Summer Flowers

To offset the trials of city living, wealthy nineteenth-century New Yorkers often escaped to rural estates, where--according to the architectural theorist Andrew Jackson Downing--the “humble roof, . . . shady porch, . . . verdant lawn, and smiling flowers offered a “barrier against vice, immorality, and bad habits.” Thompson’s cheerful view of a Gothic Revival-style Hudson River Valley home, seen at a distance behind an elegant family seated in a blossoming field, embodies Downing’s bucolic ideal. (Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)