Digital Exhibits
New Haven in Nineteenth-Century Landscape Art
Joseph Skiffington
Thomas Cole
The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1836
Oil on Canvas
New York Historical Society
Thomas Cole is generally accepted as the founder of the
Hudson River School, an art movement denoted by its romantic interpretations of
American landscapes. Regarded as one of Cole’s most well know and famous
paintings, done in the traditional Cole style of nature imposing itself over
civilization and the romantic idealism of a more pastoral American lifestyle. Boer
and Wareham in their book New Haven’s
Sentinels, make the claim that through correspondence Cole had as well as
the geological structure of mountain depicted in the foreground that this
painting could well have been inspired by West Rock. The claim is bolstered by
the sheer face depicted on the mountain as well as the reddish hue of the rock,
both of which are emblematic of West Rock. We see several farmers this was a
feature of many Cole’s paintings where he would romanticize the more agrarian
lifestyle that Americans had in the earlier nineteenth century.
Frederic Edwin Church
West Rock, New Haven, 1847
Oil on Canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art
Church was a pupil of the renowned landscape painter Thomas
Cole, though a student Cole sought to paint much more remote and symbolic
paintings as opposed to his teacher who was often noted for his grandiose and
dramatic landscape scenes. The small but noticeable church steeple was a noted
style of Church’s who would often sign or find a way to include a symbolic
representation his surname. According to Gary Knoble of the New Britain Museum
of American Art, the stylistic approach of church may have a deeper meaning and
display a fondness for wordplay, such as the inclusion of churches in his
paintings as well as the evolution of this painting to include a field as a
reference to the picture’s recipient Cyrus W. Field, the inventor of the
Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable. This piece depicts another popular artistic
approach of Church’s work where as we can see the painting is very balanced the
sky is broken up by the clouds. The land is divided by West Rock and the West
River, no one aspect is dominant in this piece. This work is also a remarkable
example of Church’s most noted skill, depicting hyper realistic landscapes,
dynamic lighting schemes, and the romanticizing of the American landscape.
George Henry Durrie
Winter Scene in New Haven, 1858
Oil on Canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum
George Henry Durrie was known for his paintings that
eventually became lithographs sold by the Currier and Ives company. Durrie was
born in Hartford, Connecticut and eventually moved to New Haven where he taught
himself the art of portrait painting. Durrie eventually began to paint
landscapes, the most notable being winter scenes which were among his most
famous and well received works. Though not a student of the Hudson River School
as Cole and Church, Durrie was certainly inspired by the notions of
romanticizing the more rural American lifestyle. The differences between Cole
and Durrie are noticeable where Cole’s paintings are traditional very colorful
and depict a looming environment, Durrie’s paintings tend to evoke a much
calmer vision of nature. In this painting of rural New Haven Countty, we see a
typical Durrie art style where he frames much of the painting with trees as we can
see on the left-hand side and in the foreground on the right.
George Henry Durrie
West Rock, New Haven, 1853
Oil on Canvas
New Haven Museum
While not a New Haven native, Durrie often depicted many of
its most famous landmarks upon moving to the city and opening his art studio.
Durrie often liked to pronounce the elements of nature and the rapidly
industrializing society that swept America, and New England particularly in the
mid-nineteenth century. This piece as we can see helps to reflect that stark
contrast with a looming West Rock imposing itself over a small village, but in
the middle of the painting we can see what appears to be a smokestack, indicative
of Westville and the West River and an early industrial center in the history
of New Haven. As mentioned previously the framing of the painting with trees is
also noted in this painting as well. Also, notable in this painting we see one
of Durrie’s other skills use the excellent use of light to give the painting
greater depth and a sense of time passing in his works.
George Henry Durrie
Judges Cave, West Rock 1856
Oil on Canvas
New Haven Museum
Here we see another of New Haven’s signature landmarks,
Judges Cave. The notorious hideout of two of the “regicide judges” Whalley and
Goffe who sentenced Charles I to death and fled to New Haven for fear of
prosecution by Charles II. As we saw before the stylistic approaches do not
differ greatly as we again see the framing of this image with a prominent tree
in the left foreground and the use of light to draw one’s eye to the cave
itself. Durrie almost always includes people in his paintings, a symbol to his
early life as a portrait painter and to show the harmony of people and nature
that so inspired much of the American Romantic Style. In this piece we can see
the last type of artistic approach Durrie undertook which was the wide color
palette used in his paintings. Durrie and his contemporaries were often
critical of the oversimplification of colors used in painting, especially older
landscape paintings, which may have inspired Durrie’s vast array of detail and
colors in this painting.
Bibliography
George Henry
Durrie Papers, MSS-16, New Haven Museum, New Haven, CT.
Howat, John K.
"The Hudson River School." The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bulletin 30, no. 6 (1972): 272-83.
Knoble, Gary. Art Historian, New Britain Museum of American
Art
Simpson, Charles
R. "The Wilderness in American Capitalism: The Sacralization of
Nature." International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 5, no. 4
(1992): 555-76.
"Some
Masterpieces of "The Hudson River School" of Landscape
Painting." The Art World 3, no. 3 (1917): 180-87.
Troyen, Carol. "The Incomparable Max: Maxim
Karolik and the Taste for American Art." American Art 7,
no. 3 (1993): 65-87.
Wilson,
Christopher Kent. "The Landscape of Democracy: Frederic Church's
"West Rock, New Haven"." American Art Journal 18, no. 3 (1986):
20-39.
Zeilinga De Boer,
Jelle, and John Wareham. New Haven's Sentinels: The Art and Science of
East and West Rock. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2013.
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