silver, 2014, Asheville Art Museum, North Carolina
Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, 2015–2018, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; McKissick Museum of Art at the University of South Carolina, Columbia; Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina
Although largely based in New York, Lyell Carr was a frequent visitor to northwest Georgia near the southern edge of the Appalachian Mountains. Black Mountain is located in the Chattahoochee National Forest and is the highest peak in Dawson County, Georgia.
Black Mountain illustrates a pastoral idyll in which the looming mountain underscores the dichotomy between the majesty of nature and the feeble encroachment of man, evident in the modest barn and diminutive human figure milking a lone cow. A critic writing in 1894 commended Carr for creating an “oasis for those who are not interested in experiments and studio clevernesses, but ask that a picture shall tell them a nice little story.”