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The introduction to this series, about the Wadsworth family and the Wadsworth Atheneum, is here. For all posts in the series, click here. This week: Hudson River School paintings and related American works, continued.

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg: French, 1909

Chronologically this sculpture is out of order, but it sets the context for many of the paintings in this post. In 1909, Daniel Chester French was commissioned to create a monumental figure of Lincoln for the town of Lincoln, Nebraska. The Wadsworth’s reduced-size copy stands in a gallery with paintings that date to the Civil War era.

French’s Lincoln has significant differences from the one Saint Gaudens sculpted in 1887 for Lincoln Park, Chicago, which was the first to show the president gaunt, with his head bowed in thought. French used the research for this sculpture as the basis for his seated Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., which has much the same mood.

Passing Storm in the Adirondacks: Gifford, 1866

And here it is with its frame:

Gifford studied art in New York City in the mid-1840s, and by the 1850s was a well-known member of the Hudson River School. He painted in the Luminist style, with glowing light and precise detail. (See last week’s post and here.) Gifford traveled widely in Europe, Egypt, and the Rocky Mountains. He died in his late fifties of malarial fever.

Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), one of the leading painters of the Hudson River School, did spectacular panoramic landscapes – accurate to the smallest botanical detail – which he executed in his studio based on sketches done on site. Church and his wife spent several months in Jamaica after losing two young children to diphtheria. The half-light / half-dark scene here perhaps reflects his personal loss as well as the trauma of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln just a few years earlier.

Parlor Memorial, after 1870

The nineteenth-century equivalent of scrapbooking was to cover something with small objects of personal significance. This memorial created by Eliza Trask (1834-1919) was based on a candle stand crowned with a wooden pyramid, to which she glued seashells and photos of herself and her husband, Adoniram, in his Union uniform. Adoniram survived the Civil War, so the piece includes images of the couple growing old. For another example of “memory ware”, see this one from the Bennington Museum.

Gremlin in the Studio: Heade, ca. 1865-1875

As I said last week, Heade (1819-1904) is one of the Luminists, who began as a subset of the Hudson River painters. They predate the Impressionists, and although they are also entranced with light, the Luminists – unlike the Impressionists – are meticulous about representing details. If you like this sort of glow, see more of Heade’s paintings here.

One of Heade’s favorite subjects was meadows and marshes. He painted dozens of canvases with them. This painting is unusual, though: he’s used photographically accurate detail (trompe l’oeil, “fool the eye”) to make us think a gremlin has snuck into his studio to yank at the canvas-in-progress, so that marsh-water spills onto the studio floor.

The Confab: Johnson, 1877

After the Civil War many Americans longed for the good old days of innocent rural youth. Johnson (1824-1906) is famous for charming genre scenes such as this one.

Next week: a few more post-Civil War paintings.

Wadsworth posts on American art

When I visited the Wadsworth, visitors were sent through the galleries in reverse chronological order due to social distancing. If you’d rather read the posts in order (seventeenth through twentieth centuries), the sequence would be as follows. Part 1 is the introduction to the series.

• part 12: 16th to early 19th centuries, including Copley, Trumbull, and Earl
• part 2: late 18th c., including Copley and Earl

• part 3: early and mid-19th c., early Hudson River School, including Cole and Church
• part 11: mid-19th c., including the Colt legacy and the Charter Oak
• part 4: mid-19th c., including Church and Bierstadt
• part 6: late 19th c. painting and sculpture, including Church, Remington, and Bierstadt
• part 5: late 19th c. painting, including Church and Heade
• part 9: late 19th and early 20th c. painting and sculpture
• part 10: late 19th and early 20th c. sculpture, including MacMonnies and Frishmuth
• part 8: early and mid-20th c. painting and sculpture, including Andrew Wyeth
• Part 7: survey of images of Niagara Falls, from the 17th to 21st centuries, including Trumbull, Cole, Bierstadt, and Church.

More

• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
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