What’s in a Name
Vose Galleries initially sold George Brevitt Way’s The Upper Potomac in 2000 under a different title, River Landscape, and when the owner decided to sell it in 2019, our Gallery Manager Courtney Kopplin was determined to specifically locate the bucolic setting:
“A conspicuous label from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) found on the frame caught my attention. However, it bore an incongruous title, Mountain Village, and with no village in the picture, I assumed that Way, like many painters who are mindful of framing costs, probably used this frame for exhibition purposes on different canvases. In hopes of narrowing down and eventually verifying where the view was painted, I thought referencing the titles of other works he exhibited during his lifetime made sense and that the PAFA exhibition record book in our library would be a good place to start. Fortunately, I struck gold immediately. A painting called The Upper Potomac was exhibited in 1881 and after searching for PAFA records online, I found that the photo-engraving illustration in the catalogue bore an unmistakable resemblance to our landscape.”
Painted around 1880, The Upper Potomac was shown at PAFA’s 52nd Annual Exhibition, which was on display from April 4 – May 29, 1881. The listing on page 9 included the $80 price for it at the time.
George Brevitt Way’s paintings were featured at the Academy from 1880-1882 and again in 1887. Way’s work also appeared at the National Academy of Design from 1877 to 1881. During these years he was listed as residing in Baltimore, Maryland, but found inspiration among the Appalachians, and particularly the northern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
