Provenance
Commissioned by Colonel Thomas Denny, Jr. (1757–1814), Leicester, Mass.; probably to his wife, Lucretia Denny (1768–1858); to their son Thomas Denny (1804–1874); to his cousin Christopher Columbus Denny by 1889; to his son Parkman T. Denny, whose wife sold the painting to Edward Coffin, Worcester, Mass., 1916.²

References
Washburn 1860, 22.

Earle 1888, 88.

"Landscape and Portrait by Ralph Earl," Worcester News Bulletin 7: 4 (January 1917): 7, 8.

"Purchases in 1916–1917," Worcester Annual Report 1917, 16.

Morgan 1921, 9.

Worcester 1922, 174.

Lee 1929, [219], 220.

Worcester 1933, 96.

Sawitzky 1935, 8, 30.

Burroughs 1936, 95, fig. 68 (n.p.).

"Loans from the Museum Collections," Worcester Annual Report 1936, 25.

Goodrich 1938, 6, 25, plate (n.p.).

Kellner 1938, 158.

Worcester Annual Report 1938, 20.

Sherman 1939, 168.

Saint-Gaudens 1940, cat. no. 17 (n.p.).

Lane 1940, 7, 10.

Sawitzky 1945, cat. 49, plate (n.p.).

"Ralph Earl," Worcester News Bulletin 11: 3 (December 1945): n.p.

Dresser 1945, 205, 206, 207.

Pierson and Davidson 1960, 307.

Lyon 1963, 12.

Goodrich 1967, 10, 92–93.

Prown 1969, 64.

Worcester 1973, 153.

Jareckie 1976, 12–13.

Montgomery and Kane 1976, 113.

Whitehill and Kotker 1976, 104–5.

Brown 1979, 148.

Teitz 1979, 42–43.

Czestochowski 1982, 52–53.

Kornhauser 1985, 1015, 1016.

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, in Nygren 1986, 255.

Meinig 1986, I, 446.

Kornhauser 1988, I, 236, 243 n 34, 300–1.

Marcus 1988, II, 307.

Brooke 1989, frontispiece, 1.

Kornhauser 1991a, 65, 234–36.

Estus and McClymer 1994, 152.

Worcester 1994, 187.

Emmet 1996, 2.

Exhibitions
Connecticut Portraits by Ralph Earl, Gallery of Fine Arts, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., August 1–October 15, 1935, cat. no. 37.

A Century of American Landscape Painting: 1800 to 1900, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, January 19–February 27, 1938; and Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Mass., March 8–29, 1938, cat. no. 82.

Survey of American Painting, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, October 24–December 15, 1940, cat. no. 17.

Ralph Earl 1751–1801, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 16–November 21, 1945; and Worcester Art Museum, December 13, 1945–January 13, 1946, cat. no. 49.

The Early Republic: Consolidation of Revolutionary Goals, Worcester Art Museum, March 3–June 30, 1976, cat. no. 7.

American Art from the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, April 27–June 24, 1979, cat. pp. 42–43.

Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn., February 2–April 5, 1992 (not shown at the other two venues to which the exhibition traveled), cat. no. 66.

Notes
1. The painting was called Looking East from Leicester Hills until Mary Thurston, a descendant of Thomas Denny, wrote, "[M]y sister and I have wondered why it was given the title ‘Looking east from Leicester Hills’ when it is definitely a view from Denny Hill." Mary D. Thurston to Benjamin H. Stone, June 7, 1938, object file, Worcester Art Museum.

2. Christopher C. Denny, "Reminiscences of Some Leicester Families," 1889. Handwritten notes taken from a this manuscript identify Thomas Denny as the one who commissioned this landscape and the author of the "Reminisences" as the painting’s the owner at the time. Denny’s will, filed December 9, 1814, bequeathed "the use and improvement of my dwelling house in the center of the town" and "all the furniture in my house of every description" to his wife, Lucretia. Worcester County Probate Court, file 16654.

A typed note by Worcester Art Museum curator Louisa Dresser following a conversation with Mary Thurston, June 11, 1938, identifies their uncle Christopher Denny as a former owner of the painting; his daughter-in-law Mrs. Parkman Denny, sold the painting. An attachment to a letter from Mary Thurston to Louisa Dresser, September 19, 1938, traces the painting from Thomas Denny to his surviving son, Thomas, to Christopher Columbus Denny.

A handwritten note, apparently written by Mary Thurston in about 1938, reads: "Thomas Denny’s son Thomas lived in New York City, and presumably when the family left Leicester, Mr. Christopher C. Denny came into possession of the Earle painting. His son Parkman T. Denny placed it in the Leicester Public Library as a loan sometime in the late 1890s, and it hung there for about twenty years."

Reverend Kenneth L. Palmer, note appended to Caroline L. Thurston’s untitled account of Denny Hill, 1943.

The acquisition by the Worcester Art Museum is documented by a receipt and noted in Worcester Annual Report 1917, 16. All documents from object file, Worcester Art Museum.