A Journey's Pause in the Roman Campagna

The present work was likely painted in late 1868, when Jervis McEntee was working alongside fellow artist Sanford Robinson Gifford in Italy. According to Gifford's diary, the two men took a sketching trip into the Roman Campagna in early October of that year, where they happened upon a stopped Cardinal's carriage with a Carthusian monk and his retinue. Each artist painted a sketch of this encounter, though their orientations vary. According to Eleanor Jones Harvey, "McEntee adopted a view from the rear of the coach, which has stopped along the crest of the road...Both men paint the view to the south, and in each sketch the setting sun casts long shadows across the road in the same direction...The artistic camaraderie that prompted both men to paint small sketches of this experience...illuminates a corner of the artists' lives and friendships." (E.J. Harvey, The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature, 1830-1880, exhibition catalogue, 1998, Dallas, Texas, p. 221)

In 1873, McEntee noted the sale of this work in his diary: "Mr. Johnson a jeweler...called on me and staid [sic] a long time as it was a rainy day. I sold him my little picture of a Cardinal on the Campagna for $100" (as quoted in The Painted Sketch, p. 221) Another work by McEntee of this scene is in the collection of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz.