Oil

Pastel landscape scene of a row of trees being backlight by the soft light of a sunrise / sunset. A winding, pastoral river can be seen in the background. Signed in the lower right corner. Hung in an ornate gold frame.

H 14.25 in. x W 16.25 in. x D 2 in.

H 7.75 in. x W 10 in.

Born 1864 in Brooklyn, New York, Corwin Knapp Linson, was an artist and illustrator who worked with his friend and roommate, Stephen Crane, author of the Civil War novella, The Red Badge of Courage. Linson would later write a book about Crane titled “My Stephen Crane.” Several versions of the manuscript, and photographs of Crane taken by Linson, are in the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Library in New York. In mid-May 1894, Linson and Crane went to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to investigate, for the McClure publishing company, working conditions for the coal miners. Linson illustrated the resulting article by Crane, "In the Depths of a Coal Mine," which was syndicated by McClure in various newspapers on July 22, 1894, and included in the August 1894 issue of McClure's Magazine. Stephen Crane was one of those writers who sought the experience of the lives of the under-classes in America. Linson provided food and rest in his studio for Crane and another artist, William W. Carroll, after they had spent four days and three nights in New York's Bowery, gathering material which would become part of the writer's 1894, An Experiment in Misery. Such work would link Crane with political economist Walter Wyckoff, who, in 1891, had traveled in poverty for nineteen months across the country, though he did not publish his accounts until 1897. Crane and Wyckoff would meet through Corwin Linson, who would later illustrate one of Wyckoff's articles. From the 1920s-1930s, Corwin Linson lived and worked in the borough of Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, bordering on Raritan Bay. He passed away in 1934.