The Popular Appeal of Landscape

Entrance to the Highlands on the Hudson is based on a work by William H. Bartlett, an artist who traveled through the United States in 1836, recording America’s scenery in sepia watercolor. Upon returning to England, Bartlett’s views were engraved on steel plates and printed for Nathaniel P. Willis’s work, American Scenery, issued in parts from 1837 through 1839, and published as a complete volume containing 119 engravings in 1840. American Scenery contained several views of the Hudson RiverValley, including this scene that depicts the southern entrance to the Hudson Highlands, just north of Peekskill. The viewer is looking north from the western bank of the river; the dark mountain that dominates the right middle ground is Anthony’s Nose.

Numerous artists—professionals and amateurs—copied Bartlett’s views. Hippolyte-Louis Garnier, a French painter, miniaturist, and lithographer, who worked in Paris, painted this version using a limited palette. He added a smartly dressed couple at left, not present in Bartlett’s version, who seem better suited for promenading through the Tuileries in Paris than the HudsonValley’s rugged terrain. Garnier was almost certainly painting his American landscapes for sale in America since several auction catalogues from the mid-nineteenth century list several paintings of American scenes by Garnier and other European artists.

Inspired by the poem “Deserted Village” (1770), by Englishman Oliver Goldsmith, An Old Man’s Reminiscences pictures a nostalgic reverie, a moment of reflective contemplation for the aged man seated in the shade at left. Asher B. Durand originally titled his painting Landscape Composition: “An Old Man’s Reminiscences, indicating the scene was not based on an actual landscape, but was composed.

Durand painted few allegorical or narrative works, unlike his mentor Thomas Cole, who preferred painting imagined landscapes full of symbolism. Durand, instead, paid close attention to nature and generally painted what he saw. In the mid-1850s, he published a series of “Letters on Landscape Painting” in the art journal The Crayon, which clearly delineated his ideas and method of painting from nature. Nevertheless, An Old Man’s Reminiscences was an important work, and the citizens of Albany raised funds to acquire the painting in 1848 for the Albany Gallery of Fine Arts, a predecessor of the Albany Institute of History & Art.

Little is known about the artist Thomas Chambers, yet hundreds of paintings signed by or attributed to him survive. His use of bold colors and stylized rhythmic patterns is unmistakable.

Born is Whitby, England, in 1808, Chambers was raised in a working-class family in a seaport town. His older brother, George, became a noted painter of marine scenes and moved to London in 1825. In 1832, Chambers immigrated to the United States. He first settled in New Orleans, where he listed himself as a “painter” in the 1833–1834 city directory. Between 1834 and 1840, Chambers was living in New York City and working as a “landscape painter” and “marine painter.” New York, however, did not keep Chambers for long. Based on recent research, we learn that he moved next to Baltimore, then Boston, and between 1852 and 1857, he resided in Albany. Chambers eventually returned to New York City where he remained until about 1865, at which time he returned to England, where he died in 1869.

View of the Hudson River at West Point is based on a print (see below) by the French naturalist, engineer, and artist Jacques-Gérard Milbert, included in his published portfolio Itinéraire Pittoresque du Fleuve Hudson et des Parties Latérales (1828–1829). Like other artists painting for the aspiring middle-class market, Chambers relied heavily on published prints as sources for his landscapes and marine views.

The French naturalist, engineer, and artist, Jacques-Gérard Milbert, traveled through the United States between 1815 and 1823, as part of a scientific research mission to document the geology, flora, and fauna of the nation. He collected more than 7,000 natural history specimens for the Natural History Museum in Paris, and also sent the first living American buffalo to France. While in the United States he also worked as an engineer with the Erie Canal Commission, a task that afforded him the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the Hudson River and Mohawk valleys, where he made numerous drawings of the topography and landscape.

After he returned to Paris, Milbert’s drawings were given to several lithographers, who transferred his views onto lithographic printing stones. Between 1828 and 1829, fifty-four prints were issued in thirteen installments, each installment containing three to five prints. The complete portfolio, titled Itinéraire Pittoresque du Fleuve Hudson et des Parties Latérales, was an impressive collection of North American views. The prints were widely distributed, both in Europe and the United States, and decorative painters and artists like Thomas Chambers frequently copied them.