Art in America: A Critical and Historial Sketch

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.

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.

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.

Nor does the general absence of imaginative power in our art seem to us 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Walter M. Brackett, who has been able rarely well to enjoy the triple pleasure of catching, painting, and eating the same fish on a summer's morning by the limpid brooks of New Hampshire, has justly won a reputation as an artistic Walton. If he would but paint his rocks and trees as cleverly as he renders the speckled monarch of the stream, his compositions would leave little to be desired. Henry C. Bispham has given us some spirited but sometimes badly drawn paintings of cattle and horses; and Colonel T. B. Thorpe, an amateur with artistic tastes, in such semi-humorous satires as "A Border Inquest," representing wolves sitting on the carcass of a buffalo, struck a vein peculiarly American in its humor, and carried to a high degree of excellence by William H. Beard, whose brother, James Beard, can also be justly ranked as an animal-painter of respectable attainments. Mr. Beard, although remarkably versatile, has made a specialty, if it may be so termed, of exposing the failings and foibles of our sinful humanity by the medium of animal genre. Monkeys, bears, goats, owls, and rabbits are in turn impressed into the benevolent service of taking us off, and repeating for us the old Spartan tale of the slave made drunk by his master as a warning to his son. Of the skill which Mr. Beard has exhibited in this novel line there can be no question. The "Dance of Silenus," the pertinacious, iterative, pragmatic ape called "The Bore," and "Bears on a Bender," are masterly bits of characterization. There is also a deal of comic satire in "The Bulls and Bears of Mammon's Fierce Zoology," which, with a multitude of struggling fighting figures, takes off the eccentricities of the Stock-exchange. Beard can justly be called the American Æsop. It is asserted by many that this is not art. The fact is that it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line, and to prescribe what subjects an artist shall choose. In art the result justifies the means. And this certainly seems as legitimate a subject for the brush of the artist as the graphic pictorial satires of Hogarth, or the mildly comical genres of Erskine Nicol.

In a previous chapter we alluded to some of the figure, historical, and genre painters of this period. William Mount was the precursor of a number of genre artists of more or less ability, among whom may be mentioned Thomas Hicks, a pupil of Couture, and one of the first of our painters who studied at Paris. In this admirable school Mr. Hicks became an excellent colorist, although of late his art has appeared to lose some of this quality. He has painted landscape and genre, meeting with respectable success in the latter, but portraiture has chiefly occupied his attention. His portrait of General Meade is a striking and satisfactory work. Then there was Richard Caton Woodville, who followed Whittredge to Düsseldorf, and promised much in genre. His paintings show very decided traces of German influence, but behind it all was a strong individuality that seemed destined to assert itself, and to place him among our foremost painters. But he died young, and (shall we not say?) happily for him, since little fame and less appreciation are destined to the artists who come ere the people are ripe for their art. George B. Flagg at one time promised well for our genre art, but his abilities were too precocious, and unfortunately the splendid opportunities he enjoyed as a pupil of Allston, and as a long resident in London, do not seem to have been sufficient to give growth or permanence to his talents.

About this time our frontier life was coming more prominently into view, and that picturesque border line between civilization and barbarism was becoming a subject for the pen of our leading writers. Irving, Cooper, and Kennedy, Street, Whittier, and Longfellow, were tuning the first efforts of their Muse to celebrate Indian life and border warfare in prose and verse, while the majestic measures of Bryant's "Prairies" seemed a prophetic prelude to the march of mankind toward the lands of the setting sun. "Evangeline," the most splendid result of our poetic literature, attracted not less for its magnificent generalizations of the scenery of the West than for the constancy of the heroine, and the artistic mind responded in turn to the unknown mystery and romance of that vast region, and gave us graphic pictures of the rude humanity which lent interest and sentiment to its unexplored solitudes. It is greatly to be regretted that the work of these pioneers in Western genre was not of more artistic value; from a historical point of view, too much importance cannot be attached to the enterprise and courage of men like Catlin, Deas, and Ranney, who, imbued with the spirit of adventure, identified themselves with Indian and border life, and rescued it from oblivion by their art enthusiasm, which, had it been guided by previous training, would have been of even greater value. As it is, they have with the pencil done a service for the subjects they portrayed similar to what Bret Harte has accomplished in giving immortality with the pen to the wild, picturesque, but evanescent mining scenes of the Pacific slope. In this connection the fact is worth recording that the important mutual life-insurance association called the Artists' Funding Society took its origin in a successful effort to contribute to the support of the family of Ranney after his death.

Our historical painters of this period rarely created any works deserving of note or remembrance. Here and there a painting like that of Huntington's "Republican Court" was produced, which is a graceful and elegant composition, and one of the best of the kind in American art. Peter F. Rothermel, the able portrait-painter of Philadelphia, also composed a number of historical works, of which the last is probably of most value. His "Battle of Gettysburg" is a bold and not ineffective representation of one of the critical moments in the world's history, although open in parts to severe criticism. J. G. Chapman, well known at one time as a skilful wood-engraver and genre painter, also aspired to the difficult field of historical painting; but it is to an artist of German extraction, Emmanuel Leutze, that we owe our best historical art previous to 1860, excepting perhaps some of the compositions of Copley and West and two or three of the battle-pieces of Trumbull. Although born abroad, Leutze may be justly claimed as an American painter, for he was taken to Philadelphia in childhood, and remained in this country until thoroughly imbued with a patriotic love for the land and its history and the spirit of its institutions; and although he subsequently passed a number of years at Düsseldorf, whither he went at twenty-seven, the last ten years of his life were here; here he died, and the subjects of his art were almost entirely inspired by American scenes, and have become incorporated with the growth of our civilization.

Leutze was a man who was cast in a large mould, capable of a grand enthusiasm, and aspiring to grasp soaring ideals. Although his art was often at fault, it makes us feel, notwithstanding, that in contemplating his works we are in the presence of a colossal mind which, under healthier influences, would have better achieved what he aspired to win. He drew from wells of seemingly inexhaustible inspiration. He was Byronic in the impetus of his genius, the rugged incompleteness of his style, the magnificent fervor and rush of his fancy, the epic grandeur and energy, dash and daring, of his creations. It is easy to say that he was steeped in German conventionalism, that he pictured the impossible, that he was sometimes harsh in his color and technique; and so he was at times, but, with it all, he left the impression of vast intellectual resources.

We would not be understood as saying that all the works of Leutze are worthy of unqualified acceptance; we refer rather to their general character. His art was very prolific, and as a pupil of Lessing and Schadow it bore the unmistakable stamp of Düsseldorf. Much of his work, partaking also of the grandiose style of Kaulbach, was of a semi-decorative character, like the "Landing of the Norsemen," which represents two fresh, sturdy Scandinavian rovers stepping out of an impossible ship, bearing aloft a noble princess, and in the very act of landing snatching the grapes "hanging wanton to be plucked." Spirited as it is, the manifest absurdity of the composition as a representation of reality yet requires us to accept it as decorative in design. "Godiva" is a somewhat coarse but characteristic work of Leutze, and the "Iconoclast" one of his most interesting and artistic works. In America, Leutze will be remembered longest by his large and magnificent painting of "Washington at Princeton," his "Emigration to the West" (a decorative composition in one of the panels of the stairway of the Capitol at Washington), and his "Washington Crossing the Delaware." The latter was executed at Düsseldorf, and the ice was painted from an unusual mass of shattered ice floating down the Rhine on the breaking up of the winter. It is another illustration of the apparent caprice with which man is treated by destiny, that scarcely had Leutze closed his eyes in his last sleep, at the early age of fifty-one, when a letter arrived from Germany bringing official tidings that he had just been elected to succeed Lessing as president of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.

While we find in Leutze the qualities we have described, it cannot be said that he sought out any new methods of expression, or that he undertook to suggest the deeper and more subtle traits of human nature; he was content to work after the manner of the school in which he studied. It is to another painter (already referred to), of great intellectual resource and a thoroughly American discontent with the actual, that we turn for aspirations after a higher form of art. William Page, a native of Albany, who studied law, and for a time also theology, at Andover Seminary, was from the first biassed in favor of art. His mind presents a combination of the speculative and the practical, and it is the union of these antithetical qualities which has alternately aided or hindered the success of Page's efforts and experiments. He is deliberate rather than inspirational, guided by an exquisite feeling for color and an admirable sense of form, but too often unduly controlled by the logical and analytical faculty. Had his fancy only been more childlike, and been left more to the guidance of its own natural and correct instincts, Mr. Page's works would have oftener moved us by their beauty rather than by the dexterity of the technique. Still, it is by the aid of a few such questioning minds that art makes its advances, and interprets the secrets of nature. As a portrait painter, Page has placed himself among the first artists of the age. We see in his portraits a dignity and repose, a grasp of character, and a harmonious richness of color that are wonderfully impressive. In attempting to represent the beauty of the feminine figure Mr. Page has been influenced by great delicacy and refinement of motive, although in the celebrated painting of "Venus Rising from the Sea," he gave cause for much discussion as to the merits of his theories.

When Page was in his prime, our literature had already become distinguished by several writers of thoroughly original and mystically creative imagination, native to the soil, and drawing sustenance from native inspiration: they were Charles Brockden Brown, Judd, Hawthorne, and Poe. In point of originality in conceiving of scenes powerfully weird and imaginative, these writers have had no superiors in this century. With a style essentially individual, they analyzed the workings of the human heart, and dealt with the great problems of destiny. Their genius was cosmopolitan, and for all ages. Our pictorial art, in a less degree, began soon after to be prompted by a similar tendency.

Most prominent among these artists whose faltering efforts have most distinctly articulated the language and aspirations of the soul are Elihu Vedder and John Lafarge. It cannot be said that either of these artists has yet accomplished with complete success the end he has sought; but their efforts have been in the right direction, and as such are highly interesting, hopeful, and suggestive.

Mr. Vedder's early genre and landscape compositions are full of subtle attempts at psychology in color. Outward nature with him is but a means for more effectively conveying the impressions of humanity; and his faces are full of vague, mystic, far-off searching after the infinite, and the why and the wherefore of this existence below. Since Mr. Vedder took up his residence permanently in Italy, he has improved in technique, and there is less dryness in his method of using color, as witnessed by his remarkable painting called a "Venetian Dancing Girl, or 'La Regina;'" but he has not in recent years produced anything so marvellously imaginative as his "Lair of the Sea-Serpent," or so grand and desolate as his "Death of Abel." The man who painted the "Lost Mind," the "Death of Abel," and the "Lair of the Sea-Serpent," did not need to borrow from the ancients – at least so far as regards forms of expression. The vast, solemn, appalling solitude of the primeval world, the terrific sublimity of its first tragedy, are rendered in Mr. Vedder's painting with the sombre grandeur of Dante; while as a work of imaginative art, the steel-colored monster reposing his gigantic folds on the dry grass of a desolate shore by the endless seas, is a composition of wonderful simplicity and mysterious power, a creation of pure genius.

Mr. Lafarge is by nature a colorist; to color, the emotional element of art, his sensitive nature vibrates as to well-attuned harmonies of music. For form he has less feeling; his drawing is often very defective, and the lines are hesitating, uncertain, and feeble. But we have had no artist since Stuart who has shown such a natural sympathy for the shades and modulations of chromatic effects. But, while his drawing is open to criticism, this artist is inspired by the general meaning of form, and has sometimes produced some very weird and startling compositions entirely in black and white, or camaieu. But whether it be form or color, the various elements of art are regarded by Lafarge not so much for what they are as for what they suggest; he is less concerned with the external than with the hidden meaning it has for the soul. It is because of his subtle way of regarding the beauty of this world that he has given us such thoughtful landscapes as "Paradise at Newport," and such exquisitely painted flowers, rendered with a tender harmony of color that thrills us like a lyric of Keats or of Tennyson. It is this serious, reflective turn which has given a religious hue to his art, and has enabled him to succeed so well in the most ambitious attempt at decorative-painting yet undertaken in this country – the frescoes of Trinity Church, in Boston; in which, it should be added, he was ably assisted by Mr. Lathrop. In these compositions we see the results of a highly ideal and reverent nature, nourished by the most abundant art opportunities the age could afford. It is not difficult to find in them points fairly open to attack; but the promise they show is so hopeful a sign in our art, the success actually achieved in them in a direction quite new in this country is so marked, that we prefer to leave to others any unfavorable criticism they may suggest.

IV.

AMERICAN PAINTERS.

1828-1878

THE discovery of the gold mines of California was a signal for enterprise, daring, and achievement, not only to our commerce and the thrift of our shifting millions of uneasy settlers, but also to the literature and landscape-art of the United States. "To the kingdom of the west wind" hied artist and author alike; and the epic of the settlement of California, of the scaling of the Rocky Mountains, of the glory of the Columbia River, and the stupendous horrors of the Yellowstone was pictured on the canvas of the artist. Taylor and Scott conquered the Pacific slope; Fremont pointed out the pathway over the swelling ranges of the Sierras; and our painters revealed to us the matchless splendor of a scenery which shall arouse increasing astonishment and reverential awe and rapture in the hearts of generations yet to be. In the gratitude we owe to these landscape-painters who dared, discovered, and delineated for us the scenery of which we were hitherto the ignorant possessors, criticism is almost left in abeyance, for the service done the people has been a double one – in leading them to the observation of paintings, and informing them of the attractions of a little known possession. If the art of these paintings of our Western scenery had been in all respects equal to the subject, the country would have been rich indeed. Among the artist explorers to whom we are most indebted, Messrs. Bierstadt, Hill, and Moran are the most famous. The former, by his great composition entitled the "Rocky Mountains," threw the people into an ecstasy of delight, which at this time it is difficult to understand, and bounded at one step to celebrity.

Albert Bierstadt is a native of Düsseldorf, but came to this country in infancy. Subsequently he studied at Düsseldorf and Rome. On returning to America, he accompanied the exploring expedition of General Lander that went over the plains in 1858. Fitz Hugh Ludlow, the well-known littérateur, was associated with him in a subsequent trip, and several graphic articles in which he afterward described the journey undoubtedly helped to bring Mr. Bierstadt into notice.

The "Rocky Mountains" is not the representation of an actual scene, but a typical composition, and, thus regarded, is an interesting work, although it seems to us somewhat too theatrical, and scarcely true in some of the details. Local truth is desirable in topographical art, although of quite secondary importance in compositions of a more ideal character. Since then this artist has executed a number of similarly ambitious paintings of our Western scenery, including a colossal painting of the gorge of the Yosemite Valley. All of them are characterized by boldness of treatment, but sometimes they are crude in color and out of tone. Of these we prefer, as least sensational and most artistically correct, the painting of a storm on Mount Rosalie. Bierstadt's smaller California scenes are generally more valuable than his large ones for artistic quality: one of the best compositions we have seen from his easel is a war sketch representing Federal sharp-shooters on the crest of a hill behind some trees. This is an excellent piece of work, fresh, original, and quite free from the Düsseldorf taint; and confirms us in the opinion that Mr. Bierstadt is naturally an artist of great ability and large resources, and might easily have maintained a reputation as such if he had not grafted on the sensationalism of Düsseldorf a greater ambition for notoriety and money than for success in pure art.

Some of the qualities we have learned to look for in vain in the canvases of Bierstadt we find emphasized in the paintings of Thomas Hill, who succeeded him as court painter to the monarch of the Rocky Mountains. Hill began life as a coach-painter at Taunton, Massachusetts. After deciding on a professional art career, he visited Europe, and benefited by observation in foreign studios, especially of France, although his style is essentially his own. His method of using pigments is sometimes open to the accusation of hardness; there is too often a lack of juiciness – a dryness that seems to remind us of paint rather than atmosphere, which may be owing to the fact, as I have been informed, that he uses little or no oil in going over a painting the second time. But Mr. Hill is a good colorist, bold and massive in his effects, and a very careful, conscientious student of nature. He has been happy in the rendering of wood interiors, as, for example, bits from the Forest of Fontainebleau. One of his most remarkable New England landscapes represents the avalanche in the Notch of the White Mountains, which was attended with such disastrous results to the dwellers in the valley. But Mr. Hill will be identified in future with California, where he has become a resident, and has devoted his energies to painting some of the magnificent scenery of that marvellous region, where the roar of the whirlwind and the roll of the thunder reverberate like the tread of the countless millions who evermore march to the westward. As he sat on the edge of the precipice, the forerunner of coming ages, and painted the sublime, solitary depths of the Yosemite, did the artist realize that with every stroke of the brush he was aiding the advance guard of civilization, and driving away the desolation which gave additional grandeur to one of the most extraordinary spots on the planet? In his great painting of the Yosemite he seems to have been inspired by a reverential spirit; he has taken no liberties with his subject, but has endeavored with admirable art to convey a correct impression of the scene; and the work may be justly ranked with the best examples of the American school of landscape-painting.

The first fever of the California rush had subsided when the uneasy explorer again stirred the enthusiasm of adventurous artists by thrilling descriptions of the Yellowstone River, its Tartarean gorges, and the lurid splendor of its sulphurous cliffs and steaming geysers. Once more the landscape artist of the country was moved to go forth and make known to us those unrevealed wonders; and Thomas Moran, "taking his life in his hands," in the language of religious cant, aspired to capture the bouquet, the first bloom, from this newly-opened draught of inspiration. We all know the result. Who has not seen his splendid painting of the "Gorge of the Yellowstone," now in the Capitol at Washington? Granting the fitness of the subject for art, it can be frankly conceded that this is one of the best paintings of the sort yet produced. The vivid local colors of the rocks, which there is no reason to doubt have been faithfully rendered – for Mr. Moran is a careful and indefatigable student of certain phases of nature – appear, however, to give such works a sensational effect.

This seems to us to be the most valuable of the numerous paintings of Western subjects produced by this artist. It would be a mistake, however, to judge him wholly by the more ambitious compositions suggested by tropical or Western scenery. Some of his ideal paintings are very clever, and show us an ardent student of nature, and a mind inspired by a fervid imagination. But while conceding thus much to the talents of this artist – who belongs to an artistic family, two of his brothers being also well-known painters, one in marine, the other in cattle painting – we can not accord him great original powers. He has studied the technique of his calling most carefully, and has bestowed great attention to the methods of several celebrated artists; but we are too often conscious, in looking at his works, that his style has leaned upon that of certain favorite painters. There is great cleverness, but little genius, apparent in the landscapes of Mr. Moran, for the imitative faculty has been too much for him.

Contemporary with our school of grand nature, if we may so call it, and represented by artists native in thought and education, we find evidences of another beginning to assert itself, of altogether a different character. The former deals wholly with externals, and the subject is the first end sought; it concerns itself altogether with objects, and not with any ulterior thoughts which they may suggest to the sensitive imagination. The latter, on the other hand, searches out the mystery in nature, and analyzes its human aspects. It is the vague suggestions seen in hills and skies, in sere woods and lonely waters, and moorlands fading away into eternity – it is their symbolism and sympathy with the soul that an artist like Mr. Jervis M'Entee seeks to represent on canvas. This is, in a word, the subjective art to which we have already alluded. To him the voice of nature is an elegy; the fall of the leaves in October suggests the passing away of men to the grave in a countless and endless procession; and whenever he introduces the agency of man into his pictures, it is as if he were fighting with an unseen and remorseless destiny. Exquisitely poetic and beautiful are the autumnal scenes of this artist, the reaches of russet woodlands, the expanses of skurrying clouds, gray, melancholy, wild. His art sings in a low minor key that finds response in the heart of multitudes who have suffered, to whom the world has been a battle-field, where the losses have outweighed the gains, and have left them gazing into the mysterious future like one who at midnight stands on the brink of a tremendous abyss into which he must be hurled, but knows not what are the shuddering possibilities that await the inevitable plunge.

A young artist of Boston died in Syria, four years ago, at the early age of twenty-five, before he had acquired more than local repute, who gave promise of standing among the foremost of American landscape-painters. I refer to A. P. Close. Certainly no artist we have produced has evinced more abundant signs of genius at so early an age. Nor was he wholly a landscape-painter; the figure was also one aim of his art, and it was in the combination of the two that he excelled. He also had an eye for color that has not been too common in our art; and, wholly untaught, expressed his moods and fancies with a force that, even in its immaturity, suggested the master. But the one point in which he surpassed most of our artists up to this time was in the singular and inexhaustible activity of the imaginative faculty. It is strange that one so young should have so early manifested in his art a serious, almost morbid, view of life. It may have been because he found himself, before the age of twenty, forced to provide for a fatherless family, and to devote the greater part of his energies to what was to him the uncongenial work of drawing on wood.

Less subjective and morbid, but moved by a similar feeling for the suggestions of nature, A. H. Wyant displays a sympathy with scenery and a masterful skill in reaching subtle effects which place him among the first landscape-painters of the age. In the suggestive rendering of space and color, of the manifold phases of a bit of waste land, or mountain glen, or sedgy brook-side, simple enough at first sight, but full of an infinitude of unobtrusive beauty, he works with the magic of a high-priest of nature; his style is broad in effect, without being slovenly and careless, and gives a multitude of details while really dealing chiefly with one central and prevailing idea. Mr. Wyant's work occasionally shows traces of foreign influences; but he is an artist of too much original power to be under any necessity to stunt himself by the imitation of the style of any other artist, however great.