A Mountain Stream

At a time when women faced many barriers, Julie H. Beers became one of the first women from the United States to have a successful career as a landscape painter. In addition to selling her work, she earned income by organizing instructional outdoor sketching trips for women in upstate New York and New England. Although its location was not recorded, A Mountain Stream was likely painted on her summer trip to New Hampshire’s White Mountains in 1870. Rendered close-up from a low vantage point, its intimately scaled composition features tree roots, angled boulders, patches of moss, pockets of vegetation, and gentle cascades of water.