Questroyal 2009

James McDougal Hart ( 1828 – 1901 ) Plate 19 A Tranquil Morning , 1871 Oil on canvas 10 1 / 4 x 16 1 / 4 inches Signed and dated lower left: J.M. Hart. 71 provenance Weimer Gallery, Inc., Darien, Connecticut Private collection, Pleasantville, NewYork Private collection, by descent in the family Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC, NewYork, as Woodland Lake, 1871 His studies from nature evince industry and application, and his fancy sketches betray the touch of genius.We venture the prediction, if life and health are spared him, that Mr. Hart’s name will be found among the first in the list of our American landscape painters. Anonymous art connoisseur, quoted in the Cosmopolitan Art Journal, 1857 1 There is not an artist in the country who paints closer from nature than James Hart . . . he always has the genuine feeling, and manages to express it on canvas with the utmost vigor, freedom, and dignity. Chicago Tribune, 1871 2 A “Provincial” Artist in the Big City James M. Hart began his career as an outsider. Born and raised in Albany, he was considered what the Cosmopolitan Art Journal termed a “‘provincially’ trained” artist and therefore likely to be at arm’s length from the praise lav- ished upon the more “sophisticated” NewYork City painters. 3 Nevertheless, Hart moved to New York in the fall of 1856 and tried his luck. Happily, the artist’s notable talent was immediately embraced and success quickly fol- lowed; as The Art Amateur later reported, Hart’s “first exhibit at the National Academy of Design was quite a large canvas, some six feet in height, an Adirondack stream, with cattle standing in the water. It was sold on the first day of the exhibition, an occurrence so unusual at that time that there was no sale ticket to put on the picture, and the news ran like wild fire through the studios.” 4 Hart’s reputation grew, and soon he was promoted as a leading teacher, instructing pupils such as Edward Gay (see plate 16 ) and Homer Dodge Martin (see plate 27 ). 5 His art and travels were also a topic of New York periodicals—one included an interview discussing his methods of painting and another thoroughly analyzed his painted study of a calf, which was intended to educate the budding artists of the publication’s readership. 6 –– jlw Hart’s works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Cleveland Museum of Art. 1 “James M. Hart,” Cosmopolitan Art Journal 3 , no. 1 ( 1858 ): 31 . 2 “The Fine Arts,” Chicago Tribune, February 9, 1871 . 3 “James M. Hart,” 30 . 4 “A Veteran Landscape Artist,” The Art Amateur: A Monthly Journal Devoted to Art in the Household 27 , no. 4 (September 1892 ): 81 . Although recorded in this article, the above story may be an exaggeration, for Hart’s first entry to an annual exhibition at the National Academy of Design was a scene entitled View in South Germany , not an Adirondack view as reported. The newspaper would only be correct, then, if Hart contributed a work to the academy for an exhibition other than their annual show. See Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826 – 1860 , vol. 1 (NewYork: New-York Historical Society, 1943 ), p. 211 . 5 Mark Sullivan, James M. andWilliam Hart, American Landscape Painters (Philadelphia: John F. Warren, 1983 ), p. 7 . 6 “A Veteran Landscape Artist,” 82 ; “Treatment of the Designs,” The Art Amateur: A Monthly Journal Devoted to Art in the Household 14 , no. 6 (May 1886 ): 137 .