This oil on panel landscape titled "The Crescent Moon" measures 14-1/2” x 8-1/2” or in the original period gesso frame of 21” x 15”, is signed lower right Edward Gay and titled and inscribed verso. The Edward Gay signature has a few letters missing but is still distinguishable and is inscribed and signed via label verso "The Crescent Moon" painted by George Gay Hudson River School. This mid 19th century painting depicting a rural winter landscape of people walking up a pathway to a farmhouse under a crescent moon is probably a view from around the Mount Vernon, New York area and is a quintessential representation of an Edward B. Gay painting.
 
Biography:
Edward B. Gay was born in Dublin, Ireland on 25 April 1837 and immigrated with his family to Albany, New York in the wake of the Irish Potato Famine in1848. Three local Albany artists, James and William Hart and George Boughton, recognized Gay's talent when he was a child and encouraged him to pursue his talents. Gay traveled to Europe and settled in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1862 where he studied with conventional historical painters Johann Schirmer and Karl Friedrich Lessing. Although he learned much, Gay felt he was wasting his time and decided to move his family back to the United States.
 
In 1864 he moved with his wife and children to Mount Vernon, New York where he found inspiration in the beauty in the open farmland, sunny meadows and orchards that stretched along Long Island Sound. It was at this point that he began devoting his time to painting and mastering landscapes. He became an active participant in the Albany art community and he was initially influenced by the Hudson River School. However, during one of his frequent trips to Europe he encountered the work of John Constable of the Barbizon School and was struck by the "new Progressive spirit" of Constable's work. While traveling through England and France, he discovered" new approaches to color and light." He began spending time at the artist colony of Cragsmoor, New York where he bought a summer home in 1905.
 
Despite his influences and training with artists of the Barbizon school and others, Gay identified with no particular school or category; rather, he "[painted]what he saw – no more, no less." He died in Mount Vernon in 1928.