For its 2015 exhibition season, Boscobel House and Gardens will host Every Kind of a Painter: Thomas Prichard Rossiter (1818-1871). This will be the first retrospective of the work of an important American artist long overdue for reappraisal. Rossiter was a peer and friend to many better-known Hudson River School contemporaries such as John Frederick Kensett, Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. Rather than limit himself to landscapes, Rossiter painted a diverse range of subjects. Approximately 25 paintings and works on paper from public and private collections will demonstrate the deftness with which he approached portraits, still lifes, landscapes, genre scenes and history paintings. Particular attention will be given to the years that he spent in Europe, as well as Connecticut, New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Boscobel is the ideal venue for this exhibition, as Rossiter’s own house (still privately owned) survives just north of the museum. The exhibition is being organized in consultation with the distinguished art historian Bruce Weber, The Museum of the City of New York’s Curator of Paintings and Sculpture. The 65-page fully illustrated catalogue will feature an extensive essay by Dr. Weber who describes Rossiter as “an ambitious, earnest, and engrossing artist, who spent his life stretching his abilities and seeking to move American art forward.” The exhibition and catalogue will be Boscobel’s most ambitious to date. They will delight and inform viewers, celebrate the artistic significance and history of the Hudson River Valley and serve as a lasting reference about an American artist who helped create a national aesthetic identity.

The exhibition will be open during regular museum hours August 2 through November 29, 2015 and is free with paid admission to the house or grounds.