proof that we are by nature destined to remain a prosaic people. Aside
from the fact that already years ago we had such imaginative artists as
Hamilton, Lafarge, Vedder, and others, we consider that the wonderful
inventive quality of the American mind toward scientific and mechanical
discovery argues a highly creative imagination. Herbert Spencer it is
who proves somewhere that imagination must enter into the working out of
the problems of inventive science. Hitherto the nation's needs have
stimulated the imagination in that direction; but under new conditions
there is little reason to doubt that the same faculty will become
subservient to the creation of an original and powerful school of art in
America.
But while admitting the weak points of our landscape art, and that the
highest flights of which landscape-painting is capable have not always
been reached by our artists, we should be careful, on the other hand,
lest we fail to award them the merit which is justly their due for
persevering endeavor, and frequently for great natural ability. Let us,
in justice, ungrudgingly allow the discriminating praise that some out
of a large number are undoubtedly entitled to claim. If we mention them
individually rather than by the classification of schools, it is simply
because, for the reasons already stated, scarce any of our artists have
founded schools; although we may, perhaps, without inconsistency, speak
of the efforts of artists of altogether different styles, but treating
the same class of subjects, as a school. It is in this sense that we
allude to our school of landscape.
With certain important exceptions, to be noted in another chapter, the
American art of this period has, on the whole, been concerned chiefly
with the objective; and it could not have well been otherwise, for any
other form of art at such a time would have utterly failed to carry the
people with it, and thus missed of producing that gradual æsthetic
education which is the province of a national art.
Not only for this reason has our school of landscape art vindicated its
right to be, and established its claim on our respectful attention, but
also because it has owed little to foreign influences--springing rather
from environing circumstances, as naturally as the flowers of May follow
the departure of winter.
[Illustration: "THE VASTY DEEP."--[WILLIAM T. RICHARDS.]]
And thus, as after a long winter a few warm spring days cover the
orchard with an affluence of blossoms, so at this time from many
quarters of the land artists appeared, especially in the field of
landscape art; and one can hardly believe that where, but a few years
before, the Indian and the buffalo and the wolf had roamed at their own
wild will, artists now arose, armed with an ability to discern the
beauties of their native land, to direct the prosaic thoughts of the
pioneer to the loveliness of the nature which surrounded him, and to
make for themselves an enduring name. Ohio, the Massachusetts of the
West, for example, which became a State as late as 1800, was in the
early part of this period especially prolific in artists, who, if they
did not find instruction or a public on the spot, were at least enabled,
with the increasing means of communication, to go to New York and
Boston, or to wander over to the studios and art wealth of Europe. In
other lands and ages the poetic sentiment has first found a vent in
lyrics and idyls; but with us the best poetry has been in the
landscape-painting which was created by the sons of those whose ploughs
first broke the soil of this continent with a Christian civilization. At
this period, also, we note the advent of an influence which doubtless
aided to promote a more rapid pursuit of the new art impulse of the
nation. Steam, the mighty magician which drives the locomotive and the
steamship, is in bad repute with the conservatives who are not in
sympathy with the progressive movements of the age; and yet among all
the other results of which it has been the wonderful agent, we must
ascribe its patronage of art. It is undoubtedly to the far greater
facilities for going from place to place, which followed the
introduction of steam, that we must partly attribute the rapid success
of many of the artists who appeared in our country at that time in such
unexpected numbers.
It was in 1841 that Leutze went to Düsseldorf to study, and thus
introduced a new influence into our art, which hitherto, so far as it
had acknowledged foreign influences, had been swayed by the schools of
Italy and Britain. The effect was evident when, a few years later,
Worthington Whittredge, a native of Ohio, went to Düsseldorf, and
studied under the guidance of Achenbach. Very naturally his style showed
for a time the effect of foreign methods; but he was guided by a native
independence of action that enabled him in the end to assimilate rather
than to imitate, like most of our artists at this time, and his later
landscapes are thoroughly individual and American, although doubtless
improved by foreign discipline. As a faithful delineator of the various
phases of American wood interiors, Mr. Whittredge has deservedly won a
permanent place in the popular favor. Some of his landscapes,
representing the scenery of the great West, have also been large in
treatment and effective in composition; but his skies sometimes lack
atmosphere and ideality.
Like his master, Durand, J. W. Casilear began his career as an engraver;
and the success he achieved in this department is attested by his very
clever engraving of Huntington's "Sibyl." Since he drifted into
landscape-painting, Casilear has produced many delicately finished and
poetic scenes, distinguished by elegance and refinement rather than dash
or originality; and somewhat the same observations would apply to the
tender landscapes of James A. Saydam. In such dreamy, pleasant, but not
very vigorous paintings as that of his "Valley of the Pemigewasset,"
Samuel L. Gerry has also attracted favorable attention.
[Illustration: "HIGH TORN, ROCKLAND LAKE."--[JASPER F. CROPSEY.]]
The work of a genuine poet is apparent in the canvases of R. W. Hubbard.
Repose and pensive harmoniousness of treatment characterize his simple
and winsome, if not stirring, transcripts of the more familiar phases of
our scenery. They are idyls in color. What Hubbard has done for New
England landscape, J. R. Meeker, of St. Louis, has attempted for the
"lakes of the Atchafalaya, fragrant and thickly embowered with
blossoming hedges of roses," and the live-oaks spreading their vast
arms, like groined arches of Gothic cathedrals, festooned with the
mystically trailing folds of the Spanish moss, along the lagoons of the
South-west, where the sequestered shores are haunted by the pelican and
the gayly colored crane, and the groves are melodious with the rapturous
lyrics of the mockingbird, the improvisatore of the woods. If not always
successful in the tone of his pictures, it may be conceded that Mr.
Meeker has approached his subject with a reverent and poetic spirit, and
has often rendered these scenes with much feeling and truth.
Still another aspect of our scenery has been reproduced with fidelity by
W. T. Richards, of Philadelphia. We refer to the long reaches of
silvery shore and the sand-dunes which are characteristic of many parts
of our Atlantic coast. He has often painted woodland scenes with great
patience, but, as it seems to us, with too much detail, and with greens
which are open to a charge of being crude and violent. But in his beach
effects Mr. Richards maintains an important position; and if slightly
mannered, has yet developed a style of subject and treatment which very
effectively represents certain distinguishing features of our solemn
coasts. Some of his water-color paintings have scarcely been surpassed,
as, for example, the noble representations of the bleak, snow-like,
cedar-tufted dunes along the Jersey shore.
[Illustration: "THE PARSONAGE"--[A. F. BELLOWS]]
The extraordinary variety of the effects of American landscape is again
shown by the gorgeousness of our autumnal foliage. It has been objected
by some that it is too vivid for art purposes. We consider this a matter
of individual taste. There is nothing more absurd in trying to render
the effects of sunset, or the scarlet and gold of an American forest in
the dreamy days of the Indian summer, than in undertaking to paint the
splendor of many-colored drapery in an Oriental crowd, which is
considered a legitimate subject for the artist who has a correct eye
for color. It is not in the subject, but in the artist, that the
difficulty lies. Some of our painters have seized these autumnal
displays with fine feeling and excellent judgment. Kensett is an
example; another is J. F. Cropsey, who, beginning life as an architect,
became eventually an agreeable delineator of our autumnal scenery, and
at one time executed a number of paintings remarkable for their truth
and artistic beauty. His later work has scarcely sustained the early
reputation he justly acquired. At its best, his style was crisp, strong
in color, and sometimes very bold in composition. Mr. C. P. Cranch, who
was associated with Cropsey in Italy, and who is well known as a writer,
has exhibited in his Venetian landscapes a correct perception of color,
while his method lacks firmness of drawing, and shows traces of foreign
influence more than that of many of our artists who studied abroad at
this time. R. H. Fuller, who was a night-watchman on the police force of
Chelsea, Massachusetts, and died in 1871, was an artist whose
educational opportunities were excessively meagre. But he had a fine eye
for color and atmospheric effect, and some of his landscapes are painted
with a full brush, and are tender and beautiful. F. D. Williams, before
he left Boston for Paris, also developed a strong scheme of handling and
color which was at once pleasing and original. F. H. Shapleigh has
likewise shown an excellent feeling for some of nature's more quiet
effects, and his coast scenes are attractive, although lacking somewhat
in force.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE.--[JAMES HART.]]
As one considers this field of American art, he is increasingly
astonished to find how strikingly it exemplifies one of the leading
traits of a national school in the entire originality and individuality
with which each of our prominent landscapists of this period interprets
nature, even when he has studied more or less in Europe. Whatever may be
the general defect of refinement rather than strength, and other
weaknesses characteristic of our school of landscape art, it must be
admitted that its representative artists have been often sturdily
independent, and that their merits as well as their defects are entirely
their own. What difference there is between the carefully finished but
rich, massive foliage of David Johnson, suggesting the strength of the
old English masters of landscape, and the dreamy, mellow pastoral meadow
lands, wooded slopes, and dimpling lakes of our Green Mountains, veiled
by a luminous haze and steeped in repose, which are so delicately
portrayed by the brush of J. B. Bristol! Few of the landscape-painters
of this school have produced more agreeable results with their brush.
What points of divergence there are, again, between the landscapes of W.
L. Sonntag and A. F. Bellows!--the one adopting a scheme of tone and
color apparently out of the focus of nature, yet so using it in
rendering ideal compositions as to achieve results which place him by
the side of our leading poets of nature. To him landscape-painting seems
to be not so much a means to give faithful transcripts of actual scenes
as to represent the ideals of his fancy; and as such we accept them with
thankfulness, for they not only serve to give us pleasure, but also to
illustrate the many-sided phases of art. Bellows, on the other hand,
both in oil and _aquarelle_, has attempted minute reproductions of
nature; and, while sometimes suggesting the impression of labor rather
more than is consistent with breadth of effect, has faithfully and
charmingly interpreted the idyllic side of our rural life. If he had not
been a poet in color, we might have expected of him pastoral lyrics
imbued with the spirit of Cowper or Thompson. Early study at the school
of Antwerp, and the pursuit of _genre_ for some years, have enabled Mr.
Bellows skilfully to diversify his attractive village pictures and
representations of our noble New England elms with groups of figures. He
is justly entitled to be called the American Birket Foster.
It is instructive, in this connection, to observe the first landscapes
of George Inness, which properly belong in style to the early and
distinctively American school of landscape, while his recent method has
identified him with the later graduates of the ateliers of Paris. Samuel
Colman is another landscape-painter whose art is identified both with
this school and with that of the period on which we are now entering.
Educated here, and influenced by a fine eye for color, foreign travel
has broadened his sympathies, modified his technique, and led him to
look with favor upon later methods.
The landscapes of William and James Hart represent still another phase
of our art. Both began life as apprentices to a coach-painter, but
gradually identified themselves with the great throng of all ages who
have become the votaries of nature. There is cleverness and dexterity in
their work, a fine perception of the external beauty of the slopes and
vales and woods of our land, and brilliant color; but it is sometimes
marred by hardness of handling, and lack of juiciness or warmth of
feeling; in other words, it is too exclusively objective, as if only the
physical and not also the mental eye had been concerned in the painting
of their works. James Hart has of late years added cattle to his
landscapes with excellent success, and holds a prominent position among
the very few respectable painters of animal life whom the American art
of this period can justly claim.
[Illustration: "SUNSET ON THE HUDSON."--[SANDFORD R. GIFFORD.]]
Mr. Horace Robbins, successful in seizing certain aspects of mountain
scenery, with a fine feeling for atmospheric grays, and Mr. Arthur
Parton, who very pleasingly renders trees, and some of the sober effects
of our dim November days, although among our younger painters, justly
belong to this period, as do also Messrs. James and George Smillie, who
have been equally happy in water and oil colors. The former is another
of our many landscape-painters who began as engravers on steel. The
later style of these talented brothers has been evidently modified with
advantage by the influence of foreign technique, although they have
studied wholly in this country; and they now display an attractive vigor
and freshness in their landscape pieces, and a somewhat original choice
of subjects.
The style of each of the artists we have mentioned can be distinguished
at once. Individuality of expression is stamped upon the canvas of all;
but among them there is no one more thoroughly original than Sanford R.
Gifford, who, if he had lived in Persia or Peru two thousand years ago,
might well have been an enthusiastic fire-worshipper, or daily welcomed
the rising sun with reverent adoration. To him landscape-painting,
whether of scenes in our own Far West, or on the legendary Hudson, or in
the gorgeous East, has been alike the occasion for giving expression to
his feeling for glowing atmospheric effects, for lyrics which on canvas
reproduce the splendor of the sunset sky. But it would be a mistake to
suppose that Mr. Gifford's poetic sense has been confined to the
contemplation of serene and glowing atmospheres: he has also
successfully rendered the lazy mist, the trailing vapor of morning
enmeshed in dusky woodlands by the silent lake. His style combines to a
remarkable degree deliberation and inspiration--a happy union of the
analytical and emotional elements in art.
The objective school of American landscape-painting has found its
culminating excellence, as it seems to us, in the art of Frederick K.
Church. In his art-life the tendencies and aims of the chief national
school we have produced during the last half century have been typically
represented. In his works the technical weakness of this school is
apparent, and, at the same time, its noble sympathy with nature, and its
love for the grander aspects of the external world. It also represents
the restless, unsatisfied genius of our people during this period, ever
reaching out and beyond, and yearning, Venice-like, to draw to itself
the spoils, the riches, the splendors, of the whole round globe. To our
art the paintings of Mr. Church are what the geographic cantos of
"Childe Harold" have been to the poesy of England, or the burning
descriptions of St. Pierre and Châteaubriand to the literature of
France. If such a topic is permissible in letters, may it not also be
allowed sometimes in painting? Whether the one is as lofty as epic
poetry, or the other as great as historical painting or subjective
landscape, is a question which we do not need here to analyze. It is
sufficient that each holds an important position; and to carry off the
palm in either can only be the result of consummate genius. Yes! what
"Childe Harold" did for the scenery of the Old World, the art of Church
has done for that of the New. The vastness and the glory of this
continent were yet unrevealed to us. With the enthusiasm of a Raleigh or
a Balboa he has explored land and sea, combining the characteristics of
the explorer and the artist. A pupil of Cole, he has carried to its full
fruition the aspirations of his master, first gaining inspiration along
the magical shores of the Hudson, and amidst the ideally beautiful
ranges of the legendary Catskills. Our civilization needed exactly this
form of art expression at this period, and the artist appeared who
should teach the people to love beauty, and to find it among the
regions which first rang with the axe of our pioneers.
[Illustration: A COMPOSITION.--[FREDERICK E. CHURCH.]]
But, although dealing not so much with nature, as such, as with some of
her little known and more remarkable and startling effects, there is a
very noteworthy absence of sensationalism or staginess in the paintings
of Church; while, on the other hand, the somewhat too careful
reproduction of details has not prevented them from possessing a grand
massing of effect and a thrilling beauty and sublimity. "Cotopaxi," the
"Heart of the Andes," or "Niagara," may transgress many rules laid down
by the schools, but the magnificent ability with which they are
represented disarms criticism. Church's first painting of Niagara
occupies the culminating point in the objective art of this period of
our history, executed by an artist who up to that time had never crossed
the Atlantic, and whose merits and defects were entirely his own.
Mr. Church's "Niagara" is doubtless familiar to many through the fine
chromo-lithographic copy made from it; but those who have not seen the
original have only an incomplete idea of the grandeur of this great
painting. It grows on acquaintance somewhat as does the cataract
itself, until we seem to hear even the roar of the mighty waters that
rushed over those tremendous cliffs ages before this continent was
trodden by man, symbolizing the endless, remorseless, and irresistible
sweep of time. The green flood pouring evermore into the appalling abyss
veiled by mist wreathing up from the surging vortex below; the distant
shore lined with foliage, touched by the burning tints of October; the
rosy gray sky over-arching the scene, and the ethereal bow uniting
heaven and earth with its elusive band of colors--all are there,
rendered with matchless art.
The subjects of Mr. Church's more recent works have been taken from the
storied shores of the Mediterranean. We perceive in them no sign of
failing power, but more breadth and less opulence of detail. The artist
has treated the splendors of classic lands with the dignified reserve of
matured strength and a higher sense of the ideal. The melancholy
grandeur of the Parthenon in ruins has been painted with a stately
reticence in consonance with the character of the subject; and the
magnificent composition called the "Ægean" may well hold its own by the
side of some of the superb Italian canvases of Turner.
A landscape-painter who chose a range of subjects similar to those of
Church, and accompanied him in one of his South American trips, was
Louis R. Mignot, of South Carolina, who died in London some eight years
ago. He was inspired by a rapturous enthusiasm alike for the tender and
the brilliant aspects of nature, and appears to us to have been one of
the most remarkable artists of our country. He can be justly ranked with
the pioneers who first awoke the attention of the nation to a
consciousness of the beauty, glory, and inexhaustible variety of the
scenery of this continent, which had fallen to them as a heritage such
as no other people have yet acquired. Mignot was at once a fine colorist
and one of the most skilled of our painters in the handling of
materials; his was also a mind fired by a wide range of sympathies; and
whether it was the superb splendor of the tropical scenery of the Rio
Bamba, in South America, the sublime maddening rush of iris-circled
water at Niagara, or the fairy-like grace, the exquisite and ethereal
loveliness of new-fallen snow, he was equally happy in rendering the
varied aspects of nature. It is greatly to be regretted that the most
important works of this artist are owned in England, whither he resorted
at the opening of the civil war. "Snow in Hyde Park," which he painted
not long before his death, is one of the noblest productions of American
landscape-painting.
[Illustration: "A WINTER SCENE."--[LOUIS R. MIGNOT.]]
The American marine art of this period has been represented by a number
of artists, although they have been by no means so numerous or capable
as the maritime character of our people would have led us to expect.
William Bradford, by origin a Quaker, has made to himself a name for his
enterprise in going repeatedly to Labrador to study icebergs, and has
executed some effective compositions, which have won him fame at home
and abroad. Some of his coast scenes are also spirited, although open to
the charge of technical errors. Charles Temple Dix, who unfortunately
died young, painted some dashing, imaginative, and promising
compositions; and Harry Brown, of Portland, has successfully rendered
certain coast effects. But our ablest marine-painter of this period
seems to have been James Hamilton, of Philadelphia, who was beyond
question an artist of genius. His color was sometimes harsh and crude;
but he handled pigments with mastery, and composed with the virile
imagination of an improvisatore. Errors can doubtless be found in his
ships, or the forms of his waves; but he was inspired by a genuine
enthusiasm for the sea, and rendered the wildest and grandest effects of
old ocean with breadth, massiveness, and power. We have had no
marine-painter about whose works there is more of the raciness and
flavor of blue water.
When we turn to the department of animal-painting, we discover what has
been hitherto the weakest feature of American art, both in the number
and quality of the artists who have pursued this branch of the
profession. T. H. Hinckley at one time promised well in painting cattle
and game, but his efforts rarely went beyond giving us Denner-like
representations of stuffed foxes with glass eyes. The hairs were all
there, the color was well enough, although perhaps a little foxy--if one
may be permitted the term in this connection; but there was no life, no
characterization, there. William Hayes showed decided ability in his
representations of bisons and prairie-dogs and other dogs. Weak in
color, he yet succeeded in giving spirit and character to the groups he
painted, and holds among our animal-painters a position not dissimilar
to that of Mount in _genre_.
[Illustration: "SHIP OF 'THE ANCIENT MARINER.'"--[JAMES HAMILTON.]]