Miner Kilbourne Kellogg, born Manlius - Sea of Tiberias, From Tabor - unknown - T-Shirt

This pencil landscape shows the Sea of Tiberias from a height, with still water filling the middle distance and hills rising beyond it.

Visual Elements & Composition

Pale paper cream dominates the image, with soft pencil grey carrying the hills, shrubs and shadowed slopes. The lake sits as a broad, quiet plane across the centre, while low mountains soften into faint hatching at left. A small cluster of buildings sits among trees on a slope at lower left. In the foreground, two figures stand near a fence, one holding a long staff, and a gnarled tree curves along the right edge. A handwritten inscription records the viewpoint and subject.

Meaning & Symbolism

The Sea of Tiberias is the Sea of Galilee, the freshwater lake at the centre of the Gospel narratives, and Mount Tabor is the rounded hill in Lower Galilee traditionally identified as the site of the Transfiguration. Seen from that height, the lake becomes a setting of sacred geography, while the figures, fence and village remind the viewer of the working land on its shore. American painter Miner Kilbourne Kellogg, born in Manlius, New York, made this study on his travels in Europe and the Near East in the 1840s. Its precise labelling belongs to a wider body of Holy Land drawings from that period.

Made for the Wearer's Chest

A landscape this wide needs room to breathe, and a tee gives it a flat, open field to unfold across. As you move through the day, the lake and hills shift with you, the way a view from a hilltop does when you turn to take it in. The figures in the foreground sit close to the eye, so the piece reads as a quiet scene rather than a distant one.