full Academician in 1849. In 1851 Kensett painted a monumental canvas of Mount Washington that has become an icon of White Mountain art. Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway was purchased by the American Art Union, made into an engraving by James Smillie, and distributed to 13,000 Art Union subscribers throughout the country. Other artists painted copies of this scene from the print. Currier and Ives published a similar print in about 1860. This single painting by Kensett helped to popularize the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. Kensett's style evolved gradually, from the traditional Hudson River School manner in the 1850s into the more refined Luminist style in his later years. By the early 1870s, Kensett was spending considerable time at his home on Contentment Island, on Long Island Sound near Darien, Connecticut. It was during this time that Kensett painted some of his finest works. Many of these were spare and luminist seascapes, the prime example being Eaton's Neck, Long Island (1872) now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The artist was widely acclaimed and financially successful during his lifetime. In turn, he was generous in support of the arts and artists. He was a full member of the National Academy of Design, the founder and president of the Artists' Fund Society, and a founder and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Death Kensett contracted pneumonia (perhaps during the attempted rescue of Mary Lydia (Hancock) Colyer, the wife of his friend and fellow artist Vincent Colyer in Long Island Sound) and died of heart failure at his New York studio in December 1872. He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. In 1874 Kensett's brother Thomas gave thirty-eight of his paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of which half remain in the collection. Legacy The first complete biography and factual study of Kensett's work were written by Ellen H. Johnson, published in 1957. Paintings See also Western painting History of painting List of Hudson River School artists Notes References Barringer, Tim and Wilton, Andrew. American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880, Princeton University Press, 2002. Driscoll, John Paul and John K. Howat. John Frederick Kensett, An American Master, W. W. Norton & Company: New York, New York, 1985. Johnson, Ellen Hulda. "Kensett Revisited", The Art Quarterly, Spring 1957, pp. 71 – 92. Further reading Trafton,