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(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This view of the Holyoke Range on the right and the Pocumtuck Range at left, rising from the valley floor, is taken from West Deerfield, Massachusetts, looking south/southeast. The small settlement of Mill River is in the middle distance. The mostly deforested view reveals the impact of agriculture upon the landscape. The painter, George Fuller, worked primarily as a portrait painter in his early career, but turned to landscape after he returned to the family farm in Deerfield. There he ran the farm and painted only when the agricultural year permitted. When the glaciers of the last Ice Age began to melt some ten thousand years ago, a huge body of water known as Lake Hitchcock covered the entire scene; the mountains rose as islands above the lake.

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