The paintings Kensett created at his new studio on Contentment Island were remarkable for presenting his first images of a place of private retreat. These were pioneering paintings of the American landscape that were more abstract in their compositions, more textural in their surface, and more intense in their colors than his earlier work.

The paintings recorded the fleeting image of a pristine landscape at Long Island Sound that attracted urban refugees in search of recreation and retreat. And they recorded a spiritual search for wisdom after the national and personal disillusion of the Civil War.

The paintings are a record of the vista from Kensett's home and studio in each compass direction, with accurate placement of each material element. Views from similar prospects are painted at the critical moments of light in the cycle of the day: dawn, sunrise, sunset, and dusk. Some views are painted in multiples, with variations in size or the addition of distinctive details.

Kensett concentrated on the world visible from his home and studio at Contentment Island; he painted these views again and again. The accuracy of his observation makes it possible to identify the locations. Rather than the land itself, the subject of the paintings becomes the infinite variety of nature's changing effects, seen through color and light, in locations that had become familiar to the artist through his intimate knowledge of the place.