Design, is a native of New York city, and has enjoyed advantages and
successes experienced by very few of our early artists. A pupil of Morse
and Inman, he is better known by the men of this generation as a
pleasing portrait-painter; but the most important of his early efforts
were in what might be called a semi-literary style in _genre_ and
historical and allegorical or religious art, in which departments he has
won a permanent place in our annals by such compositions as "Mercy's
Dream," "The Sibyl," and "Queen Mary Signing the Death-warrant of Lady
Jane Grey."
While portraiture has been the field to which most of our leading
painters of the figure have directed their attention during this period,
_genre_ has been represented by several artists of decided ability, who,
under more favorable art auspices, might have achieved superior results.
Inman was one of the first of our artists to make satisfactory attempts
in _genre_. If circumstances had allowed him to devote himself entirely
to any one of the three branches he pursued, he might have reached a
higher position than he did. But the most important _genre_ artist of
the early part of this period was William Sidney Mount, the son of a
farmer on Long Island. Associated first with his brother as a
sign-painter, he eventually, in 1828, took up _genre_ painting. Mount
lacked ambition, as he himself confessed; he was too easily influenced
by the rapidly won approval of the public to cease improving his style,
and early returned to his farm on Long Island. Mount was not remarkable
as a colorist, although it is quite possible he might have succeeded as
such with superior advantages; but he was in other respects a man of
genius, who as such has not been surpassed by the numerous _genre_
artists whom he preceded, and to whom he showed by his example the
resources which our native domestic life can furnish to the _genre_
painter. This American Wilkie had a keen eye for the humorous traits of
our rustic life, and rendered them with an effect that sometimes
suggests the old Dutch masters. "The Long Story" and "Bargaining for a
Horse" are full of inimitable touches of humor and shrewd observations
of human nature. F. W. Edmonds, who was a contemporary of Mount,
although a bank cashier, found time from his business to produce many
clever _genre_ paintings, showing a keener eye for color, but less snap
in the drawing and composition, than Mount.
[Illustration: "MIRANDA."--[DANIEL HUNTINGTON.]]
In other departments of the figure at this period of our art, Robert W.
Weir holds a prominent position as one of our pioneers in the
distinctive branch called historical painting. Of Huguenot descent, and
gaining his artistic training in Italy, after severe struggles at home,
his career illustrates several of the influences which have been most
apparent in forming American art. Although not a servile imitator of
foreign and classic art, and showing independence of thought in his
practice and choice of subjects, Weir's style is pleasing rather than
vigorous and original. It shows care and loving patience, as of one who
appreciates the dignity of his profession, but no marked imaginative
force, nor does he introduce or suggest any new truths. Such a massive
composition, however, as the "Sailing of the Pilgrims," while it
scarcely arouses enthusiasm, causes us to wonder that we should so early
have produced an art as conscientious and clever as this. The portrait
of Red Jacket, and the elaborate painting called "Taking the Veil," are
also works of decided merit. Enjoying a serene old age, this revered
painter yet survives, still wielding his brush, and annually exhibiting
creditable pictures in the Academy.
[Illustration: "A SURPRISE."--[WILLIAM SIDNEY MOUNT.]]
In the works of the figure-painters we have spoken of there is evident
an earnest pursuit of art, attended sometimes with very respectable
results; but, with the exception of here and there a portrait-painter of
real genius, we do not discover in their paintings much that is of value
in the history of art, except as indicating the existence of genuine
æsthetic feeling in the country demanding expression in however
hesitating and abortive a manner. But when we come to the subject of
landscape-painting, we enter upon a field in which originality of style
is apparent, and a certain consistency and harmony of effort. Minds of
large reserve power meet us at the outset, moved by strong and earnest
convictions, and often expressing their thoughts in methods entirely
their own. Thoroughly, almost fanatically, national by nature, even when
their art shows traces of foreign influence, and drawing their subjects
from their native soil, they have created an art which can fairly claim
to be ranked as a school, whatever be the position assigned to it in
future ages. English, French, Irish, African, and Spaniard have alike
vied in painting the scenery of this beautiful country, and mingling
their fame and identifying their lives with "its hills, rock-ribbed and
ancient as the sun," its mountain streams and meadow lands, its primeval
forests, and the waves that break upon its granite shores.
It is to three artists of great natural ability that the origin of
American landscape-painting can be traced--Cole, Doughty, and Durand.
Although the youngest of the three, the first seems to have antedated
Doughty by a few months in adopting this branch of art professionally;
while Durand, older than Cole by several years, yet did not take up
landscape-painting until some years after him.
Thomas Cole died in the prime of life, at the age of forty-seven, but
there are few characters in the history of the country that have made a
deeper impression. Singularly versatile, inspired by a powerful
imagination, possessing a pure and lofty character, and animated by the
noblest of sentiments, we feel before his greatest works--through all
the imperfections of his art, through all the faltering methods with
which his genius sought to express itself--that a vast mind here sought
feebly to utter great thoughts (which he has doubtless already learned
to utter with more truth in another world); we see that unmistakable
sign of all minds of a high order, the evidence that the man was greater
than his works. It is not dexterity, technique, knowledge, that
impresses us in studying the works of Cole, so much as character. One
feels that in them is seen the handwriting of one of the greatest men
who have ever trod this continent.
[Illustration: "TAKING THE VEIL"--[ROBERT WEIR]]
Thomas Cole, the first artist who ever painted landscape professionally
in America--unless we except the few faltering landscape-paintings of
John Frazer, the miniature artist of the previous century--was born in
England, but he was of American ancestry, and his parents returned to
this country in his childhood. The difficulties with which he had to
contend at the outset of his art career form an affecting picture. From
infancy he had been fond of the pencil; and the tinting of wall-paper in
his father's factory at Steubenville, Ohio, gave him a slight practice
in the harmony of colors. In the mean time he took up engraving, but
was diverted from this pursuit by a travelling German portrait-painter,
who gave him a few lessons in the use of oil-colors. He began with
portraiture, and resolved to be an artist, although the failure of his
father's business brought the whole family on him for support. The
struggles through which the youth now passed make a long and painful
story. Through it all he retained his bias for art, and at twenty-two
began to draw scenery, from nature, along the banks of the Monongahela.
Dunlap has well said, "To me the struggles of a virtuous man endeavoring
to buffet fortune, steeped to the very lips in poverty, yet never
despairing, or a moment ceasing his exertions, is one of the most
sublime objects of contemplation."
After several years of this severe hardship, Cole finally drifted to New
York, and eventually attracted notice. When the National Academy of
Design was founded in 1828, Cole and Doughty were simultaneously winning
success, and giving a permanent character to the art which for half a
century was destined to be most prominent on the walls of the Academy.
So far as foreign technical influences can be traced in the compositions
of Cole, they are those of Claude and Salvator Rosa. He revisited
England at the time when Turner and Constable were establishing their
fame, and producing such an influence on the great school of French
landscape art which has since succeeded. It is interesting to think what
would have been the character of our landscape art if Cole had been
favorably impressed by the broad and vigorous style of these painters.
But he does not seem to have been ripe for the audacious and sometimes
more truthful methods of modern landscape, and expressed himself with
warmth regarding what he considered the extravagances of Turner.
The art of Cole was however, largely biassed by the literature of
England. The influence of both Bunyan and Walter Scott can be traced in
his works; while the serious turn of his mind gave a solemn majesty and
a religious fervor to his compositions, which command our deep respect,
even when we fail altogether to concede complete success to his artistic
efforts. For this reason Cole has wielded, more than most of our
artists, a powerful influence outside of his art with a people which,
with all its volatility, yet maintains the traditions of a deeply
religious ancestry. It was in this many-sidedness of his genius, that
brought him into contact with widely varied sympathies, that Cole's
chief power consisted; for if we look at his work from the art point of
view alone, we are impressed with its inequality, the lack of early art
influences which it exhibits, and an attempt sometimes at dramatic force
which occasionally lapses into mere sensationalism. But in all his
compositions there are evident a rapturous love of nature, and the
energy and yearning of a mind seeking to find expression for a vast
ideal. Cole was what very few of our artists have been--an idealist. The
work by which he will be longest and best remembered in the art of his
country is the noble series called the "Course of Empire," consisting of
five paintings, representing a nation's rise, progress, decline, and
fall, and the change which comes over the abandoned scenery as the once
superb capital returns to the wildness and solitude of nature. The last
of the series, entitled "Desolation"--a gray silent waste, haunted by
the bittern, with here and there a crumbling column reflected in the
deserted harbor, where gleaming fleets once floated, and imperial
pageants were seen in the pavilions along the marble piers--is one of
the most remarkable productions of American art. But with all the
enthusiasm which Cole aroused among his contemporaries, his influence
seems to have been to give dignity to landscape art rather than to
impress his thoughts and methods on other artists. It is true that he
seized the characteristics of our scenery with a truth which came not
only from close study, but also from deep affection for the land whose
mountains and lakes he painted, and thus led our first landscapists to
observe the great variety and beauty of their own country. But, on the
other hand, a certain hardness in his technique probably rendered him
less influential as a leader than Doughty and Durand. The former, if
inferior in general capacity to Cole, was more emphatically the artist
by nature.
[Illustration: "DESOLATION."--[FROM "THE COURSE OF EMPIRE," BY THOMAS
COLE.]]
Thomas Doughty was in the leather business until his twenty-eighth year,
when, without any previous training, he threw up the trade, and adopted
the profession of landscape-painter. There is an audacity, a
self-confidence, in the way our early painters entered on the art
career, without instruction in the theory and practice of their art,
which is charming for the simplicity it shows, but would tend to bring
the efforts of these artists into contempt if the results had not often
justified their audacity, for they were sometimes men of remarkable
ability. There have been many greater landscape-painters than Doughty,
but few who have done so well with such meagre opportunities for
instruction. He seems, also, to have been successful in attracting
favorable notice in England as well as here, although at a time when
English landscape art was at its zenith. The soft, poetic traits, the
tender, silvery tones, that distinguished Doughty's style, were entirely
original with him, and have undoubtedly had much influence in forming
the style of some of the landscapists who succeeded him.
In Asher B. Durand, a Huguenot by descent, and the only one of the three
founders of American landscape-painting who survives to our time to
enjoy a green old age, we find a nature as strong as that of Cole. The
equal of that artist in the sum of his intellectual powers, we discover
in him a different quality of mind. Similar as they are in high moral
purpose and a profound reverence for the Creator, as represented in his
works, Cole was the most imaginative and inspirational of the two,
stirred more by the fire of genius; while Durand, with a more equable
temperament and a larger experience, produced results that are more
satisfactory from an art point of view.
[Illustration: A STUDY FROM NATURE.--[A. U. DURAND.]]
Few artists have shown greater capacity than Durand in successfully
following entirely distinct branches of art. As a steel-engraver, who in
this century has produced work that is much superior to his superb
engraving of Vanderlyn's "Ariadne?" Who of our artists has been able
both to design and to engrave such a work as his "Musidora?" After
employing the burin so admirably, he took up portrait-painting, and by
such portraits as his head of Bryant placed himself by the side of our
leading portrait-painters. Still unsatisfied with the success won thus
far, Durand, in his thirty-eighth year, directed his efforts to
landscape-painting, and at once became not only a pioneer but a master
in this department. The care he had been obliged to give to engraving
was undoubtedly of great assistance to him in enabling him to render the
lines of a composition with truth; while his practice of studying
character in portraiture gave him insight into the individuality of
trees--he invested them with a humanity like that which the ancient
Greeks gave to their forests when they made them the haunt of the
dryads. It is to this that we doubtless owe the massive handling, the
fresh and vigorous treatment of trees in such solemn and majestic
landscapes as "The Edge of the Forest," in the Corcoran Gallery at
Washington. The art of Durand is wholly national: few of our painters
owe less to foreign inspiration. Here he learned the various arts that
gave him a triple fame, here he found the subjects for his compositions,
and his name is destined to endure as long as American art shall endure.
[Illustration: "NOON BY THE SEA-SHORE."--BEVERLY BEACH.--[J. F.
KENSETT.]]
Among the most prominent of the landscape-painters who succeeded the
founders of the art among us, and were, like them, inspired by a
reverent spirit and lofty poetic impulses, John F. Kensett holds a
commanding position. Like Durand, he began his career with the burin,
and after working for the American Bank-note Company, drifted into
painting. Circumstances seem to have favored him beyond many of his
compeers, and he was early permitted to visit England and the Continent,
and spent seven years abroad. Notwithstanding so long an association
with foreign schools, especially the Italian, we find very little
evidence of foreign art in the style of Kensett. He was fully as
original as Durand, and saw and represented nature in his own language.
His methods of rendering a bit of landscape were tender and harmonious,
and entirely free from any attempt at sensationalism. So marked was the
latter characteristic especially, that before the great modern question
of the values began to arouse much attention in the ateliers of Paris,
Kensett had already grasped the perception of a theory of art practice
which has since become so prominent in foreign art; although, naturally,
it is not in all his canvases that this attempt to interpret the true
relations of objects in nature is equally evident. We see it brought out
most prominently in some of his quiet, dreamy coast scenes, in which it
is not so much things as feelings that he tries to render or suggest. In
them also is most apparent an endeavor after breadth of effect, which is
a sign of mastery when successfully carried out. Mr. Kensett's art
consisted in a certain inimitably winning tenderness of tone--a subtle
poetic suggestiveness. His small compositions, as a rule, are more
satisfying than his larger pictures, in which the thinness of his
technique is sometimes too prominent. The career of Kensett, who died
but a few years ago, is one of the most complete and symmetrical in our
art history.
[Illustration: "ALTORF, BIRTH-PLACE OF WILLIAM TELL."--[GEORGE L.
BROWN.]]
A contemporary of Kensett, but still surviving him, George L. Brown, of
Boston, struggled heroically and successfully with the early
difficulties of his life; and, yielding to the seductive influences of
Italian scenery, devoted his art to representing it, with results that
entitle him to an honorable position. The effects he has sought are
luminousness and color. Mr. Brown's method of using colors was formed,
to a certain extent, on that of the Italian landscape art of the time;
and, while often brilliant and poetic, reminds us sometimes of the
studio rather than of the free, pure, magical opulence of the atmosphere
and sunlight of the scenery he portrayed. It can be frankly conceded,
however, that he has been no slavish copyist of a style; but while
acknowledging the force of foreign influences, has yet given abundant
evidence of a personality of his own: and in such works as his "Bay of
New York," which is owned by the Prince of Wales, and some of his views
among the liquid streets of Venice lined with mouldering palaces, and
skimmed by gondolas darting hither and thither like swallows, he has
shown himself to be a true poet and an admirable painter.
III.
_AMERICAN PAINTERS._
1828-1878.
No school of art ever came more rapidly into being than the landscape
school which owes its rise to Cole, Doughty, and Durand. Up to this time
portraiture had been the field in which American painters had achieved
their most signal successes. But now the majority of our artists of
ability turned their attention to the representation of scenery; and for
forty years a long list of painters have made the public familiar with
their native land, and have thus, at the same time, stimulated a popular
interest in art.
It is impossible to mention here more than a few of those who, as
landscape-painters, have won a local or national reputation among us.
Nor is it essential, while recognizing the great importance and
undoubted merit of our landscape art, to exaggerate its relative value
and position. While it has, in most cases, been the result of a true
artistic feeling and a genuine, if not very demonstrative, enthusiasm
for nature on the part of the artists who have devoted their lives to
its pursuit, and while it has given us much that is pleasing, much that
is improving, much that is poetic, and occasionally some examples of a
high order of landscape-painting--yet, as a whole, our school of
landscape seems scarcely to be entitled to the highest rank. The wonder
is that it has been of such average excellence, for the environing
conditions have apparently not been favorable. The influences among
which it sprung have been so often prosaic or uninspiring, that,
notwithstanding its fertility, we find the result to lean to quantity
rather than quality. The ideal and emotional elements in art have not
been sufficiently dominant; while the topographical and the mechanical
notions regarding the end of landscape art have prevailed.
[Illustration: "BROOK IN THE WOODS."--[WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE.]]
Until recently this school has contented itself with the superficial
aspect of nature rather than with the subtle suggestions by which it
appeals to the soul. An absence of imaginative power has been too
apparent, and a lack of the energy and earnestness born of large natures
and absorbing enthusiasm; and the abundant variety or individuality of
style, while indicating self-reliant, independent action, sometimes has
also been a result of the want of solid training, or failure to grasp
the accepted principles which underlie art practice. There has been a
general average of native ability in the artists--a certain dead level
of excellence in the quality of the works offered at our annual
exhibitions--which was good as far as it went; but, except on rare
occasions, it seldom arrested and enchained attention by the expression
of daring technique or imaginative power, as the outcome of concerted
influences exerted in one direction, and resulting in typical
representative minds of vast resources, bounding into the arena and
challenging the admiration of the world. Artists we have undoubtedly had
occasionally, during this period, who have been endowed with genius to
win renown; but they have, like Cole, either lacked the training and
influences--the long succession of national heredity in art practice
which are well-nigh indispensable to the highest success; or, like
Church, yielding to the impulse of a prosaic environment, they have
stopped short of the highest flights of art, and their imagination has
been curbed to the subordinate pursuit of rendering the actual rather
than the ideal.
In technique, also--if we may be permitted modestly to express an
opinion on the subject--this school has seemed to be, on the whole, weak
and vacillating, being impelled by no definite aim. It has dealt with
detail rather than masses; it has concerned itself with parts rather
than general effect. Thus, while the rendering of details has sometimes
been given with great fidelity, the spirit of the scene has eluded the
artist, and a work which dazzles us at first, fails, therefore, to hold
the imagination of the observer, and becomes flat and insipid on
repeated inspection. The reverse is the case with works of art of the
first order.
We also find in the art of this school weakness in a knowledge of--or at
least in the power of appreciating--the vast significance of the line in
art. Too many American paintings, which have been clever in color, have
been almost ruined by the palpable ignorance they display of the
elements of drawing. Inability to compose effectively--or, in other
words, to perceive the harmony which is the dominant idea of true
art--has also been too frequent a characteristic of this school. While
in the application of colors a lack of nerve has been exhibited which
gives to many of these works an appearance of thinness, that becomes
painfully apparent when they have been painted a few years. These
observations apply no less to the figure-painting than the landscape art
of this period of American art; and a general absence of warmth and
earnestness is the impression which a survey of the field leaves upon
the mind of the candid observer.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION.--[R. W. HUBBARD.]]
There is nothing in this to surprise or to discourage, if we frankly
consider the surrounding circumstances. Great art is the child of
repose; the restlessness, the feverish activity of the country,
eminently encouraging to some pursuits, is, if not fatal to the arts, at
least opposed to their highest development; the vast multiplicity of
aims agitating the people has thus far prevented that concentration of
effort which meets with a response in the enthusiasm of artistic genius.
Instead of being discouraged, therefore, by the quality of the art we
have already produced, we accept it as strong evidence that the American
people have a decided natural turn for the arts, which only awaits a
more favorable condition of the nation to reach a higher plane of
excellence.