Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Paintings: Nine Recent Acquisitions

Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Paintings: Nine Recent AcquisitionsAuthor(s): Barbara T. RossSource: Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Vol. 44, No. 1 (1985), pp. 4-13Published by: Princeton University Art MuseumStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3774656 .

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Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Paintings: Nine Recent Acquisitions Barbara T. Ross The collection of The Art Museum has been significant- ly enriched in the last five years by the gifts of nine small nineteenth-century American landscape paintings. Six were given by Stuart P. Feld, Class of 1957, and Mrs. Feld. By happy coincidence, the three additional Ameri- can landscapes, given within the same period, comple- ment the Feld donation: they are the gifts of Mrs. Flo- rence Lewison Glickman in memory of her husband, Maurice Glickman; the Newington Cropsey Foundation; and Hugh Trumbull Adams, Class of 193 5.

The six artists represented-Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, George In- ness, Louis Remy Mignot, and Worthington Whittredge -were all born between i8 zo and I83 I, were friends, kept studios in New York City at the height of their ca- reers, and exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design. The designation "Second Generation Hud- son River School" has been applied to all six.

The Hudson River School painters shared a desire to portray nature in a wild and uncorrupted state, and a zeal to produce a truly American style of landscape painting. These artists, as the name suggests, often depicted scenes that were familiar to them along the Hud- son River Valley, as well as in the mountains of New York State and New England, where they spent their summers. They were the first American artists to take their sketchbooks and color boxes directly into the wilderness; their studies after nature convey a sense of immediacy and a direct experience of a time and place. While their larger, more formal canvases were based on their memories and sketches after nature, they were painted in the studio, where the subjects were romanti- cized.

Although influenced by the work of Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Asher B. Durand (I796-i886), "founders" of the School, the paintings of the "second generation" artists, I860-I875, are characterized by a greater naturalism and fidelity to an actual place; a lighter, more brilliant palette; and smaller canvases. The designation "Luminism"-a term used to describe both a concern with light and a quality of light characteristic of the American landscape-has been applied to the mature style of the artists under consideration; all were included in the important exhibition in I980 entitled "American Light: The Luminist Movement," at the

National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Such terms, however, must not be applied too rigidly, and the more private works of these artists, while always atten- tive to the quality of light, principally demonstrate a concern with an unaffected naturalism.

The works of George Inness (18z5-1894) cannot always be easily categorized. Not American in subject or spirit, his Sunset Near St. Peter's, Rome, given to the Museum in i98z by Hugh Trumbull Adams, Class of 1935, is concerned with the dramatic effect of light. Probably executed in i87I during the last of the many stays Inness made in Italy, this painting is one of several depictions by the artist of the dome and walled com- pound of St. Peter's, with the Tiber River in the foreground. In this work Inness explores the brilliant colors and the extremes of light and shade of the last moments of a sunset; the buildings are strongly silhouetted against the orange afterglow, and the boat in the foreground is all but lost in the deep penumbra. A famous landmark has been made incidental to a mood, a moment of quiet beauty.

This painting joins three others by Inness already in the collection of The Art Museum-a diminutive, more traditional, romantic pastoral landscape of 1857; a bright and airy panoramic view of Albano, Italy, of about i87z-1874; and a sublime late work, The Home

Figure i. George Inness, Italian Pastoral Scene, I857. Oil on canvas, i6.o x 2I.o cm. (65/16 x 81/4 in.), The Art Muse- um, Princeton University, Museum purchase, The John MacLean Magie and Gertrude Magie Fund (47-z 15).

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Figure z. George Inness, Sunset Near St. Peter's, Rome, ca. 187I. Oil on canvas, 41.0 x 6i.o cm. (i61/8 X z4 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Hugh Trumbull Adams, Class of I935 (8z-i ).

Figure 3. George Inness, Albano, Italy, ca. I872-I874. Oil on panel, 76.o x 114.0 cm. (295/16 x 447/8 in.), The Art Mu- seum, Princeton University, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas G. Cook (56-IzI).

of the Heron, 189 I. In the last, we are interlopers in a se- cret wooded place probably in southern Florida, domi- nated by a large tree beside which we see a white heron standing on a fallen log surrounded by lush vegetation. The afternoon sun flickers through the leaves; a soft glow on a tree trunk is balanced by the white plumage of the heron. The humidity, stillness, and saturated green- ness of the forest are almost palpable.

Figure 4. George Inness, The Home of the Heron, I891. Oil on canvas, io6.5 X 93.5 cm. (417/8 x 3613/16 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Victor Stephen Harris, Class of 1940, and David Harris, Class of 1944, in memory of their father, Victor Harris (43-93).

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Figure 5. Jasper F. Cropsey, Morning, I854. Oil on canvas, 43.8 x 32.3 cm. (I71/4 X I 21/16 in.) (arched top), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Stuart P. Feld, Class of I957, and Mrs. Feld (84-3 I1).

A pair of charming paintings with arched tops by Jas- per Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), called Morning (1854) and Evening (185 5), were executed in this coun- try in the period between the artist's I847-I849 and I856-I863 sojourns in England and continental Europe, but borrow heavily from traditional European prototypes. They are landscapes of the imagination, in- corporating such picturesque elements as an Alpine peak, a quaint bridge, cows, a castle, a stile, and a shep- herd boy. The beginning and end of the day are eloquently evoked by white clouds against a light blue morning sky, and by heavy clouds, dark against the deep orange glow of sunset. In the same period Cropsey was also producing characteristic Hudson River School subjects, but not until after his return to America in I863 did he make a total commitment to painting landscapes after nature.

The recent acquisition of Morning and Evening has prompted the study of another canvas by Cropsey in the

Figure 6. Jasper F. Cropsey, Evening, I 855. Oil on canvas, 44.4 X 33.I cm. (I71/2x I3'/16 in.) (arched top), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Stuart P. Feld, Class of 1957, and Mrs. Feld (84-32).

collection, executed in I8 59 during his second English stay. This painting, traditionally entitled Lulworth Cas- tle (although Lulworth Castle is a square seventeenth- century building with symmetrical corner towers), is a somewhat prosaic work which borrows heavily from the tradition of English landscape painting. Three simi- lar paintings by Cropsey depicting castles and horses with riders are known: two in the collections of his heirs and one at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, in Lawrence.

Cropsey's Mounts Adam and Eve of i87z, a painting from his maturity, was presented to the Museum in I983 by the Newington Cropsey Foundation. An ex- pansive vista unfolds from a gentle rise in the foreground, over a placid pond and through a valley to Mounts Adam and Eve in the distance. It is a work of gentle grandeur and great sensitivity to light and atmos- phere. At least three other paintings by Cropsey and several sketches depict this pair of peaks in the southern

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Figure 7. Jasper F. Cropsey, Mounts Adam and Eve, 1872. Oil on canvas, 30.6 x 51.3 cm. (i2/16 X zo3/16 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of the Newington Cropsey Foundation (8 3- I I).

Figure 8. Jasper F. Cropsey, Lulworth Castle, I859. Oil on canvas, 35.8 x 5 .z cm. (I48 x zo3/16 in.), The Art Muse- um, Princeton University, Gift of Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. (46-8z).

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Figure 9. Louis Remy Mignot, South American Scene, i86z. Oil on canvas, 37.5 x 56.5 cm. (43/4 x zzV4 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Stuart P. Feld, Class of I957, and Mrs. Feld (80-38).

Figure io. Frederick E. Church, Passing Shower in the Tropics, i 87z. Oil on canvas, 3 1.0 x 5 I.3 cm. (I z3/16 X

zo3/16 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Muse- um purchase (45-2zI).

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Catskills (some liberties may have been taken here with their configuration), which could be viewed from the artist's new home, "Aladdin," in Warwick, New York, completed in I869.

Louis Remy Mignot's South American Scene, i862, was given by Mr. and Mrs. Feld in I980. Mignot (1831-I870) accompanied the painter Frederick E. Church in 1857, on Church's second South American trip, through Panama to Ecuador and the Andes Moun- tains. On his return in I858, Mignot rented a studio in the new Tenth Street Studio Building, where many of the Hudson River School painters, including Bierstadt, Gifford, Kensett, and Whittredge, worked. Although Mignot continued to paint Hudson River and New En- gland scenes, he became known for his exotic tropical subjects, inspired by his 1857 trip to South America and by trips to his native South Carolina. Heavily influenced by his more famous fellow traveler, Church, Mignot's painting has the same warm pink tonalities, luminous clarity, and idealized exotic scenery characteristic of Church's work. It is instructive to compare Mignot's

canvas with Church's Passing Shower in the Tropics, 1872, in the collection of The Art Museum, which, de- spite its small size, has a breadth and grandeur that elud- ed Mignot. Mignot's tropical river scene-with palm trees, lush vegetation, a ruin in the foreground, and a lacy edge of white buildings against high mountains on the far shore-was painted only months before his abrupt departure for London at the outbreak of the Civil War. Another version, River Scene, Equador, ap- peared on the New York art market in I984.

It is likely that Worthington Whittredge (i820- I9io) painted A Catskill Brook, a small landscape depicting a brook in the forest with three bathers, while en- joying just such a scene. This picture is one of the finest of the many intimate, modest landscapes Whittredge executed in the fifty years between I859, when he returned home from ten years abroad, and his death in I910. A Catskill Brook probably dates from the i 8 6os. Whittredge alternately painted such restrained scenes as this one and ambitious Luminist studio paintings, inspired by his several trips west and to Mexico. The Mu-

Figure i i. Worthington Whittredge, A Catskill Brook. Oil on canvas, 28.5 x 42.5 cm. (II3/6 x i63/4 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Stuart P. Feld, Class of 1957, and Mrs. Feld (78-47).

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Brook. Gifford spent many summer hours in such sur- roundings, alternately painting and fishing. Fishing in a Mountain Stream is a private work, very different from the artist's highly finished grand panoramas, which convey Gifford's ambitions in the Luminist style and which gained him his reputation.

John Frederick Kensett (i816-I87z), like Cropsey, tended to concentrate on landscape subjects close to home. The collection of The Art Museum includes two paintings by this important Luminist: Coast Scene, 1855, unfortunately marred by damage in the sky area, and a small gem of a canvas of about i851, Sunset, Camel's Hump, Vermont. The pristine beauty and stillness of the dark, looming hills and mountain peaks, and the glint of a fading sun upon the river in the valley be- low, are masterfully captured.

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Figure i z. Worthington Whittredge, Cypresses at the Villa d'Este, Tivoli, i856. Oil on paper, 59.0 x 43.0 cm. (23 1/4 X I615/16 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Museum purchase, John MacLean Magie and Gertrude Magie Fund (68-I84).

seum also has in its collection a view of the gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, painted by Whittredge in i8 5 6 during his European sojourn.

The Art Museum now also has a painting by Whit- tredge's close friend and traveling companion, Sanford Robinson Gifford (i8z3-i880). Fishing in a Mountain Stream, a small but broadly painted canvas, shows a lone figure, perhaps a boy, fishing in a gently flowing brook in the forest; in its intimacy and unaffected feel- ing for nature it is akin to Whittredge's A Catskill

Figure I 3. Sanford Robinson Gifford, Fishing in a Moun- tain Stream. Oil on canvas, 30.7 x z5.8 cm. (i z/8 x Io1/8 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Stuart P. Feld, Class of I957, and Mrs. Feld (8 1-43).

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Figure 14. John F. Kensett, Sunset, Camel's Hump, Ver- mont, ca. i85 I. Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 4I.0 cm. (iz x i68 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of the Old Print Shop, New York (45-199).

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Figure 5. John F. Kensett, Coast Scene, 8 5 5. Oil on canvas, 37.0 x 6z.o cm. (I49/1 x z47/8 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Mrs. John P. Poe (4I-5z).

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Figure i6. Albert Bierstadt, Mount Adams, Washington, I875. Oil on canvas, I38.ox zIz.5 cm. (543/8x 83/8 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Mrs. Jacob N. Beam, before I9II (40-430).

In the i86os, Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Church were certainly the most popular American artists of their day. Bierstadt (i830-1902) was widely acclaimed for his majestic landscapes of the American West, such as Mount Adams, Washington, I875, in the Museum collection. His paintings captured the imagination of an entire generation and helped to popularize the West, made more accessible by the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869. Bierstadt's enthusiastic travel accounts, published in The Crayon, induced his fellow artists, among them Whittredge, Gifford, and Kensett, to travel to the Rockies. Bierstadt made six trips to the West; Mount Adams, Washington resulted from his second trip, in 1863, which he made with the journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow. There is a calculated but convincing grandeur in the towering, snow-capped mountains, which dwarf the figures and horses; in the thin, shifting

clouds; and in the dramatic contrasts of light and shade. Such paintings were executed in the studio, often years after Bierstadt's visit to the site depicted, and were based on his stereoscopic views and sketches. At the height of Bierstadt's career his Western views were much sought after, and they commanded high prices, although later in his lifetime his reputation waned considerably.

Strikingly different is a Bierstadt oil sketch on paper entitled Undulations: White Mountains, New Hamp- shire, given in I982 by Florence Lewison Glickman in memory of her husband, Maurice Glickman. Inscribed "White Mts. N.H." on the verso, this painting was probably made during one of the summers Bierstadt spent in the region, between 1857 and i86z. This small, rapid but knowing study of a gentle mountain range and valley was made for future reference with no thought to public viewing. But the immediacy, economy, and

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Figure I7. Albert Bierstadt, Undulations: White Moun- tains, New Hampshire. Oil on paper, z6.o x 36.o cm. (o1V4 X I43/16 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Florence Lewison Glickman in memory of her husband, Maurice Glickman ( 8 z- io9).

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strength of the image make it a work of the greatest ap-

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i.::.:.,." ~,:.. .... :.:.~ . peal to twentieth-century eyes.

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Bierstadt's Yosemite Valley, California, also oil on paper, was given by Mr. and Mrs. Feld in i983. This

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picture, which is more a reminiscence thanan actual -.: ''.·.:.scene, shows a stream in a forest glade, with an unob-

trusive horse and rider on the far shore; the peak of El :;"1.~ ; ~'"' ~~~~ '

~ "' Capitan can be seen in the distance through the trees. This painting was probably also inspired by Bierstadt's 1863 trip to the West, and may have been executed in

i: ~?~ ^ ~~ ~F : ~ 0the late i86os or early i87os. In Yosemite Valley, Cali- R F~ ... : ^z ;fornia the artist shares a private reflection, a beautifully

painted moment of tranquil and untouched nature. "F X- w F ~~~Bierstadt's grand panoramic vistas are once again ap- i:.~::?.:~f::: ~ preciated, and his reputation is now enhanced by

greater public knowledge of works such as these, which i " " g':' ..... . speak so eloquently to our time. The Museum is very

fortunate in having such a fine and instructive range of Bierstadt's works.

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:j . - 7 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ --= ~ ~~ PFigure i8. Albert Bierstadt, Yosemite Valley, California. Oil on paper, 50.0 X 4o.o cm. (I911/6 X I53/4 in.), The Art Museum, Princeton University, Gift of Stuart P. Feld, Class of I957, and Mrs. Feld (83-53).

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Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Paintings: Nine Recent Acquisitions