Montrose Park, a beautiful public park in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, was a beloved location for Frank Wright. In the early-mid 1970s, when his daughter was young, the family would visit the park every Sunday. Wright painted picnics and children at play, as well as Rock Creek Forest nextdoor, a wilderness in the middle of the nation’s capital. He was enamored with one particular, old, grand tree and ultimately created a series of “portraits” of the tree in each season.

In a Washington Post review, Benjamin Forgey wrote, “For Frank Wright, Montrose Park has become a place that perfectly mirrors his feelings, a place separate from the noise and clashing confusions of urban life in the 1970s. In a sense, Montrose has become Wright’s backyard, the equivalent outdoors of the cloistered, quiet scenes of family life that he also celebrates in paint.”