Peter Huntoon’s “Mettowee Valley View”
I recently spent part of a morning studying and contemplating Peter Huntoon’s “Mettowee Valley View”. It’s one of my favorites and a print of it hangs near our fireplace here in Essex Junction.
Peter Huntoon is a native Vermonter whose work invites long hours of attention and delight. The focus of his art is primarily (though not exclusively) Vermont scenes. “Mettowee Valley View” offers something of a microcosm of a state with only 660,000 residents, mostly a farming state of which 80% remains woods and forests.
Which, for a lover of Vermont like Peter Huntoon, suggests endless opportunities for artistic delight. Huntoon sends an occasional email featuring his latest paintings, and I encourage readers to visit his website, A Day in Vermont, and consider subscribing.
The palette of “Mettowee Valley View” is so agreeable to me—all those wonderful blues, whites, and grays, melting and dissolving together, suggesting depth and mystery.
I always look for motion and direction in art, for movement. The way the mountains guide our sight down toward the valley floor, while the ephemeral mists lift upward toward the receiving sky almost makes this a motion picture.
Huntoon achieves depth and perspective by painting objects closest to the viewer—such as the barn in the middle left—with greater clarity than those farther away, as if to say that “here and now” is the only thing we can truly know, while the distant “then and there” can only be vaguely understood. We should make the most of whatever is at hand, at the same time keeping an eye on what’s to come.
The intrusion of human culture into this beautiful scene is modest and fruitful. The brown line in the field reminded me of lines in Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur”,
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod:
And all is seared with trade, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge…”
but without the implication of waste and the exploitation of the earth. In Huntoon’s painting, the presence of human culture is not objectionable. The smallness of the farm and the way the field spreads across the whole painting suggests a proper and measured use of the earth and its resources.
Overall, “Mettowee Valley View” is a calming and delightful invitation to peace, to a simpler life, and to the enjoyment and proper use of everyday things, which for us, who are called to glorify God in even the smallest things of life, can help to nurture appreciation for the quotidian moments of our lives.
