Thomas Hovenden: His Life and Art 9780812208870

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Thomas Hovenden

Thomas Hovenden His Life and Art

A N N E G R E G O RY T E R H U N E

With Patricia Smith Scanlan Foreword by Elizabeth Johns

A B A R R A F O U N D AT I O N B O O K

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A P R E S S

Philadelphia

Copyright © 2006 The Barra Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in Canada on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Terhune, Anne Gregory. Thomas Hovenden : his life and art / Anne Gregory Terhune with Patricia Smith Scanlan ; foreword by Elizabeth Johns. p. cm. “A Barra Foundation book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8122-3920-1 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8122-3920-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Hovenden, Thomas, 1840‒1895. 2. Painters— United States—Biography. 3. Genre painting, American—19th century. I. Scanlan, Patricia Smith. II. Title. ND237.H777 T47 2005 759.13B 22 2005045658 Text design by George Lang Frontispiece: The Old Book Salesman, 1881. Oil on canvas, 19 x 15 in. Private collection. Page xii: The Poacher’s Story (also known as Hunter’s Tale, Brittany), 1880. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 14 ⳯ 171⁄4 in. Allison Gallery, New York.

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note vii List of Illustrations ix Foreword, Elizabeth Johns xiii Chapter . Becoming an Artist  Chapter . From “Picturesque” Brittany to Paris: Painting Courage and Romance in History and Legend  Chapter . “What Shall American Artists Paint?”  Chapter . Painting the “Good Ole Times”: Scenes of African American Life  Chapter . Images to “Appeal to the National Mind”  Chapter . Home Life: Center of “Our Joys or Sorrows”  Conclusion  Notes  Index 

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Thomas Hovenden: His Life and Art would not have been possible without the persistence and generous support of the Barra Foundation. Anne Gregory Terhune submitted a draft of this book to the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1994, when it was approved for publication contingent on acceptance of a revised manuscript. Owing to declining health, however, Anne Terhune was

not in a position to carry out the final revisions. Mr. Robert L. McNeil, Jr., of the Barra Foundation suggested that the Foundation find a scholar to make the required revisions so that the book could be published. Anne Terhune was able to approve this arrangement before her death in 2005, and Patricia Smith Scanlan of Indiana University revised the final manuscript.

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I L L U S T R AT I O N S

All works are by Thomas Hovenden unless noted otherwise. The Old Book Salesman, 1881. ii The Poacher’s Story, 1880. xii 1. Thomas Hovenden, ca. 1890. xvi 2. Broadway Near Grand Street, New York City, 1860. 2 3. Artist unknown, Picture-Gallery of the Fair, Fourteenth-Street Building, 1864. 4 4. Artist unknown, Funeral Honors to President Lincoln, 1865. 5 5. Venus de Milo, ca. 1860–63. 6 6. Engraving of Hovenden’s The Old Nurse’s Visit, 1873. 8 7. Engraving of Hovenden’s A Home Missionary. 10 8. In the Woods, ca. 1873. 11 9. Winslow Homer, The Initials, 1864. 12 10. Self-Portrait, ca. 1873. 13 11. Lady Tending Flowers, 1873. 15 12. Eastman Johnson, Catching the Bee, 1872. 16 13. A Reverie, 1873. 17 14. Eastman Johnson, Not at Home, 1872–80. 18 15. Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1863. 22 16. Alexandre Cabanel, Study,Triumph of Flora, 1870–72. 23 17. Photograph of lodging on the Seine’s left bank at 15 rue Jacob. 24 18. Study of an Old Lady, ca. 1874–75. 25

19. Self-Portrait of the Artist in His Studio, 1875. 26 20. Study of a Bearded Man, ca. 1874–75. 28 21. Alexandre Cabanel, Othello Relating His Adventures, 1857. 29 22. Alexandre Cabanel, The Choir Director’s Widow (La veuve du maître de chapelle). 30 23. Artists in Front of Gloanec Pension, ca. 1876–80. 32 24. William Lamb Picknell, Road to Concarneau, 1880. 33 25. Robert Wylie, A Fortune Teller of Brittany, 1871–72. 35 26. Robert Wylie, The Postman, 1868. 36 27. A Sunny Day in Brittany, 1876. 37 28. The Image Seller, 1876. 38 29. A Brittany Image Seller, 1878. 39 30. Church near Pont-Aven from Finistère, 1878. 40 31. Detail of Church near Pont-Aven from Finistère. 41 32. Study for A Brittany Peasant Girl (also known as What O’Clock Is It?), 1876. 42 33. The Path to the Spring, 1879. 44 34. Thomas Hovenden painting in the Bois d’Amour, Pont-Aven, 1880. 45 35. Breton Woman Blowing the Dinner Horn, n.d. 46 36. Pendant le Repos, 1878. 47 37. One Who Can Read, 1877. 48 38. Vendéan Soldier, ca. 1877. 51

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ILLUSTRATIONS

39. A Breton Interior in 1793 (also known as The Vendéan Volunteer), 1878. 53 40. Detail of A Breton Interior. 54 41. In Hoc Signo Vinces (In This Sign Shalt Thou Conquer), 1880. 55 42. Detail of In Hoc Signo Vinces, emblem of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart. 55 43. Study for In Hoc Signo Vinces, 1880. 57 44. Ernest Meissonier, The Musician, 1859. 59 45. Costume class, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 60 46. The Favorite Falcon, 1879. 61 47. “Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady” (The Engagement Ring), 1880. 63 48. Death of Elaine, 1882. 64 49. Drawing for Elaine, 1882. 65 50. Study for Elaine, ca. 1882. 66 51. Self-Portrait, ca. 1881. 71 52. The Puzzled Voter, 1880. 77 53. William Michael Harnett, Still Life with Letter to Thomas B. Clarke, 1879. 79 54. The Old Version (also known as Sunday Afternoon), 1881. 81 55. The Revised Version, 1881. 82 56. Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof? (also known as Arbor Day), 1883. 85 57. Study for Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof ? 86 58. A Village Blacksmith, 1882. 88 59. Study for A Village Blacksmith. 89 60. The Cabinetmaker, 1888. 91 61. The Traveling Clock-Mender, 1893. 92 62. George Bacon Wood, Jr., Interior of Blacksmith’s Shop, 1875. 93 63. James Henry Beard, Goodbye, Ole Virginia, 1872. 96 64. William Aiken Walker, Plantation Economy in the Old South, ca. 1876. 97 65. Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves, ca. 1863. 98

66. Winslow Homer, A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876. 98 67. Winslow Homer, Sunday Morning in Virginia, 1877. 99 68. Thomas Eakins, Will Schuster and Black Man Going Shooting for Rail, 1876. 99 69. Abolition Hall, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. 101 70. Portrait of Samuel Jones, ca. 1882. 102 71. Dat Possum Smell Pow’ful Good, 1881. 104 72. Helen Corson, Uncle Ned and His Pupil, 1881. 105 73. Engraving of Hovenden’s Never Too Late to Mend, 1882. 106 74. Thomas Eakins, Negro Boy Dancing, 1878. 107 75. I’se So Happy! 1882. 108 76. Dem Was Good Ole Times, 1882. 109 77. Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893. 110 78. Sunday Morning, 1881. 112 79. Chloe and Sam, 1882. 114 80. Taking His Ease, 1885. 115 81. An Old Shaver, 1886. 116 82. Their Pride, 1888. 117 83. Young Woman Holding a Cabbage. 120 84. Youth Blowing Smoke Rings, 1884. 121 85. Ain’t That Ripe, ca. 1884–85. 122 86. Winslow Homer, Watermelon Boys, 1876. 123 87. William Michael Harnett, Attention, Company! 1878. 124 88. The Last Moments of John Brown, 1882–84. 127 89. In the Hands of the Enemy, 1889. 128 90. The Founders of a State, 1895. 129 91. After A. Berghaus’s pencil sketch. Execution of Brown,Who Is Coming Down the Steps of the Jail, 1859. 130

ILLUSTRATIONS

92. Unknown photographer, John Brown in 1856. 131 93. Unknown artist, John Brown Ascending the Scaffold Preparatory to Being Hanged. 132 94. John Brown After His Capture. 133 95. Currier & Ives, after Louis Ransom, John Brown Meeting the Slave-Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charlestown Jail on His Way to Execution, 1863. 134 96. Thomas Satterwhite Noble, John Brown’s Blessing Just Before His Execution, 1867. 135 97. James Wallace Black, John Brown, after daguerreotype attributed to Martin M. Lawrence, 1859. 135 98. Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front, 1866. 138 99. John Trumbull, Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 1786. 139 100. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry,1859, 1883. 140 101. Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, An Accident, 1879. 144 102. Douglas Volk, The Pioneer’s Rest. 148 103. Thomas Eakins, Cowboys in the Bad Lands, 1888. 148 104. Portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing, 1890. 149 105. John Lewis Krimmel, Country Wedding: Bishop White Officiating, 1814. 152 106. Francis William Edmonds, The Image Peddler, 1844. 153 107. Eastman Johnson, The New Bonnet, 1876. 154 108. Breaking Home Ties, 1890. 155 109. Model for Breaking Home Ties and Manikin, photograph. 156 110. Helen Corson Hovenden, photograph of Thomas Hovenden painting Breaking Home Ties, with son, Thomas Hovenden, Jr. 157 111. Advertisement for the Sixty-First Annual Exhibition, 1891, Archives of the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 158 112. Francis Coates Jones, Mother and Child, ca. 1885. 159 113. Edmund C. Tarbell, The Breakfast Room, ca. 1903. 160 114. Robert Koehler, The Strike, 1886. 161 115. Peonies, 1886. 163 116. Daniel Ridgeway Knight, Hailing the Ferry, 1888. 164 117. When Hope Was Darkest, 1892. 167 118. Frank Bramley, A Hopeless Dawn, 1888. 168 119. And the Harbor Bar Is Moaning, 1886. 169 120. Illustration of Walter Langley’s painting “For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep,” based on Charles Kingsley’s popular poem, “The Three Fishers, ”1883. 170 121. Bringing Home the Bride, 1893. 171 122. Helen Corson Hovenden, photograph of Hovenden, Martha, and Thomas in front of Bringing Home the Bride in Hovenden’s studio. 173 123. Otto Erdmann, Bringing Home the Bride. 173 124. Toby Edward Rosenthal, The Trial of Constance de Beverly, 1883. 174 125. A Morning in May, 1893. 176 126. Springtime, ca. 1893–94. 177 127. Jerusalem the Golden, 1894. 179 128. Photograph of Thomas Hovenden with his painting Jerusalem the Golden, ca. 1894. 180 129. A Study, Cold Point, Pennsylvania, 1895. 181 130. Self-Portrait, ca. 1893–95. 184 131. Helen Corson Hovenden, photograph of Hovenden’s studio with unfinished canvas The Founders of a State, 1895. 186 132. Photograph of Helen Corson Hovenden. 187 133. Photograph of Martha and Thomas Hovenden, Jr. 188

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F O R E WO R D

Elizabeth Johns

Acclaimed during his lifetime but slowly forgotten after his early death, the painter Thomas Hovenden (1840–95) took an artistic path quite different from those of his peers who are well known today. He specialized in narrative scenes of domestic rural life. Most of his pictures addressed issues important to viewers with rural roots whose family rituals anchored their lives— defining moments such as choosing a mate, leaving home to seek one’s fortune, proudly pursuing a hard-learned craft, and reading the Bible in the evening of life. Hovenden’s picture Breaking Home Ties (see fig. 108), exhibited at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, reveals the artist’s grasp of the needs of the audience he chose. Newspapers reported the awe with which viewers who had traveled great distances to the fair stood in front of the large painting. As they absorbed this scene of a young man leaving his home and large family to “make his fortune,” viewers traced its story of human relationships and marveled at the artist’s knowing depiction of humble country furnishings. Although Breaking Home Ties might be the only picture most audiences today know by Hovenden, unless it be The Last Moments of John Brown (see fig. 88), Hovenden has much to interest us in several respects, as Anne Gregory Terhune reveals in this first fulllength study of the artist. He lived a relatively straightforward life, informed by the American convictions that hard

work led to success and that concern for one’s community was a moral imperative. Born in 1840 in County Cork, Ireland, and orphaned at age six, he served an apprenticeship in carving and gilding, studied drawing, and, as soon as he could, emigrated to America, following a brother and arriving in New York City in 1863. Once in America, Hovenden widened his skills in drawing and watercolor while supporting himself with a framing shop. By the time he was thirty, he had begun to grasp at achieving the life of the artist, and he found help in the form of friends and a patron who would finance his studies in Europe. From orphan to emigrant to artisan to would-be artist, Hovenden saw his life in increasingly professional terms. After six years among students, teachers, and art colonies in France and Brittany, honing his skills, discovering the subjects that interested him, and exhibiting his work to increasing approval, he returned to the United States at age forty. Not until that point, when he was moderately successful as an artist, did he marry. He brought this rich, principled background to his themes of communal life. Although throughout the latter part of the century artists made paintings of peasant life in northern France, as did Hovenden during his early years, his colleagues came to this subject from urban settings; for them, a peasant was the “other.” Hovenden, unlike them, painted rural themes with the sensitivity of hardships experienced

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FOREWORD

in his own upbringing. Humble people were his own. Thus when he returned to America in 1880, he brought to these subjects not only technical but also emotional expertise. Because of this, he turned his back on the American genre painting that had prevailed since before the Civil War, painting that poked fun at “ordinary” citizens. Artists such as John Francis Krimmel,William Sidney Mount, Francis Edmonds, and George Caleb Bingham had appealed to urban patrons who were eager to leave behind their humble origins and see themselves as superior to rural citizens. In contrast, Hovenden painted in sympathy with ordinary people, finding in their concerns the emotional life that flowed in everyone. Settling in the small village of Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania (fig. 1), the home of his bride Helen Corson, who had also studied abroad, Hovenden merged the simplicity of his own domestic life into that of his paintings. He used his family and friends as models. The very place he lived—a small, rural village not far from Philadelphia, with citizens whose ancestors had long ago settled there—inspired thoughtfulness about traditional ways. Plymouth Meeting was a Quaker community, and, although Hovenden was not a Quaker himself, the Quaker conviction of each person’s “inner light” seems to have infused his painting of individuals. His images of African Americans were a natural interest in Plymouth Meeting, for Hovenden’s painting studio had been the site of meetings of abolitionists and then a station on the Underground Railroad. One can imagine the conversations with his models—his fellow community members—about the emotions and interactions of the characters in the paintings for

which they were posing. The experience of the models themselves would certainly have been topics in the guarded hopes of the in-laws of the new bride in Bringing Home the Bride (1893), the comfort with each other of Chloe and Sam in the painting by that name, the complex emotions of the young boy leaving for the city and of his sister in the background (certain not to leave home) in Breaking Home Ties. Village life, as well as Hovenden’s experiences while growing up, encouraged him to make pictures with spaces that viewers could enter comfortably. Not simply a “realist” who appeased onlookers’ desire to tell exactly what was depicted in a picture, nor merely a technician who delighted in his ability to render details precisely, he delighted in capturing both human beings and the material universe—in adolescents and parents and grandparents, and in carpets, tables and lamps, and mantelpieces. Viewers knew from their own lives the country chairs in Breaking Home Ties, the wallpaper and home decorations in Sunday Morning in Virginia (1881), the clothing in The Old Version (1881). In picture after picture, he conveyed the feelings of human beings for one another, for the things they possessed, and for the rituals that gave them comfort. Hovenden served many constituencies with these commitments. Early patrons such as Baltimorean John W. McCoy saw and encouraged Hovenden’s talent for appealing to a wide rather than an elite audience. Journalists new to art criticism but steeped in the culture-wide absorption with narrative delighted in describing in detail his pictures and interpreting their stories. Inexperienced viewers in such large exhibition venues as the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition

FOREWORD

in Chicago found in his pictures respect and empathy for their own lives. To each of these groups, Hovenden gave pictures that offered new experiences of self- and cultural assessment. Hovenden’s choices make telling contrasts to those of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, his near contemporaries. Homer, an individualist whether he was in Cullercoats, England, or Prout’s Neck, Maine, valued the mysteries of nature, especially the sea, not human ritual. Eakins, rooted in Philadelphia, found meaning in making portraits of citizens who had done well professionally through their own efforts. Neither was interested in attracting inexperienced viewers. Other artists who had studied in Europe painted for upperand upper-middle-class buyers: some, like Frederic Bridgman, stayed abroad and painted Oriental themes; others, like Edmund C. Tarbell and Francis Coates Jones, paid tribute to the sophisticated lives of the well-to-do at home. Perhaps the high point of Hovenden’s career was during the early 1890s, when his own commitments coincided with the interests of a large number of patrons, critics, and viewers. By 1895, when Hovenden died in midlife, the audience for paintings was beginning to split. His posthumous reputation faded in the swirl of new expectations of art. Viewers and collectors who considered themselves sophisticated turned to the nonnarrative and nonrealistic aspects of Impressionism for satisfaction, and later to the mysteries of modernism. They had moved away from a desire for pictures that depicted the familiar and that satisfied emotions—pictures that cherished a shared life—to images that called upon the poetic sensibility of the individual viewer for meaning.

For these patrons, paintings did not tell stories and meaning required cultivation and taste. Hovenden’s early admirer Samuel Isham regretted this departure from art that unified a people. Looking back in the early twentieth century on the late 1880s and early 1890s, Isham admired the artist as a “recorder of the simpler, wider side of our common life.” Some years later, the art historian Edgar P. Richardson, steeped in modernism, diagnosed the lapse of Hovenden’s reputation as a result of his lacking “a personal point of view.” Yet, as Terhune shows us in this thorough study, the last thing that Hovenden wanted to communicate was a point of view that separated him from his fellow human beings. His untimely death in 1895 was a freak accident. Hovenden and a child, among others, stepped down from a trolley at Plymouth Meeting and crossed nearby train tracks, unable to see a locomotive that was quickly bearing down on them. They were killed instantly. So identified was the artist with the goodness of character that produces sympathy with human emotions that the legend quickly grew (despite extensive testimony to the contrary at the coroner’s inquest) that he had sacrificed his life for the child who died with him in the accident. In his last years, Hovenden himself may have foreseen the imminent decline of his reputation. Shortly before his death, Hovenden lectured his students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts about the purpose of art. In a statement that could serve as his last will and testament, Hovenden professed, “If I can give comfort, if I can give strength to those around me by any word or act of mine, what manner of man am I if I do it not?”

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1. Thomas Hovenden under grape arbor at his home in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Photograph ca. 1890 by W. H. Richardson of Norristown, Pennsylvania. Private collection.

Chapter 1

Becoming an Artist He was called before the Council of the Academy . . . and strongly encouraged to give up all other pursuits for art. —“Advent of a Great American Painter:Thomas Hovenden,” Studio and Musical Review 1 (19 February 1881): 51. Thomas Hovenden’s calling to become an artist and the themes of transition and the cycles of life that permeate his work stem from his childhood in Ireland. Orphaned at a young age, Hovenden experienced loss and longing from which he would draw inspiration for many of his most successful genre paintings; his recurring motifs of family life, the continuity of family ties, and shared values undoubtedly reflect his own need for a reassuring sense of permanence and stability. In turn, Hovenden’s themes resonated with late nineteenth-century audiences at a time when increasing industrialization and urbanization threatened family bonds and traditional ways. Despite the difficult circumstances of his early years, it was Hovenden’s orphaned status that led to his initial art education and apprenticeship in Ireland, and, eventually, to his studies in New York and Paris, where he mastered the sophisticated figural style, color harmonies, and painterly effects that characterize his mature work. Hovenden was born on December 28, 1840, in Dunmanway, County Cork, Ireland, the son of Ellen Bryan and Robert Hovenden, who were married in 1834. His father, of English ancestry and Protestant faith, was Keeper of the

Bridewell, or prison, in Dunmanway, an English colony since the mid-seventeenth century. Hovenden grew up with an older brother, John, and a sister, Elizabeth, and spent his first years in that “pleasant,” little “market and post town,” with one street about a half mile long, a Protestant church, a Catholic chapel, and a Methodist Meeting House.1 At the time of the disastrous Potato Famine when Hovenden was only a boy of six, his parents died. The child was taken from his home and placed in an orphanage about thirty-seven miles away in Cork. Most likely, the orphanage had similar admission and apprenticeship requirements as the Blue-Coat School, one of Cork’s oldest charities, which operated a house for poor boys; generally, boys were admitted at the age of eight years and then apprenticed at the age of fourteen.2 By the year of Hovenden’s birth, the ancient city of Cork had become the second-most substantial city in Ireland, exceeded only by Dublin in size, commercial importance, and population. Its setting—centered in a green valley enclosed by high hills “through which the Lee [River] pursues its course to the sea”—was one of natural beauty. Water was everywhere and Cork boasted

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six bridges spanning the Lee for its population of over a hundred thousand.3 For an orphaned lad grieving for absent parents, anguished by probable separation from siblings, and remembering a small country village and rural life, Cork must have seemed a strangely different and lonely place. At a very tender age, Thomas Hovenden learned about loss and heartache. As the charity school required, Hovenden began an apprenticeship at fourteen years of age, working with George Tolerton, a cabinetmaker and “carver and gilder in Cork.” Hovenden’s aptitude for drawing so impressed Tolerton that in 1858, after three years of a seven-year apprenticeship, the master sent the seventeen-year-old Hovenden to the newly established Cork School of Design for classes a few days a week at a cost of only several shillings a quarter. Tolerton must have believed that the training would further his pupil’s usefulness in his continuing apprenticeship and prepare him to be a journeyman on his own.4 The school was one of the branch art schools of design set up by the British government’s Department of Science and Art in response to a growing concern for good design in handcrafted and manufactured products, a concern that became more pronounced when manufactured goods were exhibited alongside works of the decorative and fine arts at the first international exposition held in South Kensington, London, in 1851. Following the exposition, the department bought land at the site of the fair and, in 1857, located its Art Training School and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) there with the goal of reforming art training to improve contemporary design.5 Hovenden’s first artistic training at the Cork School was based on the South Kensington

Normal School of Design’s philosophy as well as on the ideas of the influential British author and art critic John Ruskin: that the study of newly redefined design principles could transform industrial products and benefit society and that artful surroundings were morally strengthening. James Brenan, the master of the Cork School of Design while Hovenden attended, held “theories [that] were very much those of Ruskin and William Morris:‘He believed firmly . . . that they [the School] could do nothing better than add art to industry.’”6 Hovenden’s attention to material arts in his paintings later in his career—for example, Breton and early American furniture—began with his apprenticeship to a craftsperson and his attendance at the Cork School. He believed to the end of his life, however, that painting had separate and “higher” aims: rather than merely being decorative or beautiful, art had a social purpose and expressed elevated moral or symbolic meaning. At the Cork School, Hovenden was one of about a hundred and fifty students, many of whom were women. He probably studied practical aspects of decorative art: design; color; and the history, drawing, and painting of ornament. During the course of this practical training, Hovenden began to aspire to becoming an artist—a career then generally considered superior to that of an artisan. Hovenden might have explored other course offerings more important for his future as a painter: elementary drawing and perspective, drawing from plaster casts of antique statuary and from natural objects, and painting in watercolor. Possibly, he demonstrated enough competence to even begin drawing from the live model and painting in oil.7 As a student, Hovenden had an artistic advantage otherwise available only in London or on the Continent. The very

BECOMING AN ARTIST

building that the Cork School occupied housed an extraordinary collection of more than a hundred casts of Greek and Roman sculpture, primarily of works in the Vatican collection.8 An essential part of art education, the prolonged study of ancient classical sculpture was a requisite prior to the study of the live model. The school’s replicas of revered sculptures, admired for generations, proclaimed the centrality of the heroic human figure in Western art, an idea that Hovenden the painter never forgot.9 As Hovenden reached adulthood, he had ambitions beyond being a gilder. Two watercolors, one of a shoreline scene with two figures from 1860 and the other A Farm in County Cork (n.d.), probably date from this early period and both evoke pleasant aspects of the rural life Hovenden knew in County Cork. Once Hovenden knew he wanted to become an artist, he recognized the limitations of his Cork School training for such a career. He no doubt had heard about opportunities for studying art and earning a living in New York City from his older brother John, who had settled there in 1859 and was supporting himself as a clerk. Determined to

join his brother and pursue a future as an artist in America, in 1863 the serious but genial young man of twenty-two years, medium height, dark brown hair, gray-blue eyes, and fair complexion, left the old world for the new.10 Four or five years later, Elizabeth Hovenden also emigrated to New York City to be near her two brothers, soon finding employment as a dressmaker.11 In the year that Hovenden came to the United States, he was only one of the well over one hundred and fifty thousand County Cork immigrants who had arrived at Castle Garden at Manhattan’s southern tip, more people than made up all of the city of Cork. Almost immediately, the pace, the size, the variety, and the vitality of New York City jolted newcomers. Just north of Castle Garden and the Battery, the busy main thoroughfare of Broadway began, running up the middle of the then-developed part of the city. Pedestrians and the traffic of horse-drawn wagons, cars, omnibuses, and carriages constantly jammed the street (fig. 2). A number of factories and business buildings rose to heights of five stories in the densest and most commercial section of the city from the Battery to Canal Street,

2. Broadway Near Grand Street, New York City, 1860. Stereoscopic photograph. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-95636.

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while imposing buildings, such as Haughwout’s chinaware store, a handsome Renaissance palace of modern cast iron, and A. T. Stewart’s fivestory department store, lined Broadway.12 The city had about three hundred churches, a number of fashionable hotels, cheap public transportation by horse-drawn city rail cars and city omnibuses, and printing presses that turned out the latest news within a few hours. The author of an 1864 guidebook for New York described the city as a “great centre of commercial enterprise,” characterized by “din and excitement” and everything being “done in a hurry,” and filled with over seven hundred thousand people of “all imaginable varieties and shades of character, . . . all habits, manners, and customs of the civilized globe.”13 Years afterward, Hovenden remembered that when “he came to New York . . . he found the country was in the throes of the civil war.” Despite predictions that “grass would be growing on Broadway if the Cotton States seceded,” New York City continued to thrive throughout the “Rebellion.” It was, nevertheless, a wartime city, as men in uniform and the daily press made clear. Six months after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day 1863 and less than two weeks after

the Union victory at Gettysburg, the city became acutely aware of the war when violence erupted in opposition to the Union cause and a new military draft. Riots spread throughout Manhattan and a mob looted and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum.14 The following year, a Metropolitan Fair to benefit the medical needs of the Union Army opened in April at Union Square and Fourteenth Street. The fair was a memorable event and of particular interest to artists because of its impressive picture gallery, which Hovenden most likely visited. Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) and Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), the most celebrated of the second generation of American landscape painters following Thomas Cole (1801–48) and Asher B. Durand (1796–1886), donated two large paintings, which hung directly across from each other in the center of the gallery, Church’s Heart of the Andes (1859) and Bierstadt’s The Rocky Mountains (1863) (fig. 3). The next April, in 1865, after Robert E. Lee’s surrender and Lincoln’s assassination, the slain president’s body lay in state in New York’s City Hall before a ceremonial procession accompanied the hearse up Broadway to the Hudson River depot where the slow journey to Illinois continued. Nearly a million people,

3. Artist unknown, Picture-Gallery of the Fair, Fourteenth-Street Building. Harper’s Weekly, 16 April 1864, 244.

BECOMING AN ARTIST

4. Artist unknown, Funeral Honors to President Lincoln. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 13 May 1865, 120–21.

quite possibly Hovenden among them, watched and mourned (fig. 4).15 When Hovenden arrived in Manhattan, he may have stayed with his brother on the Lower East Side, but by late 1863 he had settled in Greenwich Village. The population of the Village after midcentury grew more slowly than that of the city as a whole, and, atypically for New York City, remained primarily native-born, although a number of Irish immigrants moved into the area. Hovenden lodged for a couple of years at 134 Amity Street, now West Third Street, near Sixth Avenue and just south of Washington Square. By 1866 or early 1867, he obtained space for a frame shop and studio at 724 Broadway, between Washington Place and Waverly Place, and lived at 127 Charles Street, within two blocks of the Hudson River.16 Hovenden purposely chose to live and work in an area of the city that was congenial to artists. Since the mid-nineteenth century, a number of artists had had studios in the Washington Square neighborhood. It was probably there that Hovenden met another aspiring artist who would become a lifelong friend, Hugh Bolton Jones (1848–1927), known as H. Bolton Jones. A native Baltimorean, Jones had

studied at the Maryland Institute, moved to New York in 1865 to work as a decorator, and then studied under the landscape painter Horace W. Robbins, Jr. (1842–1904). Hovenden and Jones might have met when Robbins returned to New York in 1867 after several years abroad and took a studio on West 10th Street fairly near Hovenden’s frame shop and residence. Although Hovenden was almost eight years older than Jones, both young men were new to life in New York City and studying to be painters.17 At the time Hovenden settled in the Village, the National Academy of Design, New York’s major art organization, was only several blocks north of Washington Square, at 58 East Thirteenth Street. Hovenden began attending evening classes there on the first of January 1864 and continued his enrollment for the next four years.18 Even before Hovenden became a student at the National Academy of Design, he had a command of draftsmanship, as his large pencil drawing of Venus de Milo (fig. 5) proves. When Hovenden submitted the drawing to the Academy in 1864 in application for life-classes, the Academy leaders were impressed. Hovenden was admitted “without the usual routine

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5. Venus de Milo, ca. 1860–63. Pencil drawing, 281⁄2 ⳯ 13 in. Private collection. Seen in Self-Portrait, ca. 1873.

probation of drawing from the antique” and “called before the Council of the Academy and complimented and strongly encouraged to give up all other pursuits for art.” Two years later, the Artist Fund Society showed Hovenden’s drawing at its exhibition at the Academy.19 Soon after entering the Academy, Hovenden also began to study with Charles Parsons, an Academy member and lithographer, paying Parsons a “fixed sum” to

learn the rudiments of lithography. Within a few weeks, Hovenden was earning twenty dollars a week for lithographic work.20 The goal of the National Academy’s instruction was to train professional artists—painters and sculptors—not artisans. In April 1865, while Hovenden was enrolled in the Academy school’s night classes, the Academy moved into its new, white and gray marble “Venetian Palace” on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, where there was space for the schools, libraries, lecture room, and exhibition galleries.21 Yet for a talented student like Hovenden, the National Academy of Design offered limited opportunities during the four years that he attended classes: instruction was haphazard and instructors were for the most part volunteers from the Academy’s membership. The assigned Academicians during Hovenden’s enrollment were all figure painters—a fact that Hovenden surely noticed; among them, Hovenden probably admired the work of Eastman Johnson, who was painting genre pictures of American subjects in the 1860s. During Hovenden’s enrollment, no real studentprofessor relationship was possible nor were there student competitions or class offerings in painting, sketching, figure drawing, or composition.22 As an Academy student, Hovenden did have the opportunity to study the library’s art books, the Academy’s collection of casts, engraved reproductions of paintings, and original paintings. He took advantage of what he found valuable in the Academy’s educational program, first entering the Antique School as one of twenty-five students in 1864, where he continued for four years. Not until the 1866–67 session, however, did Hovenden enroll in the Life

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School. Judging by pictures Hovenden exhibited at the Academy in the late 1860s, he found his own opportunities to work from life.23 In addition to offering classes, the Academy also held annual spring exhibitions of contemporary art that occasioned regular reviews in the metropolitan press and periodicals.24 Hovenden exhibited paintings at the National Academy of Design in 1867, 1868, 1872, and 1874. Although some of these pictures are presently unlocated, their titles suggest that Hovenden painted portraits, landscapes, and genre pictures in these years: in 1867, a Portrait; in 1868, Evening in the Woods; in 1872, The Old Nurse’s Visit and A Study from Nature; and, in 1874, The Two Lilies. All these works except the Portrait and A Study from Nature were listed for sale, but Hovenden was not able to make a living as an artist until the 1870s.25 He recalled to an interviewer some years later that the Civil War period “was a bad time for painters” and that to support himself “he went into business as a frame dealer,” operating his business successfully until he left New York City in 1868. Nonetheless, he was determined to be a painter and, as he admitted to his interviewer, “when springtime came . . . [he] ran off to the country to do sketching, leaving his business to take care of itself,” quite possibly accompanied by his friend H. Bolton Jones, who was to become a landscape painter.26 In 1868, after five years in Manhattan during which Hovenden had worked as a gilder, studied art, painted, exhibited, and fulfilled residency requirements for citizenship, he decided to move to Baltimore, most likely encouraged by Jones. Hovenden apparently concluded that he could no longer benefit from classes at the

Academy, and participation in the National Academy’s annual exhibitions did not require New York residency. Both artists expected improved opportunities to sell their work, and they quickly set up a studio together in the house belonging to Jones’s father, Hugh Burgess Jones, an officer in a Baltimore insurance company. That studio, fairly near the harbor at 51 Saratoga Street, probably remained Hovenden’s permanent address from 1868 until 1874 when he went to Europe.27 Hovenden and Jones joined an active art community in Baltimore: the 1868 City Directory listed thirty artists; five years later, the directory named more than fifty, among whom were Hovenden and Jones. In December 1871, Hovenden, Jones, and other Baltimore artists showed “some excellent pieces” at the Maryland Academy of Art. Hovenden also continued to exhibit at the National Academy of Design in 1872 and 1874.28 When Hovenden settled in Baltimore, he thought he would earn a living by painting portraits. Later, remembering his disappointment, he explained to an interviewer that “Baltimore, with all of its wealth and austere aristocracy, cares little for art.” At that time, Maryland—a border state with divided sympathies during the Civil War— experienced the strains and uncertainties of the Reconstruction years. Hovenden, however, was resourceful and managed to support himself by coloring photographs, doing illustrations for magazines, and, probably, working for an art-supplies and picture-framing firm. At least once he took a brief trip to Virginia where, in addition to coloring photographs and performing other odd jobs, he designed a banner for a society of newly freed former slaves in Richmond.29 Hovenden contin-

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6. Engraving of Hovenden’s The Old Nurse’s Visit, 1872, in American Agriculturalist, January 1873, 28.

ued to paint pictures, beginning to show an increased interest in genre subjects, or scenes from everyday life. The artist was attuned to the marketplace and genre pictures greatly appealed to the growing middle class in Victorian England and in mid-nineteenth-century America; it was during these years that Hoven-

den’s genre paintings attracted his first substantial patronage. Hovenden exhibited his genre painting The Old Nurse’s Visit (1872) at the National Academy of Design’s annual spring exhibition of 1872. The painting, known today from a wood engraving published a year later (fig. 6), shows a prom-

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ising young artist putting finishing touches on an impressively framed landscape of trees, house, and a narrow stretch of water, while his “old nurse,” an African American woman wearing an aproned uniform, head kerchief, and eyeglasses, watches with interest. In a self-effacing way, Hovenden creates a genre painting rather than a self-portrait; emphasizing the artist at work, Hovenden situates the painter with his back toward the viewer, seated in a chair before his easel. In his left hand the artist holds his palette, brushes, and maulstick, while he carefully paints details on the trunk of the tree on the canvas with his right hand. Between the artist and the attentive nurse, an adjacent table holds a stack of art books and loose drawings, further underscoring his professional status. Perhaps Hovenden selected the genre theme and title because it would have had broader appeal than a self-portrait of a little-known artist. In choosing a theme including an African American, Hovenden may have been encouraged by Eastman Johnson’s (1824–1906) and Winslow Homer’s (1836–1910) earlier examples of African American genre subjects with which he was probably familiar. Johnson’s painting Negro Life at the South (1859, New-York Historical Society) was exhibited in 1859 at the National Academy of Design, where it received enormous critical acclaim, and Hovenden most likely knew about the picture. Hovenden also may have been familiar with Homer’s The Bright Side (1865, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), exhibited at the National Academy in 1865, and Homer’s Civil War illustrations, including those of African Americans, which appeared in issues of Harper’s Weekly through the 1860s.

When an illustration of The Old Nurse’s Visit was published, it was accompanied by a patronizing and racist explanation of the painting, addressed to young readers of the “Northern States.” The journalist described the Southern “mammy” tradition, stating—incorrectly—that the artist had actually experienced what he depicted. With imagined dialogue in dialect for the “mammy,” the writer exaggerated a childlike ignorance and perplexity on her part that Hovenden does not portray. Compared with the coarsely offensive article and contemporary magazine images of African Americans, Hovenden did not caricature the “old nurse” as the “mammy” type: she is attentive, slim, and neatly dressed. Nonetheless, her uniform is that of a servant and she admires his creation from a sideline, paying homage to a younger white man.30 The depiction and its title signify sympathy for the impoverished and humiliated South and the nostalgic myth of old plantation days of moonlight, magnolias, and happy slaves. A year later, Hovenden’s more stereotyped, demeaning, and ineptly drawn image, titled A Home Missionary (fig. 7) illustrated Harper’s Weekly’s front cover, showing a seated young white girl reading to an older black woman. General uneasiness about Reconstruction was growing at this time, as was a renewed interest in the myth of the Old South, indicated by such images in the illustrated press. In The Old Nurse’s Visit, Hovenden defused the visitation theme of former slaves and slave owners by presenting a touching story of regional quaintness that reflected and appealed to white attitudes of his day. Yet A Home Missionary also reveals Hovenden’s own acceptance of those attitudes;

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7. Engraving of Hovenden’s A Home Missionary in Harper’s Weekly, 2 May 1874: cover, 103⁄4 ⳯ 9 in.

it is an early example of Hovenden’s instinct for creating genre themes that carried undertones of contemporary social or moral relevance couched in agreeable sentiment.31 William T. Walters, a Baltimore art collector, owner of a successful liquor business, and in-

vestor in Southern railroads, admired The Old Nurse’s Visit enough to be convinced of Hovenden’s talent and, eventually, to urge the artist to go to Europe to study.32 John W. McCoy, Walters’s contemporary, business partner, and fellow Baltimorean, also became an

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8. In the Woods, ca. 1873. Oil on canvas, 18 ⳯ 141⁄2 in. Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, 1986.68.

early patron of Hovenden.33 McCoy believed in and practiced the virtues of hard work and good works. In addition to his partnership with Walters, he published a daily afternoon newspaper, and he served as “practical head” of the Baltimore Harbor Commission, as “head” of the Executive Committee of the Maryland “State Lunatic Hospital,” and as trustee of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, which was incorporated in 1857 and began exhibiting paintings and sculpture in 1879. McCoy also collected art and had, as he wrote to Hovenden, “no leisure and . . . almost no recreation.”34 McCoy bought the artist’s paintings In the

Woods (fig. 8) and The Lovers (ca. 1872–73), now known as Couple in a Landscape, dating from Hovenden’s Baltimore period.35 Both are landscapes with one or two small figures, reflecting the strong landscape tradition in American art from the 1820s to the 1870s. In the Woods, for example, features a young woman in a light-colored dress walking through a forest; her hat hangs casually from her right arm while her left hand carefully holds the hem of her skirt above the dirt path. Dappled sunlight filters through the dense trees in Hovenden’s carefully rendered and detailed scene. The subject of a figure or a couple in a wooded setting,

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9. Winslow Homer, The Initials, 1864. Oil on canvas, 16 ⳯ 121⁄8 in. Private collection.

combining a genre theme and the myth of the Garden of Eden, was in favor at the time Hovenden painted his pictures, as evidenced by Winslow Homer’s The Initials (fig. 9), which Hovenden must have seen at the National Academy’s 1865 annual exhibition. Whereas Homer gives the figure prominence and suggests a narrative reading, Hovenden gives the natural setting importance equal to the figures and is less concerned with a story. Both artists, however, suggest parallels between the human figures and nature, between virginal beauty and

unspoiled woods.36 Hovenden exhibited Evening in the Woods, perhaps the same painting as In the Woods, in the National Academy of Design’s 1868 annual exhibition.37 An early self-portrait also from this period reveals Hovenden’s ambitions and his desire to be considered seriously as an artist. In his Self-Portrait of about 1873 (fig. 10, presently unlocated), the artist presents himself alone in his studio, facing the viewer as he intently studies a painting on an easel, holding his maulstick, palette, and brush. His surroundings, which include framed, finished

10. Self-Portrait, ca. 1873. Oil on canvas, 273⁄4 ⳯ 173⁄8 in. Photograph: Zaplin-Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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paintings on the walls, a sketchbook and goldtooled, leather-bound books on the shelf, two easels, a variety of paintbrushes, and discarded sketches on the floor next to a paint box with the painter’s signature, to which the maulstick points, create a rarefied atmosphere of high art and confirm Hovenden’s professional status. High on the studio wall, his expertly matted and framed drawing of Venus de Milo affirms Hovenden’s commitment to painting as high art while serving as his muse. The landscape paintings included in the scene allude to the seasons of nature and the cycle of life. On the easel behind the artist rests a morning sunlit scene of figures in front of the new green foliage of spring, paralleling the freshness of youth. Hanging on the wall to the right, a small horizontal landscape features trees bathed in the light of midday in the height of summer foliage, while, beneath it, a small canvas wreathed in maple leaves depicts a couple at sunset in an autumnal landscape of bare tree branches. Resting on the shelf, a partially seen painting shows the afterglow of sunset reflected in the darkening winter sky of the waning year, corresponding to the twilight of life. This thoughtful scheme, which Hovenden has interwoven into his selfportrait, highlights the themes of change, time’s passage, and life’s seasons, which the artist would incorporate in works throughout his career. Hovenden demonstrates increased skill in this selfportrait, for instance, in the technical conceit of trompe l’oeil shadows of the nail and string holding the wreath of leaves and a more sophisticated treatment of figure and space. McCoy’s patronage no doubt encouraged the artist’s greater selfassurance. Another picture from Hovenden’s Baltimore

period is Lady Tending Flowers, painted for McCoy in 1873 (fig. 11).38 In it, a woman wearing a dress, a white frilled apron, and a straw hat sits on the steps of a wooden porch as she tends the plants and garden around her. Holding a trowel in her left hand, she leans to her right and gently pats the dirt around a plant that presumably has just been potted. The clear, bright coloration of the blue dress, pink flesh tones and scarf, white apron, red geranium, and magenta plant leaves are vibrant in the bright sunlight, which Hovenden has carefully rendered as it falls on the porch floor, the step, and the white column, and the folds of her dress. His interest in the effects of light parallels the efforts of other genre painters in the late 1860s and early 1870s, such as Eastman Johnson’s woman in a sun-filled garden in Catching the Bee (1872) (fig. 12) and Winslow Homer’s croquet paintings of 1865–67.39 More representations of women appeared in American art in the 1870s as women became more visible and more influential; in Lady Tending Flowers, Hovenden depicts a typical image of woman linked with nature.40 Hovenden’s 1873 painting A Reverie (fig. 13) could be the unseen painting on the easel in the Self-Portrait because of its date and format. A Reverie is probably the picture Hovenden titled Two Lilies when he exhibited it at the National Academy of Design in 1874 and later retitled. The setting—an unmistakably Victorian interior—is decorated in a harmony of deep reds, greens, and browns, with floral wall-towall rug; velvet sofa on which rest a large book and a Japanese fan; a bobbin-turned, open armchair with red upholstery; gilt picture frames; and even a glass paperweight on the table beside the cachepot.41 A young woman sits languidly in

11. Lady Tending Flowers, 1873. Oil on canvas, 171⁄2 ⳯ 155⁄8 in. Courtesy of The Peabody Art Collection, Maryland Commission on Artistic Property of the Maryland State Archives. MSA-SC-4680-10-0036.

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12. Eastman Johnson, Catching the Bee, 1872. Oil on millboard, 291⁄2 1 ⳯ 21 ⁄4 in. Collection of The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey. Purchase 1958 Wallace M. Scudder Bequest Fund.

the chair, her head resting on her left hand as she looks wistfully into the distance. Her richly colored teal dress stands out from the darker jewel tones of the upholstered furnishings and the carpet. Both the virginal young woman lost in reverie and the other woman playing a piano in the background shadows on the left, are metaphorically likened to the two lilies, or flowers of purity: the single white trumpet blossom of the calla lily in a ceramic cachepot on the table

against the wall and the other faintly suggested in the rectangular painting hanging on the wall above the table.42 A gentle mood of sadness and longing for someone departed is suggested by the telltale letter held by the young woman in the chair and by the opened envelope hastily dropped on the floor. Other narrative details— the oval framed image of a young man paired with a woman’s head framed by an embroidered antimacassar, and the woman’s languishing pos-

13. A Reverie, 1873. Oil on canvas, 27 ⳯ 22 in. Courtesy of Ms. Sondra Landy Gross, Great Neck, New York.

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14. Eastman Johnson, Not at Home, 1872–80. Oil on board, 261⁄2 ⳯ 221⁄4 in. Brooklyn Museum of Art. Gift of Miss Gwendolyn O. L. Conkling. 40.60.

ture—suggest the sorrow of absence of someone held dear, probably the writer of the letter. The dark, heavily furnished Victorian interior in A Reverie is reminiscent of similar settings featured in Eastman Johnson’s Not at Home (1872–1880) (fig. 14) and Thomas Eakins’s Home Scene (1870–71, Brooklyn Museum of Art) of the early 1870s. Like Johnson and Eakins, Hovenden paints with a dark palette and uses the human figure to express mood, atmosphere, or feeling rather than to tell a story as in earlier American genre painting.43 Hovenden’s interest in furnishings, intense colors, and floral symbolism also recalls mid-nineteenth-century English Pre-

Raphaelite painting, yet Hovenden’s picture is not as precisely detailed and his handling is never tight but noticeably painterly.44 A Reverie (or Two Lilies) is probably autobiographical. Painted the year before he left for France and exhibited in the spring of the year of his departure, A Reverie may be a farewell token, reflecting Hovenden’s own regret over a coming separation. The young woman’s heart-shaped face and hairstyle are similar to those of the woman walking in In the Woods (see fig. 8), so she might have been someone the artist knew well enough to ask to pose for him for both pictures, possibly his sister or someone for whom he had a romantic

BECOMING AN ARTIST

attachment. Comparison of the facial types of the artist in the Self-Portrait and the young woman in A Reverie makes a brother-sister resemblance believable. Separation would have been particularly difficult for Hovenden, who had been reunited with his brother and sister in New York only to leave again for Paris to meet new challenges. Convinced of Hovenden’s talent,Walters urged the artist to go to Europe to study. McCoy’s patronage and financial support enabled Hovenden to avail himself of the most sophisticated artistic education in the world and in 1874, at age thirty-three, Hovenden sailed for France. McCoy continued his financial support and keen interest in the artist’s work while Hovenden was abroad. Six handwritten letters from McCoy to Hovenden remain from a steady correspondence between artist and patron; written at some length and in a fatherly tone, they reveal McCoy’s close attention to the artist’s descriptions of his works and his genuine concern for Hovenden’s well-being and future. In turn, Hovenden kept his patron specifically informed about what he was painting, often expressing his doubts and hopes for his works’ reception at the Salon or at exhibits in the United States. McCoy’s reassuring and supportive letters must have bolstered the artist immeasurably.45 Hovenden’s experience abroad, as for other “new men” who studied in Europe, proved to be pivotal for him as an artist. His training under Alexandre Cabanel (1823–89) was crucial in the shaping of Hovenden’s style and his attitudes about art. The impact of Hovenden’s introduction to Paris and his study under the celebrated Cabanel was immediate and enduring. Hovenden’s belief in art’s high purpose, his respect for serious professional training, his focus on figure painting, his skill in design-

ing large-scale compositions, his careful choice of subjects, his interest in themes rooted in history, and even the strain of gravity and melancholy in his work were formed by that experience. Paris had become the magnet for artists that Rome had been earlier, offering superior professional education, an exhilarating artistic environment, annual exhibition opportunities, and, in contrast to Rome’s ancient marbles and Renaissance masters, modernity. The American art critic and author George William Sheldon well understood what Parisian study meant for the 1870s and 1880s artistic generation of American painters: “For fresh subtilties [sic] and cunning mediums of technique the American artist of the present decade [1880s] has a profound respect. His predecessor had a fondness for addressing himself to matters of sentimentality, of animation in design, of innocuous story-telling, but he himself can draw and paint soundly and is learned in the practice of his art.”46 In going abroad for professional training Hovenden followed a general trend among American artists in the 1870s and 1880s. Encouraged by improved transportation, increasing coverage of European art in the American press and periodicals, and a lessening of provincialism in the United States, hundreds of young artists traveled to Europe to study—most to Paris—during the two decades following the Civil War. Among American painters in Paris in the middle to late 1870s when Hovenden was there were George de Forest Brush, Helen Corson, Kenyon Cox, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Hugh Bolton Jones, Francis Coates Jones, Will Hicock Low, Charles Sprague Pearce, William Lamb Picknell, Stephen Arnold, Douglas

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Volk, and Julian Alden Weir. The unequalled vitality of the French capital as a center in which to study, exhibit, see, buy, and sell art, and the generally recognized artistic superiority of contemporary French art accounted for its compelling attraction.47 In particular, the unmatched distinction of showing works at the Salon, the official government-sponsored exhibition, gave artists important professional recognition, as it did for Hovenden.48 A wide audience of art critics, artists, the press, and an interested public visited the Salon, and critical notices in Salon reviews, offers of purchase, and medals or awards for artists’ works could greatly enhance an artist’s reputation and commercial success. The sophisticated artistic climate of the French capital awed American artists who left the meager artistic milieu of New York to go to Paris in the 1870s and early 1880s; they savored what the painter Will Low called the “larger freedom and nobler aims” of its “superior civilization.” 49 By the late 1860s, the taste for French Salon paintings had also spread to American art patrons, and this taste was further stimulated in the 1880s by handsome and well-illustrated art books, such as Earl Shinn’s The Art Treasures of America with commentaries on art in American collections, and the art critic George William Sheldon’s Hours with Art and Artists with essays on European and American artists.Writing in the late 1880s, the American art critic and editor Sylvester Rosa Koehler asserted that French art had such great appeal because it was not as nationalistic as English or German art but more realistic and “intensely modern.”50 The avid American patronage of Salon artists inclined American

art students to study under popular French masters and under other French painters who had been taught by those masters, and to publicize these connections. Hovenden, for example, continued to identify himself at the Paris Salon as a pupil of Cabanel even after his studies had ceased. At the time Hovenden arrived in Paris, the capital and the nation were recovering from the ravages of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, which had brought humiliating defeat to the French, the downfall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire, and the forming of the Third Republic. In only two and a half years, the French had paid off the German indemnity of five billion francs, rubble had been removed from throughout Paris, and a new future for France quickened with the evacuation of the last German occupation troops from the capital in late 1873. Repair, restoration, and rebuilding went forward everywhere in the city—at the Louvre, on the Vendôme column destroyed during the brief insurgency of the Commune after the war, and on the Arc de Triomphe. New monuments such as Emmanuel Fremiet’s equestrian statue Joan of Arc (1874) recalled the glory of France, exalted the survival from the terrible year, and accorded with the conservative political reaction that followed the war and the radical revolt of the Commune. The energetic ambiance of the capital captivated Americans. Hovenden and other expatriate artists in Paris in the 1870s found living expenses to be relatively low and the French people friendly, but the primary attraction was the leading art school in the Western world, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.51 Located directly across the Seine from the Louvre, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was the teach-

BECOMING AN ARTIST

ing institution of the Academy of Fine Arts, one of the five academies of the Institute of France. The school offered tuition-free courses for American men as well as Frenchmen. After 1863, an expanded curriculum included lecture courses in history, art history, aesthetics, and archaeology, as well as superior technical training. The broad, liberal curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts impressed aspiring artists with the wider cultural context of their calling, confirming that the profession of art was not solely one of technical skill and knowledge. American artists who took the stringent entrance examinations for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts around the time of Hovenden’s arrival in Paris testified to the school’s demanding standards.52 A lessrigorous choice of study than that of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was in the private ateliers taught by independent masters. These ateliers were, in effect, preparatory schools to enable students to pass the concours des places, the semiannual examination for matriculation in the Ecole des BeauxArts, although many Americans who studied in the private ateliers did not even attempt the examinations.53 Rather than matriculate at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or study in an independent, private atelier, Hovenden applied directly to work with Cabanel, one of the three painting masters at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The three chefs d’atelier, appointed in 1863, were Isadore Pils (1815–75), who was succeeded by Henri Lehmann (1819–82) in 1875, Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), and Cabanel. Their studios were housed at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The majority of American men and all women students (women were excluded from the school until 1897) stud-

ied in independent ateliers or academies rather than matriculating officially at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Of the three masters heading the painting ateliers at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Gérôme was by far the most popular with Americans; Cabanel, however, had a number of American pupils, Thomas Hovenden among them.54 Alexandre Cabanel sought “cette juste mesure,” that is, decorum and moderation in his choice of subject and in his treatment of it. According to French critics, Cabanel elevated the mind and charmed the eye with a style mediating between that of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres—the standard-bearer of neoclassicism after the death of Jacques-Louis David—and that of Eugène Delacroix, the leader of Romanticism from the mid-1820s.55 Cabanel excelled in his academic education, studying under a contemporary of David’s before entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1840 and winning the coveted Prix de Rome. He thoroughly grasped the principles of Neoclassicism, only slightly tempered by the contrary influences of Romanticism’s emphasis on emotion, dynamic movement, and color rather than drawing, and of Gustave Courbet’s midcentury insistence on contemporary subjects. Cabanel had a long, productive, and successful career as a figure painter of a wide range of subjects: historical and literary, decorative murals, occasional genre themes, and portraits. His Birth of Venus (1863) (fig. 15) added to his renown, particularly when Emperor Napoleon III bought the painting from the Salon of 1863. Soon thereafter Cabanel became an officer of the Legion of Honor, a member of the Academy of Fine Arts, and Professor of Painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. As a painting master, Cabanel

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15. Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1863. Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. Photograph: Hervé Lewandowski. © Réunion de Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, New York.

encouraged individual traits in his pupils, in fact, a contemporary French critic commented that the “most singular” aspect of Cabanel’s teaching was that he “does not fetter any temperament” and “never oppresses the most dissimilar minds,” adding that all of Cabanel’s pupils recognized their debt to him.56 Hovenden benefited from Cabanel’s example as well as from his teaching. Cabanel excelled in designing harmonious, coherent compositions and in drawing the human figure; his Study,Triumph of Flora for a mural at the Louvre (1870–72) (fig. 16), for instance, serves as an excellent example of carefully building up figures from outline drawings to fully modeled forms. Even his detractors, such as the American critic Clarence Cook, admitted Cabanel’s remarkable talent for “precise academic drawing.”57 Hovenden acknowledged his debt to his French master, referring to him in later years as that “great figure painter” and

well remembering that “when he put himself under Cabanel, in Paris, that master kept him drawing, not letting him use the brush for nearly ten months.” When Hovenden did pick up a brush, his use of color and method of paint application also reflected Cabanel’s influence; when Hovenden entered the French master’s atelier in the 1870s, Cabanel had begun to exhibit deeper color, more lively and painterly brushwork, and occasional use of the palette knife.58 Hovenden’s benefactors William T. Walters and John W. McCoy were certainly mindful of Cabanel’s popularity with American buyers when they arranged for Hovenden’s introduction to the French academician: one French critic commented that “every American of any pretensions rushes to Cabanel’s studio” to commission a portrait.59 In the autumn of 1874, Hovenden entered Cabanel’s atelier and would become the most outstanding of Cabanel’s thirty-five American pupils.

BECOMING AN ARTIST

16. Alexandre Cabanel, Study, Triumph of Flora, 1870–72. Louvre, Paris. RF35727. Photograph: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, New York.

Whether Hovenden arrived in Paris in time to see the first independent group exhibition of the Impressionist painters or the spring Salon is not known; however, he did arrive in time for the October to July 1874–75 session of the school ateliers and found lodging on the Seine’s left bank at 15 rue Jacob (fig. 17) near the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.60 On 26 October, Hovenden called on George A. Lucas, an art agent for William T.

Walters, who took Hovenden to meet Cabanel. The French master, impressed by Hovenden’s talent, accepted him as a student and assured Hovenden that after academic tutelage he “would realize his fondest ambition.” Two days later, Hovenden’s name appeared in the Register for Cabanel’s Ecole atelier.61 Hovenden found the standards of an atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts considerably more

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17. Photograph of lodging on the Seine’s left bank at 15 rue Jacob.

demanding than those of the National Academy of Design’s Antique and Life Schools. Although Hovenden was no beginner, Cabanel insisted that he practice drawing for months before the master would allow Hovenden to paint. Supposedly Cabanel said of those who rushed into color without adequate knowledge of drawing: “They are like boarding-school misses who write [with] flowing hands to hide bad spelling.”62 Under Cabanel, Hovenden learned how to see the weaknesses of his prior artistic education himself and

he worked diligently to overcome them. As Hovenden explained later to an American art critic: “Abroad you are taught how to look at your work; you see for yourself . . . and you are not expected to do anything till your own judgment acquiesces.”63 Hovenden studied from the antique and from life as a student in Cabanel’s studio. In all likelihood, he followed the usual Ecole atelier regimen, first working six mornings a week at drawing, then painting from life, and spending a week every month studying the antique. He was

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free in the afternoons to study and sketch the collections of the Louvre or Luxembourg galleries.64 Hovenden’s works from this period exemplify the advancements the artist made in his treatment of figures and application of color under Cabanel’s tutelage. In Study of an Old Lady (ca. 1874–75) (fig. 18), a small work, the artist rejects descriptive and narrative details to concentrate on a three-dimensional half-figure, while his more confident and freely applied pigment contrasts with the tighter handling in his earlier works.65 Patches of paint, differing in hue and tone, suggest the fullness of cheek, projection of chin, and recession of eye socket with a new understanding of underlying bone structure, of the actual appearance of flesh, and of the use of paint alone to signify three-dimensional form.

18. Study of an Old Lady, ca. 1874–75. Oil on wood panel, 67⁄16 ⳯ 55⁄16 in. Baltimore Museum of Art: George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the state of Maryland; Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund; and contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations throughout the Baltimore community. BMA 1996.45.137.

Hovenden’s earlier palette of clear bright colors has been altered to a low-keyed, limited, and grayed color scheme, allowing exploration of value relationships. Hovenden’s greater subtlety of color reflects a stylistic trend found in the work of other Americans, including J. Alden Weir and Arthur Wesley Dow, who studied in France in the 1870s and also relates to Cabanel’s shift from a light rococo palette to a darker more uniform tonality.66 An even more telling example of Hovenden’s transformations under Cabanel is a comparison of his Self-Portrait from about 1873 (see fig. 10) and his Self-Portrait of the Artist in His Studio, proudly signed “Hovenden/Paris 1875” (fig. 19).67 In the earlier Self-Portrait, the figure is central, but the individual elements in the picture

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19. Self-Portrait of the Artist in His Studio, 1875. Oil on canvas, 265⁄8 ⳯ 175⁄8 in. Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan and John H. Niemeyer Funds, 1969.28.

BECOMING AN ARTIST

are so carefully delineated that we pause to identify each object—pictures and easels, books and sketchbook, and the figurine in breeches and smock holding a quiver of paintbrushes, paralleling the artist holding his paintbrush. Overall, the studio accoutrements overpower the young man and he appears to be just one more object in the painting. By contrast, in the Paris portrait d’apparat (a solemn portrayal of the sitter surrounded by objects associated with him in his daily life), the artist’s self-image alters dramatically. No longer an earnest and aspiring practitioner in a neat bow tie and jacket, sitting erect in his chair, Hovenden is now the romantic conception of a disheveled Bohemian artist, leaning back casually with his feet propped up on a stool, wearing a white shirt and a flowing red kerchief, and contemplating his large finished canvas while he smokes meditatively. The artist’s countenance has changed as well: in the earlier self-portrait, the artist presents a neatly groomed face bearing a serious expression, bathed in bright, direct light; by contrast, in the 1875 self-portrait, the artist’s tousled hair and the shadow across his brooding eyes and mouth create a moody atmosphere in his Paris studio. The crowded room proclaims in its very disorder the preeminence of art over mundane concerns of everyday, bourgeois life. Palette and brushes hang on the wall, books pack the high shelf in the background, and the painter holds a violin and bow above sheet music strewn on a chair to pay tribute to the completion of his latest work. The artist and his calling are seen within a broader cultural ambiance as the sister arts of literature, music, and painting are honored, but the art of painting is paramount. In the Paris self-portrait,

Hovenden focuses on the figure and creates a more open composition with the diagonal thrust of the figure’s pose. His new artistic professionalism shows in the convincing three-dimensionality of the forms, the adeptly foreshortened pose of the figure, the tonal variations and more unified color harmony in the deep reds of the drapery and the terra-cotta tiled floor, the suggestion of air in the wisp of cigarette smoke, and the semblance of actual light emanating from a specific source to pervade the studio. Finally, two charcoal drawings from Hovenden’s study in Cabanel’s atelier typify the traditional academic training that demanded long practice drawing from the antique and the live model.68 In Academic Nude (ca. 1874–75), Hovenden has realized the figure accurately both anatomically and three-dimensionally through careful study in charcoal and pencil. In centering the figure on the paper, except for the raised right arm, Hovenden seems to have been following the academic principle of placement described by J.Alden Weir, when he was studying in Paris in the 1870s: “Always they make them take in the whole of the paper, the head within a quarter of an inch of the top and the same of the bottom if standing.”69 In another less-studied charcoal, Study of a Bearded Man (fig. 20), the placement on the paper is more assured and the momentary gesture quite successfully captured; it is the more effective expressively as well as in anatomical understanding. Hovenden’s numerous surviving drawings attest to the artist’s skill in drawing the human figure and his practice of using preparatory studies for his paintings throughout his career.70 Hovenden’s choice of subject matter, figural style, and compositional strategies in his subse-

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20. Study of a Bearded Man, ca. 1874–75. Charcoal drawing on paper, 93⁄4 ⳯ 13 in. Kennedy Galleries, New York.

quent paintings of Breton history and some of his later American works also reflect the artist’s training under the French master Cabanel. Praised by one French critic as being “our greatest living historical painter,” Cabanel frequently depicted noble or heroic themes from history, mythology, literature, or allegory.71 In Othello Relating His Adventures (1857) (fig. 21), however, the master presents the drama of Othello as if it were a narrative genre subject: Othello leans informally against a balustrade as he recounts his exploits to Desdemona. Hovenden similarly framed many of his historical subjects in a genre scene context; in In Hoc Signo Vinces (In This Sign Shalt Thou Conquer) (see fig. 41), for example, he represents an episode from Breton history—the Vendéan

wars—in terms of the lives of ordinary peasants. As in Cabanel’s Othello, the focus of Hovenden’s narrative is a pair of two central figures and a prominent seated figure; extensive architectural details, costumes, and “props” (such as Cabanel’s rug and tapestries and Hovenden’s furnishings), and the dramatic lighting in both paintings further underscore some of the influences Hovenden incorporated into his art from his French training.72 In one of his last paintings, Jerusalem the Golden (see fig. 127), Hovenden recalls the sweet sadness, religious mood, and pictorial devices of Cabanel’s The Choir Director’s Widow (La veuve du maître de chapelle) (fig. 22). The woman’s languishing pose resembles that of the widow in Cabanel’s painting, in reverse, even to the hand-held handkerchief, while

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21. Alexandre Cabanel, Othello Relating His Adventures, 1857. Oil on canvas, 451⁄2 ⳯ 511⁄2 in. Collection of the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. Museum purchase, 1972.36.

her facial expression resembles that of another melancholy Cabanel heroine, Desdemona.73 Hovenden’s experiences in Paris were pivotal in his artistic training and education and launched the next phase of his professional career, a sojourn in the remote province of Brittany in northwestern France. By the end of his year with Cabanel, Hovenden could “draw and paint soundly” and became “learned in the practice of his art” under the “kindly” but attentive criticism of the French master.74 At the Louvre

and the Salon, Hovenden saw acclaimed works of past and contemporary art and observed the cultural importance of art. In Paris he confirmed and adopted convictions about art that he never relinquished. What Hovenden learned from his French master informed his work thereafter in the dignity he gave to subjects of ordinary life and in the serious ethical import of his themes, reflecting his faith in art’s high purpose, in art that appealed to what the nineteenth century referred to as a higher or nobler nature. Hovenden

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22. Alexandre Cabanel, The Choir Director’s Widow (La veuve du maître de chapelle), 1859. Salon. Location unknown. Photograph: Frick Art Reference Library, New York.

summed up his training and experience abroad on his return to America: “Most of us must go abroad to learn to see aright and to grow strong.” 75 Although Hovenden did not become an American academic artist devoted to painting classical, allegorical, or ideal subjects, his unwavering emphasis on drawing and three-dimensional forms, the

primacy of the human figure, carefully arranged compositions, and thoughtfully chosen subjects, came from academic training. What Hovenden learned from his French master informed his work for the remainder of his career in the dignity with which he imbued subjects from ordinary life and in his faith in art’s high purpose.

Chapter 2

From “Picturesque” Brittany to Paris Painting Courage and Romance in History and Legend In Pont Aven,there was a colony of some ten or twelve Americans and Englishmen,bent principally on the study of art, and the atmosphere was contagious. —“Francis Coates Jones, DeWitt McClellan Lockman Papers”

After studying under Cabanel and working in Paris, Hovenden felt prepared to meet the highest artistic standards and, having reached his middle thirties, some urgency to pursue his career as a professional. In the summer of 1875, he went to the Brittany farming village of PontAven, joining the colony of artists (fig. 23) there led by the American painter Robert Wylie (1839–77), whose influence was vital for Hovenden in forging a mature style and thematic focus. Hovenden discovered he could live simply, explore new subjects, find willing models to sketch and paint, and enjoy the fellowship of other artists; as the artist told an interviewer, he found “good criticism combined with quiet, and cheap living.”1 Except for a half-year’s sojourn in Paris in 1878–79 and trips to the Salon, Hovenden would stay in Pont-Aven for his remaining years abroad. His genre and history paintings of its inhabitants were exhibited in Paris and the United States, where they attracted much critical attention and firmly established the artist’s reputation both at home and abroad. In going to Pont-Aven, Hovenden was fol-

lowing established practice among early nineteenth-century artists in Europe and America who spent the summer months living in the country and sketching outdoors; he was one of a number of Americans who left Paris at the close of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the ateliers and went to Brittany in 1875. As the American painter J. Alden Weir (1852–1919) wrote home in June, “everybody is going down there to paint Breton subjects this year.”2 An excellent location for artists, the village offered a temperate climate that allowed outdoor work for a number of months and the legendary gray skies of Brittany, which made forms and colors clearer and sharper. Accommodations were notably cheap and villagers willingly served as models. Hovenden’s few remaining scenic views of PontAven, one a painting of old thatch-roofed, wattle-and-daub peasant cottages, and another of the “deeply rooted,” stubbornly surviving ancient “oaks of Finistère,” demonstrate the picturesque characteristics of the region and the appeal of its apparent permanence and continuity.3 Hovenden might have heard about Pont-

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23. Artists in Front of Gloanec Pension, ca. 1876–80. Private collection.

Aven from Weir or from other Americans in Paris such as Edgar M. Ward (1839–1915) or the Philadelphia painter Milne Ramsey (1846–1915).4 Although French artists had discovered Pont-Aven, Americans were among the earliest of many painters who spent time there from the 1860s through the 1880s.5 Other American artists who were at Pont-Aven when Hovenden arrived, besides Wylie and Ramsey, included Vermont-born William Lamb Picknell (1853–97), who became a lifelong friend of Hovenden’s and, probably, Helen Corson (1846–1935) from near Philadelphia, who would later become Hovenden’s wife.6 The next summer, Hovenden’s old Baltimore friend H. Bolton Jones and his younger brother Frank (Francis Coates) Jones joined Hovenden at Pont-

Aven.7 Frank recalled those memorable days for an interviewer: In the picturesque country of Brittany . . . [at] Pont-Aven there was a colony of some ten or twelve Americans and Englishmen, bent principally on the study of art, and the atmosphere was contagious. . . . With the exception of the horror of Wiley’s [sic] death, Jone’s [sic] memories of PontAven are of the happiest, the four-mile walk to the sea along lovely old roads, bordered by ancient oaks . . . trimmed every ten years and every twig used by the thrifty peasants for firewood, the softness of summer rain on their faces, the talks till bedtime around the fire, of home and art and far countries. In the winter, although there was no coal, the brothers had their own little stove, while the cook prepared the meals even to game and salmon for his 20 guests on five separate little fires.8

FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

Through the 1870s, the village was a twoday rail trip from Paris to the railroad station at Quimperle, where a postman’s cart took passengers the last dozen miles to Pont-Aven. To Hovenden’s eyes after most of a year’s stay in the French capital, the “pretty little village” located in a valley alongside the Aven River surrounded by craggy hills with small farms may have looked like “a very primitive Breton village,” as it was succinctly described in a standard guidebook during the 1870s.9 The notion of a primitive and changeless Brittany, however, was a myth. To the contrary, “the peasant world was almost constantly in crisis throughout these hundred years [1848–1945] and in some very fundamental ways.”10 Although Pont-Aven was never as industrialized as Concarneau, nine miles to the west with a thriving sardine fishery, it was,

nonetheless, known for its many water mills, its port, and as a place of trade where French was spoken in addition to Breton. “Pont-Aven, Ville de renom: Quatorze moulins, quinze maisons [Pont-Aven, renowned town: Fourteen mills, fifteen houses],” was not “primitive” except in the eyes of the beholder.11 Picknell’s 1880 painting of the new crushed quartz Road to Concarneau (fig. 24) indicates just one of the modernizations in the region. Picknell wrote Hovenden early the next year from Pont-Aven: “Pont-Aven is no longer the place I liked when you and Bolt [H. Bolton Jones] were here, and the new Amers [Americans], well, in this case I a thousand times prefer old friends to new.”12 Long before Hovenden went to Brittany, the province had held a particular appeal for nineteenth-century French artists as a “primitive”

24. William Lamb Picknell, Road to Concarneau, 1880. Oil on canvas, 423⁄8 ⳯ 793⁄4 in. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Museum purchase, Gallery Fund. 99.8.

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haven from the Industrial Revolution and the accompanying spread of urbanism; of all French provinces, it seemed to artists the best source of picturesque subjects and “rustic genre.” Romantic depictions of the fog-enveloped land and its pious and superstitious people inspired the writers Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) and Auguste Brizeux (1803–58) at the end of the 1820s and beginning of the 1830s as well as a number of artists, including Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), who stayed there in 1886 and 1888.13 Peasant and provincial subjects from various areas of France captivated the imaginations of many French painters from midcentury onward, inspiring major works such as Gustave Courbet’s (1819–1877) Stonebreakers (1849) and Jules Breton’s (1827–1906) Recall of the Gleaners, shown in the 1859 Salon, as well as the work of JeanFrançois Millet (1814–75) and Jules Bastien Lepage (1848–84), also a pupil of Cabanel’s. Hovenden was well aware of major French painters known for their peasant and provincial subject matter and his large-scale, solidly rendered figure style and dark palette ally Hovenden with Millet and Courbet without their religious or political inferences. Breton enjoyed great success among American collectors, such as the Philadelphian William P.Wilstrach and the Baltimorean William T.Walters, and influenced other American artists in their treatment of rural and peasant subjects, Hovenden included.14 Hovenden became close friends with Wylie in the year and a half that they knew each other before Wylie’s sudden death from a lung hemorrhage in 1877.15 Wylie was the leader of a developing colony of American artists at Pont-Aven in the later 1860s, impressing the Bostonian Benjamin Champney with his generous nature and “thoughtful and kind” advice to younger

artists. The artists used, as a common studio, an old, abandoned, “half farmhouse, half chateau,” in the heights above the village and Wylie rounded up local “girls and boys” to sit as models. By the early 1870s, Wylie exhibited several Breton subjects at the annual Paris Salon.16 Wylie encouraged Hovenden to paint peasant genre subjects and to develop facility in paint handling and heightened sensitivity to color, and his influence informed Hovenden’s choice of Breton subjects and his major thematic focus, in Brittany and then in America, on familial bonds and traditional values.17 Later, Hovenden affirmed: “My debt to him is very great.”18 Combining a vigorous figure style with emphatic dramatization by means of strong chiaroscuro and dark tonalities, Wylie focused on the Bretons’ communal and familial bonds and their adherence to ancient legends and superstitions in his paintings such as A Fortune Teller of Brittany (fig. 25) and The Postman (fig. 26).19 Wylie and Hovenden were singular in their focus on representations of peasants in enclosed interiors, mutually attentive to some common activity. Their emphasis on the themes of family and community continuity, traditional values, and enduring traditions held great appeal in an anxious time of radical change in France and in the United States.20 Although Hovenden carefully selected picturesque aspects of Breton life, he avoided portraying Pont-Aven peasants as crudely primitive, as did some American visitors to Brittany both before and after the artist’s sojourn there. George M. Towle, the author of two articles in Harper’s Magazine in 1870, deplored the ignorance, credulity, dishonesty, drunkenness, and uncleanliness of the Breton peasant, finding no charm in the “long matted

FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

25. Robert Wylie, A Fortune Teller of Brittany, 1871–72. Oil on canvas, 337⁄8 ⳯ 473⁄4 in. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Museum purchase, Gallery Fund. 99.11.

hair” of the men and the “tough, hardy, baked look” of the women. He found the “stagnant condition” of Brittany and the backwardness of its peasants appalling and after only a week he was in a hurry to return to Paris.21 However, the authors of illustrated articles on Pont-Aven appearing in 1910 in Outlook and in Scribner’s Magazine found it “one of the dream places of the world” in the “wonderful Breton country of golden gorse and pine forest, of ancient chapels and chateaus.”22 Most painters of French peasants preferred subjects of religious festivals or, especially, harvesting and animal care that showed the peasant continuing an ancient liaison with nature, occupied with monthly labors determined

by the round of seasons.23 In contrast, Hovenden chose subjects of home and village, drawn to less energetic, quieter activities, particularly domestic ones, in which women were diligently engaged in household handwork that met basic and perennial family needs. Thus he sketched and painted men selling religious statuettes and women occupied with the simple tasks of weaving, mending, spinning, knitting, and drawing water. Hovenden and Wylie were singular in their focus on representations of peasants in enclosed interiors, mutually attentive to some common activity. In simple rural life such ancient tasks as Hovenden depicted furthered selfsufficiency and survival. Drawn to picturing

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26. Robert Wylie, The Postman, 1868. Oil on canvas, 461⁄8 ⳯ 573⁄4 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Desna and Herman Goldman. 1984.34.

recurring domestic cycles that stressed the unity and permanence of the fabric of family life, both Wylie and Hovenden signified their yearning for a unity and permanence they had not known in their early years.24 Wylie’s method of paint application and his perceptive understanding of light and color also inspired technical developments in Hovenden’s art. Frank Jones recalled Wylie’s facility in applying paint “with three small sable brushes and a little palette knife which yielded what was then a novel technique” and, equally novel, that Wylie used cobalt [blue] in his shadows. Picknell, who attributed most of his skill in landscape painting to Wylie, also recollected Wylie’s inspired use of

color and palette knife: “The wild flower which Wylie pinned on his own canvases, to keep himself up to high and pure color, was a lesson long remembered. He painted largely with the palette-knife and showed its effective use to Picknell.”25 For Hovenden, Wylie’s advice and example came at the right time; following a year of academic study that emphasized drawing and composition, Wylie encouraged Hovenden to be more attentive to light and color and more expert in paint handling. Vividly, Hovenden recalled an occasion of provocative suggestions from a “fellow artist,” no doubt Wylie, at the time Hovenden began painting A Sunny Day in Brittany (fig. 27):

27. A Sunny Day in Brittany, 1876. Oil on canvas, 221⁄2 ⳯ 11 in. Private collection, upstate New York. Image courtesy of Thomas Colville Fine Art.

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28. The Image Seller, 1876. Oil on canvas, 321⁄2 ⳯ 241⁄2 in. Location unknown. Photograph: Archives of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore. Mr Hovenden told of an early study of his in Brittany of a girl knitting by an open casement, where the sunlight was shining full upon a roof opposite. The wall beneath the window was whitewashed, and a fellow artist coming in, said: “Why my dear fellow your values are all wrong; that roof is lighter than the white wall by the girl’s side, for the light falls full on that while it is a reflected light on the wall.” “I tried to see it, and my judgment said my friend must be right,” said Mr. Hovenden, “but I could not. . . . I laid my study away till the next summer, when, taking it out, I saw my fault as my friendly critic had seen it, and could only wonder at my blindness.”26

Hovenden’s advancements in A Sunny Day are evident in his refinement of design, delicacy of tonal harmony, and sensitivity to light. Varying the geometry of the rectangular window, which is flanked by rectangles of framed windowpanes and opens onto a garden contained within a wall’s rectangle, are the tilted oval of the young person’s head and her slightly off-center placement. Repeating the scheme in a minor key, the ball of wool on the floor echoes the head’s oval and counters the small square window seat while trees beyond the wall restate the shape of the standing figure.Warm colors—red skirt, brown apron, pink cap—balance with cool—blue-green bodice, green leaves, and lavender wall—in a subtle accord. Hovenden’s felicity in portraying the play of sunlight on the figure, window-framing, and greenery, and reflected light on cheek, window glass, and wall recalls Vermeer, who was rediscovered only in the mid-nineteenth century. Hovenden’s subject—a young woman wearing the characteristic Breton feminine costume of headdress, bodice, skirt, apron, and sabots, engaged in a timeless domestic occupation— signifies that he viewed the village and its inhabitants as an artistic tourist. He presented to his intended viewers a Pont-Aven and its peasant inhabitants resistant to change, still wedded to traditional values, rooted in place, family, and a way of life gone or fast disappearing elsewhere. These nostalgic, romantic, reassuring scenes of peasant life offered Hovenden a wealth of picturesque subjects “unspoilt by progress.”27 Another Breton subject, The Image Seller (fig. 28), a presently unlocated genre painting, was the artist’s first work to be exhibited at the Salon. Watching for potential customers, an elderly man dressed in Breton peasant attire of

FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

jacket, trousers bunched below the knees, and sabots, is seated next to a side entrance of the old stone chapel of Saint Maude, then located at Nizon just outside of Pont-Aven (now relocated in Le Pouldu and renamed La chapelle NotreDame de la Paix). On the ground beside the peddler stand faience images of a winged angel and the Virgin and Child for sale to worshippers or tourists. These popular devotional images, common in Pont-Aven households, as seen on the mantelpiece in Wylie’s The Postman, were believed to protect the sanctity of the home.28 The subject must have been suggested by Wylie’s two peddler paintings exhibited in the Salon the previous year. Unlike Wylie’s more traditional style, however, Hovenden strove for the appearance of verisimilitude, creating a seemingly “unposed” scene which enhanced the “reality” of this image of a timeless, picturesque Brittany and the trusting piety of its good and simple people. Sophisticated Salon or American viewers could appreciate the quaint scene, the artist’s naturalistic treatment of the figure and setting, and gaze upon the image seller patronizingly, as “Other” than themselves.29 Hovenden’s A Brittany Image Seller (fig. 29), a later, more traditionally anecdotal picture, presents a coiffed young mother with a child on her lap seated in a window and a standing image peddler, reinterpreting Italian Renaissance compositional groupings of the Madonna and Child with Saints. An early description of the painting referred to the artist’s “sober color and sound drawing” and, specifically, to the deep blue of the peddler’s embroidered Breton jacket. This picturesque subject is more charming than the earlier Image Seller, but, again, Hovenden’s approach appears to be based on direct obser-

29. A Brittany Image Seller, 1878. Oil on canvas, 18 ⳯ 13 in. Location unknown. Photograph: George William Sheldon, Recent Ideals of American Art (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890), 100.

vation and preliminary sketches (a sketch of the peddler exists), although the peasants are dressed in their best Sunday clothes and carefully posed—even the statuette on the ground is precisely placed for compositional balance.30 Predominantly a figure painter, Hovenden occasionally painted landscapes or other nonfigural works, of which his Church near Pont-Aven

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30. Church near Pont-Aven from Finistère, 1878. Oil on canvas, 21 ⳯ 16 in. Private collection. Photograph: Joseph Amarotico, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, before conservation work.

from Finistère (fig. 30) is the most ambitious known work. A small sketch depicting a side aisle of the same church appears in the sketchbook Hovenden used in 1878,31 showing the wooden trussing of the side aisle vault, the massive piers,

the earthen floor, and the central beam supporting the carved wooden Calvary group.32 Hovenden was not interested in either the “primitive” simplicity of the carved Calvary nor the piety bestowed upon the wooden images by their

FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

worshippers. He painted three nave bays and a side aisle from a vantage point below and behind the sculptures facing the nave, which entailed cropping the figures flanking the cross and the figure of Christ. It was the sense of a medieval space hallowed by time rather than by piety that appealed to Hovenden, the sense of time’s continuum and of permanence. The very lack of sophistication in this provincial interpretation of

31. Detail of Church near Pont-Aven from Finistère.

the Gothic style, the heavy simplicity and sturdy solidity of the rude columns, archivolts, and granite walls, emphasize its survival from a prior age. The interior provided the artist with an opportunity for subtle harmonies of muted greens and mauves, which enhance the interpretation, and the loose but somewhat dry superimposed paint strokes and patches convey the weighty bulk of the stone (fig. 31). Hovenden’s low-keyed

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32. Study for A Brittany Peasant Girl (also known as What O’Clock Is It?), 1876. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 4 ⳯ 63⁄8 in. Private collection. Courtesy of Spanierman Gallery, New York.

and closely toned palette, as well as his paint handling, recalls his own earlier works painted in Paris, rather than Wylie’s darker palette, sharp contrasts of light and shade, and “fatty” application of paint. The treatments of the foregrounds, however, in Hovenden’s Church near Pont-Aven from Finistère and in Wylie’s A Fortune Teller of Brittany are similar: thin layers of underpainting in dark warm tones are covered with cooler tones of thicker paint, creating a realistic density for stone walls and earthen floors. The sense of permanence—of belief or of custom—

and of continuity with the past pervade both pictures.33 Hovenden responded more directly to the Impressionist palette and practice of outdoor painting in another work from 1878, a figure painting now known as A Brittany Peasant Girl (fig. 32). The artist sent this large-sized, genre picture to the 1879 National Academy of Design where it was exhibited as What O’Clock Is It?34 In it, a young girl in peasant dress—a white hat and collar, brown top, and red skirt—lies leisurely in a meadow among wildflowers. The title’s refer-

FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

ence was clear to nineteenth-century audiences: “What’s O’Clock” was the name given to the golden, dandelion-like wildflowers in the grass, one of which a young Breton girl has picked. In a moment of pleasurable idleness she blows the flower’s downy feathered seeds to the wind and marks the hour by the number of seeds that remain. The flowers open in the early morning and close in the late evening, telling what o’clock it is by the diurnal cycle of nature. Although the title and the figure’s action suggest an anecdotal approach, a bucolic mood prevails. Green to golden to gray-white flowers scattered through the grass, some in bud, some in full bloom, and some gone to seed, allude to time’s passage in nature. The young girl who lies so naturally among the wildflowers will herself soon blossom into full womanhood, leaving behind the early morning of her innocence and youth. A whisper of melancholy floats through this pastoral idyll. When the painting hung in the National Academy of Design’s spring exhibition in 1879, the New York Times critic found Hovenden’s painting, including the lightened palette, bright colors, and sunlight effects, startling enough to detract from Winslow Homer’s adjacent painting of a young girl sitting on a beach.35 Hovenden’s patron John W. McCoy seemed captivated by the artist’s description of the painting to him. McCoy requested a photograph of it and wrote Hovenden that he thought the theme was “charming . . . an idyllic fancy that I should think you could give great truth and sweetness to.” McCoy then generalized on the worth of artistic subjects that reflected the poetry of life:

The sad and even the tragic phases of life may at times become powerful themes in art—but they should by no means monopolize it. . . . I am sure that our life is full of poetry—and much of it quietly joyous poetry too—to those who are willing to see it—and I know it can be seen under very unpromising surroundings. When art fixes these impressions it does a very excellent and human work. Now all this straggling sermon comes from my seeing, as I write, your little girl blowing mystery out of and into the “What’s O’Clock” flowers.36

McCoy’s “sermon” reveals his preference for genre pictures that evoke delightful and sunny moments in life, untouched by sadness but suggesting poetic overtones of meaning or “mystery,” like a budding young girl who blows away the downy fruit of time and breathes her thoughts and dreams upon the air. A small Hovenden painting in the same pastoral mood as What O’Clock Is It? is The Path to the Spring (fig. 33). On a scenic walk familiar to those who stayed at Pont-Aven, two Breton women rest on their way to or from the spring. Rather than focusing on the women, the artist delights in the way sunlight filters through dense leaves and colors the tree trunks and the forest floor. The painting recalls Hovenden’s wooded landscapes with figures painted before he went abroad, such as In the Woods (see fig. 8); however, in this picture, no anecdote intervenes and the figures, although proportionally larger in scale, seem to belong to the natural landscape. Hovenden’s subject is simply the play of light in Arcady. Wylie’s influence may be inferred from the free brushstroke. As in What O’Clock Is It? Hovenden captures natural light and no doubt painted the

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33. The Path to the Spring, 1879. Oil on canvas, 211⁄8 ⳯ 163⁄4 in. Private collection. Photograph: Rick Echelmeyer.

scene primarily on the spot, the Bois d’Amour of Pont-Aven. Such handling and painting out-ofdoors were “in the air” at the time, with conservative or radical variations (figs. 34 and 35).37 Also painted in 1878 and shown at the 1879 National Academy exhibition was Hovenden’s Pendant le Repos (fig. 36), surely the title of his painting of a Breton girl playing with a puppet during a pause in posing.38 Characteristic of an

artist who chose subjects with thoughtful care to convey some cogent message, Hovenden thought of Pendant le Repos as a thematic pendant to What O’Clock Is It? pairing a young girl still in a protected environment with a young girl musing in a flowering meadow. The child sits in a large, oaken armchair, relaxing in her stocking feet with her sabots off, and plays with a puppet of a harlequin. A floral cloth in golds and blues and

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34. Thomas Hovenden painting in the Bois d’Amour, Pont-Aven, 1880. Private collection. Photograph: Helen Corson.

greens covers the back of the chair, which is set against a deep red tapestry hanging. Hovenden demonstrates his gift for coloristic harmonies in the interplay of the complementaries of warm and cool colors, particularly of red and green. The drapery over the chair back and the tapestry strike deeper chords of the green and red of the child’s skirt and vest, the blue of her stockings, and the cream of her blouse. The puppet’s harlequin costume and the stick holding the toy sum

up the artist’s palette: red, blue, yellow, white, and green. On the floor to the right, beside the footstool, a ceramic pot holds paintbrushes and on the wall above it a framed portrait of a bearded man hangs. Behind the chair to the left, an easel supports an unframed canvas. The setting, then, is an artist’s studio, or, probably, the shared studio, the “half farmhouse, half chateau” Wylie and his coterie had turned into their studio. The man in the portrait may be

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35. Breton Woman Blowing the Dinner Horn, n.d. Oil on wood panel, 241⁄16 ⳯ 131⁄2 in. Baltimore Museum of Art: The George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the state of Maryland; Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund; and contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations throughout the Baltimore community. BMA 1996.45.136.

36. Pendant le Repos, 1878 (also known as Young Girl Playing with a Toy and Breton Girl and Puppet). Oil on canvas laid down on masonite, 32 ⳯ 34 in. Private collection, Canada.

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37. One Who Can Read, 1877. Oil on canvas, 271⁄2 ⳯ 331⁄4 in. The Peabody Art Collection. Courtesy of the Maryland Commission on Artistic Property of the Maryland State Archives, on extended loan to the Baltimore Museum of Art. MSA SC 4680-10-0037.

Wylie himself and Hovenden may have intended his painting to be a memorial. In painting a picture of a child beguiled by a toy and remembering Wylie, Hovenden might have identified with the dancing harlequin who masks melancholy beneath the farce.39 Painted soon after Wylie’s death, Hovenden’s

One Who Can Read (fig. 37) resembles a typical picture of Wylie’s. The humble setting for the scene is a snug room under the eaves of a house; the sloping wall is punctuated by a dormer window and adorned with illustrated pages of paper, perhaps torn from periodicals. Light slants into the room from the window, as in Wylie’s The

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Welcome of the Orphan. A Breton family forms a closely knit triangular group that dominates the composition: the central figure of the mother faces the viewer as she works at a spinning wheel, bathed in the light from the window; to the left the father smokes a pipe as he leans casually against a table; and, in the central foreground, a young woman sitting on a stool reads aloud from a book. All three are dressed in peasant costumes—the father wears a white shirt and dark vest and pants with wooden sabots, while both mother and daughter wear white coiffes and simple dark dresses. The title of the painting and Hovenden’s lighting effects single out the young woman as the key figure; she is “the one” who is educated and literate in comparison to her parents, and her presence alludes to the inevitable modernization of the traditional Breton way of life. The “somewhat dark” and “sober” color typical of Wylie clearly influenced Hovenden’s dark tonality but did not please Hovenden’s faithful patron McCoy, who saw the painting at the National Academy and felt it “lacks showing quality from the general darkness of its character.”40 Thematically, One Who Can Read also marks a departure from Hovenden’s prior work. More sober and less lyrical in mood, even the activity is serious. The picture is the first major Hovenden painting with the motif of an intimate family group in an interior, a kind of domestic genre painting to which the artist was drawn from this time forward. Other titles Hovenden used for the painting, Pride of the Old Folks or Pet of the Family,41 indicate his belief in the necessity of a thematic and narrative reading for his works. Here, the picture centers on parental pride in a daughter’s rare accomplishment, a kindred

theme to that of Hovenden’s wood engraving A Home Missionary (see fig. 7) of 1874. Both the illustration and Pont-Aven painting, however, rely on picturesque stereotypes to convey their stories: the former includes an apparently illiterate black woman listening to a white girl read to her, while the latter implies a lack of literacy among “simple” Breton folks seen through the eyes of the artist/tourist. Thus Hovenden began his career in Brittany under the tutelage of Wylie, who encouraged Hovenden to explore and paint the picturesque genre subjects of Breton peasants and to continue to refine his sense of color and paint handling. Hovenden’s early Breton works usually center around scenes of youthful innocence, family groups, and typical examples of local color. In the late 1870s in Pont-Aven, the artist also began to experiment with a lightened Impressionist palette and painting outdoors, practices to which he would return time and again throughout his career. Hovenden would soon turn his attention to more serious, weighty subjects from Brittany’s history, draw on his training and practice with both Cabanel and Wylie to create several monumental history paintings. Breton History In turning his attention to episodes from French history, Hovenden was certainly influenced by the works of his former master, Cabanel, as well as by the high esteem with which history painting was held within the Salon and the French academic system. The direct inspiration for Hovenden’s works of the late 1870s, however, was most likely Wylie’s interest in Breton history, specifically the Wars of the Vendée (1793–95),

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an insurrection of peasants in the Vendée, Brittany, and Normandy, against the French Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror.42 At the time of his death, Wylie had been working on a six-by-seven-foot picture titled Death of a Vendéan Chief, an imagined scene of a dying leader of Royalist peasant insurgents (referred to somewhat interchangeably as Vendéans or Chouans). Originally intended for the Salon or the 1878 International Exposition, Wylie’s unfinished work was posthumously exhibited by his Paris art dealer and hailed by an American art critic as “one of the finest historical pictures from the pencil of an American that has ever been on view in Paris.”43 After Wylie’s sudden death from a lung hemorrhage in midFebruary 1877, Hovenden carried on his mentor’s interest in the Vendéan rebellion, creating several paintings on the subject. Hovenden’s Vendéan Guardsman or Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vendée, 1793 (1877) was the first of his works inspired by this period of Breton history, followed by two large paintings that established his reputation: A Breton Interior in 1793 (1878) and In Hoc Signo Vinces (1880). All three paintings are historical genre paintings rather than history paintings; the figures depicted are types, rather than identifiable, historical individuals, and the imagined Breton scenes are typical ones, prompted by stories recalled and passed down about the period, rather than specific historical events. The “typical” subjects had universal appeal and were accessible to a wide and general public, the growing middle-class public of the later nineteenth century attending Paris Salons, World Expositions, and art exhibitions in America.44

Vendéan Guardsman, an unlocated oil painting, probably resembled the watercolor Vendéan Soldier (fig. 38); the oil painting was fully described in contemporary sources as a picture of a rebel soldier of about sixty years of age, dressed in a hat with a “white royalist cockade,” a jacket, linen trousers held at the waist by a long red sash and bunched below the knees, and “weather-browned sabots.” The sentinel, on guard duty for a “council of chiefs” held in a château belonging to one of the region’s aristocracy, stands with one hand on his left hip and the other holding a musket at arm’s length.45 By the mid-nineteenth century, tales of the courage of the Vendéan, or Breton, peasant had built the Chouan into a sympathetic figure, a symbol of loyalty and faith, a noble victim. That peasant insurgent also symbolized a man closely in tune with nature, an unchanging “primitive” in the face of industrialism.46 In Baltimore, John McCoy’s response to the Vendéan Guardsman was so keen that he wrote the artist of the bright future he predicted for him: Mr. Jones [father of H. Bolton and Frank] has written you that I have bought your picture of the old Vendéan Guardsman. . . . The picture is to me highly satisfactory . . . especially for the frank, faithful, leonine character of the old man it is admirable. . . . With such work—such conscientious work—your waiting time cannot be a great deal longer. Things you know, are slow just now, all over the financial world, but as soon as a good strong earnest art again commands a market, your achievements, you may depend upon it, will not be overlooked or unrewarded.47

McCoy loaned the painting to the National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition and arranged to have it shown at an art dealer’s in Baltimore,

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38. Vendéan Soldier, ca. 1877. Watercolor, 13 ⳯ 91⁄2 in. Private collection. Photograph: Roy Wilson.

where it earned praise from several native artists. One Baltimore critic articulated the poignancy of the theme at the outset of his article: “It is essentially a historical composition and one that tells you its whole story—the story of a

heroic struggle by a heroic race for the generous and sacred cause. . . . By right of its truth, its earnestness and its intensity this picture becomes a poem, a lyric sung to a fallen cause.” The critic further commented that the peasant-soldier’s

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resolute loyalty was so certain that he would never hesitate to fight or even die in the cause of the grand seigneur and the priest against “the savage atheists from the towns.”48 Amid the burgeoning industrial expansion in the United States following the Civil War, the painting may have reminded American viewers of another “heroic struggle” and “sacred cause”—the Civil War—as well as the supposed simpler virtues of earlier times in America. Within the context of American labor unrest in the 1870s, including the Great Strike of 1877, Hovenden’s Vendéan Guardsman also may have offered businessmen such as McCoy and Walters a reassuring image: the loyalist peasant preparing to fight to guard the rights of the aristocracy in the wake of the Reign of Terror may have served as an apt metaphor for those Americans eager to preserve the bulwark of capitalism against the anarchy of labor strikes and violence.49 Also begun in the year of Wylie’s death, Hovenden’s Salon-sized historical genre picture A Breton Interior in 1793 (fig. 39), sometimes referred to as The Vendéan Volunteer, was exhibited at the 1878 International Exposition in Paris. As in the Vendéan Guardsman, Hovenden presents an imagined episode of Breton or Vendéan history in an intimate domestic genre scene that invites personal reflection. Gathered in a Breton peasant home are three generations of one family preparing for a guerrilla skirmish in the Vendéan rebellion. The typically dark interior space, “cave-like light,” cavernous stone fireplace, oak table, sideboard with Quimper faience, and heavy carved oak cabinet with a Virgin and Child statuette resting on a small pedestal, are based on actual Pont-Aven peasant households. The central figure

is the old peasant, himself a veteran of recent Vendéan wars; dressed in a light-colored shirt, tan vest, worn trousers, and wooden clogs, he sits on the table and leans back appraisingly as he sights along the sword’s blade. His son, also dressed in peasant costume of a blue jacket, dark red vest with brass buttons, linen trousers, and sabots, leans closer to gaze intently at the newly sharpened weapon; the younger man’s powder horn on the floor, musket on the high-backed chair, and scabbard at his hip indicate his readiness for battle. Their female counterparts are all dressed similarly in Breton coiffes, white collars, and peasant dresses. Next to the veteran, his daughter-in-law protectively lays her arm across the cradle on the table, which is draped with a rich, gold-colored tapestry. On the floor in the left foreground, the veteran’s wife sits before the large fireplace molding bullets over hot charcoal burning in a brazier; the bright, shiny silver bullets scattered about the floor testify to her hard work and allude to the coming battles. At her feet, the young granddaughter kneels and watches her at work, captivated by the transformation of molten metal into ammunition. Hovenden has rendered the painting in a unified, earth-toned palette, punctuated by the lightcolored garments of the old man in the center, the white coiffes and collars of the daughter-inlaw and granddaughter, the dark red patches in the grandmother’s kerchief, the young girl’s dress, and the son’s vest, and a splash of green on the small pottery vase on the floor in the lower right corner.50 Wylie’s Philadelphia friend and admirer Earl Shinn, who also traveled to Pont-Aven in the late 1860s, responded to the “communion of

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39. A Breton Interior in 1793 (also known as The Vendéan Volunteer), 1878. Oil on canvas, 381⁄4 ⳯ 54 in. Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Robert M. Carroll.

war-like interests” between father and son as typifying the legendary loyalty of the Vendéan and Breton peasant and the young Chouan’s “wiry strength” that suggested “immense tenacity and endurance.” American art critic George William Sheldon saw the young wife as emotionally torn but stoical and the old woman as eager and confident of the young recruit’s victory and return.51 Commenting that Hovenden’s “bretonnism”

lacked Wylie’s drama, L’Art’s perceptive reviewer thought that both Hovenden and Edgar Melville Ward, who exhibited a Sabot Maker, were followers of Wylie, but noted, rightly, that they preferred simple, intimate scenes of Breton domestic life rather than Wylie’s more staged and emotional subjects.52 Hovenden’s more naturalistic style in poses, gestures, and light effects in A Breton Interior contrasts with Wylie’s intensity.

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40. Detail of A Breton Interior.

Studies for A Breton Interior reveals Hovenden’s working toward figure placement and composition, while a detail of the picture (fig. 40) shows Hovenden’s firm three-dimensional realization of the figure in a believable spatial environment and his skillful rendering of still-life elements.53 Almost immediately after the exhibition of A Breton Interior at the 1878 International Exposition in Paris, the Montreal industrialist, banker, and art collector George Alexander Drummond bought the painting. A Breton Interior was also engraved by the French firm Goupil & Company

and widely circulated, which further aided Hovenden’s professional reputation and success. The sale and the critical attention the picture attracted must have even persuaded the selfdoubting artist that he had a promising future.54 In Hoc Signo Vinces (In This Sign Shalt Thou Conquer) (figs. 41 and 42), titled Le dernier préparatif (The Last Preparation) when it was exhibited in the 1880 Paris Salon, can be seen as a pendant and a sequel to A Breton Interior in 1793. Almost identical in size, both paintings feature the volunteer and his wife as well as an older

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41. In Hoc Signo Vinces (In This Sign Shalt Thou Conquer), 1880. Oil on canvas, 39 ⳯ 54 in. Detroit Institute of Arts. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold O. Love. Photograph © 1995 Detroit Institute of Arts.

42. Detail of In Hoc Signo Vinces, emblem of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart.

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woman and a young girl.55 As in A Breton Interior, Hovenden creates an imagined historical moment in a dimly lit Breton interior: rough, bare walls and floor and massive ceiling beams form the architectural backdrop, while large, solid pieces of wooden furniture—a wardrobe in the right corner, a large sideboard to the left of the door, and a massive table—loom out of the shadows. Hovenden again places pieces of Quimper faience around the room to further authenticate its Breton identity: a small pitcher and bowl rest on the left end of the table while several large platters adorn the cupboard. As in the earlier painting, a statue of the Virgin Mary stands at the top of the wardrobe, watching over the inhabitants as they await the battle call. The scene has now shifted, however, from one of battle preparations to the final moments before departure. The tender moment between husband and wife in In Hoc Signo Vinces offers a poignancy lacking in A Breton Interior. Centered in the foreground of the painting, the pair is highlighted through dramatic lighting and use of color. Bathed in light entering from the left, the young man and woman emerge from the darkness of their surroundings as fully modeled three-dimensional forms. His lighter colored garments—linen colored shirt and trousers and tan vest—distinguish the peasant from his comrades in the room, while his wife’s red and white cap, white collar, and blue and green dress, provide bright splashes of color against the more muted tones of the greenish-gray walls and floor and dark brown furniture. She sews the emblem of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart surmounted by a cross onto her husband’s jacket over his heart (fig. 43). The

painting’s Latin title refers to the Roman Emperor Constantine’s taking the sign of the cross as his insignia, after supposedly having seen a cross in the sky with the legend, in Greek, “By This Sign You Will Conquer.” For Hovenden’s young Chouan, the sacred heart is a talisman— he too will conquer.56 In In Hoc Signo Vinces, two armed Chouans seated in the foreground and an assembled group of peasant soldiers in the background on the right heighten the historical drama of the scene. On the left, a volunteer dressed in a broadbrimmed black hat, blue jacket, and thick brown trousers, rests his gun on the floor as he turns his attention to the young couple. To the right, a young peasant in patched jacket and trousers seated on a bench—also wearing the emblem of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Heart—holds a weapon made from a farmer’s scythe mounted on a pole. Through the rear arched opening, a gathering of peasants raise similar weapons above their heads. At the table strewn with clothes and pistols, the grandmother of the household packs a loaf of bread in a sack while her granddaughter watches, a reference to a Breton practice in 1793 when local parishes contributed volunteers equipped with arms and bread.57 To the far left of the main room a small sliver of light enters through a peephole in the closed window, falling on the face of an older man who peers guardedly outside. Hovenden selected Pont-Aven peasants as models in their picturesque regional dress, painted material furnishings based on carved oak box-beds and table-chests he saw in Pont-Aven, and even relied on an actual embroidered emblem of the Sacred Heart.58 His varied paint application creates remarkable textural

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43. Study for In Hoc Signo Vinces (no. 3 of seven preparatory drawings), 1880. Pencil and chalk on paper, 57⁄8 ⳯ 73⁄4 in. Detroit Institute of Arts. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold O. Love.

distinctions in, for instance, glazed pottery, earthen floor, and wrinkled cotton. Hovenden’s choice of subjects from Breton history related in part to a renewed interest in old memories of the Wars of the Vendée in Brittany during the 1870s, when another political power struggle was taking place between Clericalism and Republicanism. Royalists and Catholics on the Right vied with Republican anticlericalists on the Left for control of the National Assembly; the building of the church of SacréCoeur on the heights of Montmartre as a symbol of national sacrifice in the Franco-Prussian War continued to polarize the two factions.59 Although Hovenden had no known political agenda with the painting, when In Hoc Signo

Vinces was exhibited in Paris, where the anticlerical faction prevailed in 1880, it did not meet a welcome reception. Although the picture referred to 1793, it stirred up contemporary animosities.60 By contrast, when the painting was featured in the spring 1881 National Academy of Design exhibition, it attracted considerable critical attention and ensured Hovenden’s election in May of that year as an associate of the Academy.61 A number of writers who saw the painting specifically commented on Hovenden’s excellence as a figure painter. The most exuberant conclusion was that “It is heroic art . . . a star has risen in Israel. His greatness is accepted . . . by all artists, who admit cheerfully that no

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figure-painter in America can come near him.”62 The Art Journal’s critic judged Hovenden’s In Hoc Signo Vinces the “finest figure piece” in the exhibition, praising his “masterly manner,” “strength,” and “refinement,” and categorizing his style as that of the “prevailing French School.” Widely admired for its firm drawing, “fine sculptural qualities” in realizing figures, and “extraordinary sense of life,” one writer proclaimed In Hoc Signo Vinces “the best figure piece ever painted by an American artist.”63 The New York World critic argued against the “prejudice” of those who believed that American painters who studied abroad would be “denationalized,” and asserted, “In Hovenden America has a man who is really able to walk in the highest walk of art.” With the exhibition of In Hoc Signo Vinces at the National Academy of Design in 1881, Hovenden brought life-sized Salon figure painting to America.64 Critical reviewers admired Hovenden’s In Hoc Signo Vinces for its “moral quality” and “utter frankness,” finding it “virile, wholesome and appealing” in sentiment, “serious and noble” in subject, and seeing the wife as devoted and the husband as “too manly to weep, and too manly to wish to hide his emotion.”65 Most American descriptions of the Vendéan theme echoed the kind of sympathy expressed by McCoy and the Baltimore press for Hovenden’s Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vendée, 1793: one example referred to the “sturdy peasantry [who] stood steadfast for their king throughout the radicalism and butchery of the time.”66 The Art Journal’s writer, however, saw the painting from a more democratic and hardheaded stance: “It is always revolting to see a poor and ignorant peasantry fighting for a king.” This writer’s literal “reading” of the picture, however, missed Hovenden’s inten-

tion: to present the volunteer as a steadfast Christian soldier and express the strong familial bonds and the abiding virtues of loyalty and fortitude that he admired in the Breton people.67 Hovenden’s years in Pont-Aven were critical in terms of his artistic development. Building on his formal training with Cabanel in Paris, Hovenden absorbed ideas from Wylie and other fellow American artists, which he incorporated into his Breton genre and history paintings: a continued emphasis on the human figure; a new interest in picturesque subject matter; more sophisticated paint handling and sensitivity to color; the use of staging and dramatic lighting to heighten the emotional content of his compositions; and experiments with painting outdoors. Perhaps his greatest debt to Wylie and the PontAven years was Hovenden’s commitment to painting scenes of family ties, communal bonds, and enduring values. These would be the themes that Hovenden would weave throughout his work for the rest of his life, long after he left the rocky landscape and peasants of Brittany. Romantic Interlude After three years in Pont-Aven, Hovenden departed for Paris in the fall of 1878, taking a studio there until the summer of 1879. His increasing affection for fellow artist Helen Corson, whom he had met in Brittany, as well as the French capital’s unexcelled opportunity and artistic stimulus, persuaded him to follow her and the Ramseys there for the winter months. Concerning his decision to move, Hovenden consulted his patron, McCoy, who responded with characteristic generosity: “Whenever you think you should go to Paris, I will cheerfully advance you . . . sufficient means for one year so

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that you may be free to work with the best surroundings.”68 Inspired by the “best surroundings” and Corson’s presence, Hovenden turned from the subject of Breton history to romantic subjects of historical and legendary romance and the theme of courtship and love. In Paris, Hovenden met several times between October 1878 and June 1879 with George A. Lucas, William T. Walters’s art agent, and art dealer Samuel P. Avery, as they duly noted in their diaries. He also saw artist friends in the capital besides Corson and the Ramseys, especially Frank Jones, H. Bolton Jones’s younger brother, who lived, as had Hovenden, at 15 rue Jacob on the Left Bank, and studied, as did Corson, at Julian’s Academy. Frank Jones recalled dining often with Hovenden in a small rue Pigalle restaurant frequented by Ramsey, Maitland Armstrong, director of the American Fine Arts section of the 1878 Paris International Exposition and in Pont-Aven that summer, and artists Charles Sprague Pearce (1851–1914) and Edwin Howland Blashfield (1848–1936).69 Ramsey’s figure paintings of costume or historical genre scenes from his Pont-Aven days suggested a new direction for Hovenden to explore during his second stay in Paris. French masters taught pupils to develop pictures by researching properties, costumes, and settings for accuracy, as well as to make preparatory drawings of figures and compositions; Ramsey was known for having garnered a studio collection of “props,” such as period furniture, tapestries, ornaments, and costumes. His scene of musketeers in an aviary selecting falcons for the aristocratic game of falconry demonstrates his meticulous rendering of figures, costumes, and interior furnishings.70 During Hovenden’s

Paris interlude, he painted several costume or historical genre subjects in seventeenth-century dress from the period of Louis XIII, a type of painting popularized by the celebrated and extremely successful French painter Jean-LouisErnest Meissonier (1815–91). The wide acclaim for Meissonier’s historical and costume genre pictures, precise technique, and authentic detail (fig. 44) further encouraged Hovenden to essay that subject type, as did his romantic interest in Corson.71

44. Ernest Meissonier, The Musician, 1859. Oil on panel, 97⁄16 ⳯ 613⁄16 in. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

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45. Costume class, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Photograph: J. Liberty Tadd.

Corson, in fact, shared Hovenden’s development of costume genre pictures and served as his model for The Challenge (1878), The Favorite Falcon (1879), and “Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady” or The Engagement Ring (1880).72 Hovenden and Corson also sketched side by side on occasion, as their drawings of the same costumed model in the same pose indicate.73 Hovenden’s patron McCoy encouraged the artist’s new subject choice by praising figure drawings Hovenden sent him and expressing interest in more sketches and clearer photos of “your Louis XIII things”

(fig. 45).74 The Challenge and The Favorite Falcon (fig. 46) are both courtship genre subjects, presenting the theme of flirtation in seventeenthcentury dress and customs. Characteristically large in scale, Hovenden’s figures dominate his paintings yet he maintains the attention to details and the sheen of satins played against old tapestry as in the works of Meissonier.75 The Favorite Falcon exemplifies Hovenden’s romantic subjects as well as his precise technique: a young man and woman dressed in garments of vibrant, shimmering colors, contrast markedly with the dark back-

46. The Favorite Falcon, 1879. Oil on canvas, 535⁄8 ⳯ 383⁄4 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Edward H. Coates (Edward H. Coates Memorial Collection). 1923.9.1.

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ground comprised of rich tapestries in black, deep red, and green. Both are dressed in frothy, ruffled costumes: she in a pink and gold satin dress, and he in a pink jacket and breeches. Nearby accoutrements—a sword and plumed hat—add an air of gallantry to the man’s appearance while the falcon he holds aloft boasts of his masculine exploits. His companion gazes tenderly at him and the two link hands in the center of the painting. In both The Favorite Falcon and The Challenge Hovenden explored the sentiments of romantic love and the tentative gestures between young admirers: the theme was most likely intentional and probably autobiographical, revealing Hovenden’s deepening attachment to Corson and changes in their relationship. The artist himself served as the model for the nobleman in The Favorite Falcon and in another courtship painting, “Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady” (fig. 47) of 1880, of a gentleman offering a ring to his lady love, which on his return to America, Hovenden offered to Helen Corson, in hope or pledge of their troth.76 A fresh awareness of Impressionism appears in Hovenden’s paint handling and lightened palette in The Favorite Falcon. The figures and material furnishings are firmly defined, but the bright coloration of whitened pinks, yellows, and blues, and the paint patches composed of various hues rather than already mixed colors are notable. Hovenden very likely was one of the almost 16,000 visitors who saw the fourth group exhibition of the Impressionist painters that opened on the tenth of April, prior to the opening of the Salon at which he exhibited The Favorite Falcon.77 Although Hovenden’s historical costume genre paintings are far from the

modern life of Impressionist paintings, his courtship paintings are more akin in spirit to Impressionism’s sunlit world of leisure than his pictures inspired by Breton history with their darker palette and message of moral courage, tinged with metaphoric overtones of loss and longing. Elaine Linked in romantic theme to the courtship genre paintings is Hovenden’s Death of Elaine (fig. 48), a four-by-six-foot, Salon-sized painting, also begun in Paris in 1879 and later completed in New York. The subject of Elaine, based on Arthurian legend, offered a more elevating and inspiring scene from literature than Hovenden’s PontAven genre subjects; a story of love, sacrifice, and betrayal, it called to mind the ideals of Christian knighthood and fidelity to honor and principle. Perhaps Hovenden remembered Cabanel’s doomed damsels such as Desdemona, Cleopatra, and Echo, but he was directly inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Lancelot and Elaine,” published in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King in 1859 and later published in several languages and illustrated by the celebrated Paul Gustave Doré in Edward Moxon’s 1867 edition. Elaine inspired a number of nineteenth-century artists by offering an avenue to treat medieval English history, the “creed of Christian chivalry” in human terms, and a lovely tragic maiden who symbolized the inviolate, inspirational feminine ideal epitomized by the Virgin Mary.78 “Lancelot and Elaine” recounts the dramatic tale of the fair maiden Elaine, who is enamored with Lancelot; her love is unrequited, though, since he is consumed with passion for Queen

47. “Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady” (The Engagement Ring), 1880. Oil on canvas, 397⁄8 ⳯ 197⁄8 in. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia. Gift of Nancy I. Corson, 2003.

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48. Death of Elaine, 1882. Oil on canvas, 36 ⳯ 71 in. Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Gift of the Mary Marchand Woods Memorial Fund, 1985.25.

Guinevere, wife of King Arthur. Elaine’s intense feelings drive her to madness as she realizes that her love is in vain; ultimately, she chooses the sweetness of death to end her pain. For his painting Elaine, Hovenden chose the dramatic moment when legendary ladies and nobles have gathered in Camelot’s palace hall to listen to King Arthur read Elaine’s letter to the assembled court as she lies on her deathbed: And ever in the reading lords and dames Wept, looking often from his face who read To hers which lay so silent, . . .79

The artist’s imagery closely followed the poet’s words: All her bright hair streaming down And all the coverlid was cloth of gold Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white.80 Hovenden made a number of drawings for figures in Elaine in late spring or early summer of 1879, sending some to his Baltimore patron who praised the works as “beautifully simple—almost monumental” (fig. 49). The artist and Corson served as models; Hovenden posed for King

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49. Drawing for Elaine, 1882. Pen and ink on paper, 111⁄2 ⳯ 155⁄8 in. Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

Arthur and Corson posed both for the figures of Elaine, who loved Lancelot and died of a broken heart, and for Queen Guinevere seated beside Elaine’s bier. Following French academic practice, Hovenden worked out a preliminary composition in a small oil sketch, Study for Elaine (fig. 50), which suggests thirteen figures and a three-tiered rectangular interior with shadowy arched openings. Perhaps this Study was the one photographed for McCoy who thought the “general composition” looked “stately,” judging from a “dimmed” photograph damaged by “sea air” en route across the Atlantic.81 Hovenden’s focus on the poignant moment of Elaine’s tragic death and his staging are telling. Dramatically lit from a light source above, Elaine

lies peacefully on the bier, dressed in white, red hair strewn around her face on the pillow, covered by a tapestry of rich golden hues. Beside her on the floor rests a white lily, a symbol of her purity; her white dress and the flower contrast with Guinevere, dressed in the symbolic deep red of passion. Lancelot, next to Galahad at the head of the bier, stands with his back to the viewer and looks not at Elaine, but at the Queen whom he loves. Female attendants and members of the court stand mournfully around Elaine’s deathbed, many hidden in the deep shadows of the large chamber. The subdued, mellow colors of the background in the painting are reminiscent of Hovenden’s dimly lit Breton interior scenes, while Guinevere’s red dress, the jewel-like tones

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50. Study for Elaine, ca. 1882. Oil on panel, 61⁄4 ⳯ 93⁄4 in. Private collection.

of the costumes of the other attendants flanking the bier, and Elaine’s white dress and gold coverlet attract the viewer’s focus to the central group. By the time the artist arrived in New York in the autumn of 1880, he had completed the central figures for Elaine. A few months later, an art critic visited Hovenden’s New York studio and reported that there were some “thirty [sic] figures . . . in a palatial setting,” and declared, “we recall no equally powerful allegorical picture ever painted by an American artist.”82 Such exuberant expectations may have encouraged Hovenden but quite possibly increased his anxiety about adjusting to a very different art world from that of Paris. Finding proper costumes and architectural models in New York for completing Elaine worried Hovenden, as he indicated to McCoy.83 Hovenden may have studied John La Farge’s then recent decorations (destroyed by fire

in 1905) for the chancel of the neo-Gothic St. Thomas Church in New York at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-third Street for his architectural setting. La Farge was active in the New York art world with a reputation established by his widely publicized work for H. H. Richardson’s Romanesque Trinity Church in Boston. Hovenden might also have been influenced by St. Thomas’s pentagonal chancel or, perhaps, Trinity’s semicircular chancel.84 Hovenden developed the generalized, rectangular background in Study for Elaine into an arcaded circular hall in the completed painting, tightening and unifying the space. Rich details of carved capitals, decorated spandrels, hanging cresset, tapestry tassels, costumes, crowns, and golden coverlet in Elaine, all painted with accomplished coloristic and textural variety, suggest great courtly elegance. Elaine hung in a place of honor at the

FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

National Academy of Design in 1882 and it was prominently shown at the Philadelphia Society of Artists a year later.85 A few writers praised Hovenden’s efforts and deemed the painting worthy of its place of honor in the National Academy exhibition: one critic noted “the sincerity of its inception,” concluding that Elaine was “one of the greatest pictures of the year,” while another characterized it as an “ambitious conception” showing “an infinite amount of faithful effort and serious, honest labor.”86 Although Elaine garnered much attention from the press and the painting was very popular with the public, critical commentary often was less complimentary. Many critics implied that Elaine suffered from a certain laboriousness and several found it too stagy and lacking in drama, especially in comparison with another work on display in the same gallery, Gilbert Gaul’s Charging the Battery (1882, New-York Historical Society). The Art Amateur critic faulted Hovenden’s painting as being “full of absurdities,” the models too “commonplace,” and the setting similar to an “old stage play.”87 Another perceptive writer, wryly commenting that “this floating down the river and making a sensation at court” comes “dangerously near nonsense,” perceived that Hovenden’s essay into a literary theme lacked the conviction of his Breton works, not because it was too ambitious but because it was uncongenial: “If he will paint the world as it really is to-day he may go to Brittany, if he likes, for his models, and he may have all the canvas he wants; but the air of Tennyson’s phantom world is too thin for his robust genius. The public which admires him most will not follow him into it; and, in his heart, I don’t believe

he cares for it himself.”88 The artist himself had reservations about the final painting: “I think I have made the old servitor too prominent; Sir Galahad is a trifle bumptious, and the palace interior perhaps too gorgeous for the Arthurian period.”89 The period that Hovenden spent working on Elaine was a transitional one: his time in France had come to an end and he returned to the United States in 1880 a more skilled, mature, professional artist. During his stay in Pont-Aven in the 1870s, Hovenden had put his academic training under Cabanel to the test, continuing to focus on figural compositions, but forging a new style of picturesque genre scenes influenced by the work of Robert Wylie and other expatriate artists. Hovenden’s paintings of Breton peasants and Vendéan history prefigure his later American genre scenes of the 1880s and 1890s in both the artist’s thematic interests and his compositional strategies. As in his Breton pictures, Hovenden’s most successful works of his mature career would explore subjects of familial and communal bonds and the themes of parting and change. Hovenden’s later compositions also owe a debt to his PontAven years; he would use domestic interiors, often decorated with simple, traditional American furnishings, as the backdrops for multifigure compositions carefully arranged to convey narrative meaning, much as he had done in his Breton genre scenes. The timeless moral values and sentiment that imbue the images created in Pont-Aven would carry through Hovenden’s paintings long after his return to the United States, where he would translate the “wholesome and appealing subject matter” of pictures such as In Hoc Signo Vinces into thoroughly American scenes.90

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“What Shall American Artists Paint?” The improvement of technique is but the first step from the foot of Parnassus. —E. H. Clement,“What Shall American Artists Paint?” Catalog of the Art Department of the New England Manufacturers’and Mechanics’ Institute, Boston, 1883 The years following Hovenden’s return to the United States from France in 1880 were filled with major life changes for the artist, both professional and personal. Hovenden was a prominent member of a group of artists who came home in the late 1870s and early 1880s and made decisive changes in the New York art world that altered the aims and the look of American art. Arriving in New York with several years of European training and art practice behind him, he was ready to face an increasingly sophisticated American art community. Hovenden altered his pictorial strategies to accommodate a growing demand from patrons and audiences for homegrown subjects, skillfully reinventing his Breton genre paintings to include typically “American” furnishings, settings, figures, and narratives. On a personal level, the artist’s marriage to fellow painter Helen Corson and their settlement in a small village outside Philadelphia greatly inspired Hovenden’s art production, exposing him to new themes, models, and working methods. Throughout the decade of the 1880s, Hovenden’s American works signified national traits and values that seemed threatened by the surge of progress; the mixture of nostalgia and hope expressed in these

pictures continued to win him the critical acclaim and public success he had enjoyed with the earlier Pont-Aven paintings. Soon after Hovenden’s return, his patron John W. McCoy of Baltimore met with the artist to discuss his “immediate future.” McCoy followed up the meeting with a letter expressing his confidence in Hovenden’s career: “There is no reason in the world why you, with your foreign advantages, should not establish your reputation now & get properly rewarded for your work.” Characteristically, McCoy accompanied fatherly advice with material support, a three-hundreddollar check enabling Hovenden to acquire a New York studio in the recently built Sherwood Studio Building at 58 West Fifty-seventh Street, which he shared with his recently returned friend H. Bolton Jones.1 Hovenden’s and Jones’s decision to settle in New York was logical: it was not only the largest city in the United States in 1880 but also the country’s major art center.2 The city’s size, wealth, and transportation; its commercial and cultural opportunities; and its hustling atmosphere and mix of different social and economic classes and ethnic peoples made New York the city most removed from America’s rural past, the

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most attuned to change. By 1880, the rising structure of the Brooklyn Bridge and the electric lights along Broadway from Fourteenth to Twenty-sixth Streets symbolized New York’s modernity.3 Artists coming home from Europe at the end of the 1870s, however, did not find the established New York art community modern. The art historian Samuel Isham, a student in France in the mid-1870s, described the unsettling contrast for homecoming artists between Paris, “the most beautiful city in the world, where art and artists were glorified,” and the United States, “an unsympathetic land, indifferent to his work, where life seemed colorless and filled with all manner of irksome obligations.”4 According to a New York Times writer, the “worst hardship” for these homecoming artists was “the lack of artistic life in New York, the absence of the intellectual bustle of the ateliers.” Nonetheless, the “younger men”—as the press and members of the National Academy of Design called the foreign-trained artists compared with the older generation of American painters—were full of hope and enthusiasm for “aiding to implant a standard of art hitherto unknown upon these shores.”5 Confident of their abilities, Europeantrained artists dedicated themselves, as artists, art teachers, and participants in art organizations, to updating American art and elevating it to European standards.6 A number of younger artists challenged the authority of the older generation of artists and critics, as well as the dominance of the National Academy of Design. Refusing to play a subordinate role to the conservative insti-

tution, the challengers aimed “to remake the academy in a European mold”: their efforts led to the formation of the Art Students League in 1875 and of the Society of American Artists in 1877. These organizations provided alternatives to the academy for artistic training and exhibition opportunities.7 Despite some resistance to these “outside artists,” a different look to American art resulted as paintings by the “younger men” appeared in academy exhibitions. The perceptive critic Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer observed that the work sent by artists studying and working in Europe to the 1877 National Academy of Design exhibition, including four Hovenden paintings, one of which was his 1876 The Image Seller (see fig. 28), demonstrated a new and consistent standard of excellence.8 Artists trained abroad offered a greater variety of subjects, cohesive compositions instead of groupings of carefully worked details, and more suggestive and freely brushed pictures. These American artists trained abroad also indicated an awareness of actual outdoor light, and an interest in subjective and intimate aspects of nature rather than literal description and grandiose scenes; in genre pictures, they preferred full-bodied, expressive figures without narrative minutiae or obvious moralizing lessons.9 Hovenden, like many foreign-trained artists, was eager to exhibit his works in the early 1880s at both the National Academy of Design and the more recently established venues, such as the Society of American Artists. In the spring of 1881, he was elected a member of the society and an associate member of the National Academy of Design, to which he presented the requisite Self-

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Portrait (fig. 51). The following year, Hovenden became a full Academician.10 Throughout his career, Hovenden continued his ties to the New York art community and exhibited yearly at New York’s National Academy of Design. He also showed his paintings at the Philadelphia Society of Artists, another newly formed artists’ organization; in November 1880, he was one of the “ParisAmericans” featured in the Philadelphia Society of Artists’ “Second Annual Exhibition,” held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Of three Hovenden pictures exhibited, an art critic for the journal Art Interchange thought that Hovenden’s A Brittany Image Seller (see fig. 29) was “the best though all are good and interesting.”11 Despite some of the challenges and conflicts that young artists faced after their return from Europe, they also encountered a growing network of art institutions, critics, and art journals.12 The beginning of the 1870s marked the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, soon followed by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Pennsylvania (now Philadelphia) Museum of Art. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts opened its new building in the spring of 1876, and, in 1882, the Art Institute of Chicago held its first exhibition.13 Art schools started in New York, Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis, Providence, and Chicago in the middle to late 1870s and many of the new generation of European-trained artists found employment as art teachers. Professional art critics and art journals multiplied and the innumerable newspapers of the period carried reviews of current exhibitions. News of art reached not only the wealthy but also the growing middle class, whose comfortable economic position,

urban life, improved education, and increased interest in culture quickened curiosity about paintings that could be seen and bought here.As a copy of a new art journal that Hovenden owned stated in 1880: “Within the last ten years . . . an ever increasing enthusiasm [for art] has replaced languid interest or indifference.”14 Hovenden himself noted the improved conditions for artists in the United States.When interviewed by an art journalist shortly after his return, the artist spoke of his surprise and delight at the “advance made in art in this country.” Remembering his own experience as an art student at the Academy, Hovenden remarked that “a young artist has far better chance of good criticism and real tuition in New York now than eight or ten years back,” yet he still acknowledged the gap between American and European training: We are still far behind the French . . . for there, when an artist achieves success and arrives at celebrity, he expects to let the younger men profit by his experience, as he profited by that of his master. The great artists abroad are all acknowledged pupils of artists who helped them on in their early studies, and often the master is best known through the illustrious pupil. In France, if only an artist can pay his way, he has lessons free, he is encouraged, criticised carefully but kindly, and strengthened.What an American school of art needs is development; there is talent, originality, but—well, the most of us must go abroad to learn to see aright and to grow strong. In this country you are told to do this or that, abroad you are taught how to look at your work; you see for yourself, not through another’s eyes, and you are not expected to do anything till you own judgment acquiesces.15

Reportedly “full of enthusiasm for his art and patriotism for the land of his adoption,” Hovenden

51. Self-Portrait, ca. 1881. Oil on canvas, 193⁄4 ⳯ 16 in. National Academy of Design, New York. 596-P.

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shared the dream of other returning artists of the postwar generation to reform and improve American art.16 “What Shall American Artists Paint?” As Hovenden struggled to finish his large-scale Elaine, a literary subject drawn from Arthurian legend, the artist came under growing pressure after returning to New York to paint American subjects. McCoy’s early enthusiasm for the trappings and setting in Elaine waned soon after Hovenden arrived in the United States; McCoy advised him, a bit impatiently, to set Elaine aside if he could not find proper material for it and instead: “Go to work on pictures that you can get material for & that will sell at proper prices. You must not regard this as a too commercial a view of the case. You are in N[ew] Y[ork] & must live there. Other artists do so, . . . Do not have several incomplete things on hand but keep your chief attention on one thing till you finish it, & let the public see & judge it.”17 After this stern lecture to the uncertain artist, McCoy concluded, “Meantime, go to work cheerfully[!] . . . I am sure you will soon be satisfied with your N[ew] Y[ork] position and life.” Never again did Hovenden paint a costume subject. Influenced by McCoy’s advice to paint saleable pictures and driven by his own concern about earning a living, especially in contemplating marriage, Hovenden decided that commonplace genre subjects were more appealing and saleable to a democratic and middleclass American audience. From his return to the United States in 1880 and onward, Hovenden’s pictures were inspired by the everyday lives of Americans. McCoy was not alone in encouraging the

artist to choose American subjects with contemporary meaning. The call for European-trained American artists to paint native subjects had gained momentum by the late 1870s.18 Just a few months after McCoy’s letter to Hovenden, for example, one critic echoed McCoy’s advice, stating a widely held belief: the American artist “in returning to his country should immediately begin the rendering of American subjects.”19 In the autumn of his return, Hovenden began to explore indigenous subjects to engage his convictions about art’s purpose and thematic concerns that, at the same time, would appeal to the general American public. Hovenden chose broadly based themes and topical issues—home life, American craftsmen, and historical episodes—and adapted the figural concentration of his French academic training and the ideas explored in his Breton pictures to these native subjects. These paintings depict what art critic and author George William Sheldon referred to as “scenes in common life,” and exhibit what he identified as American characteristics: “simplicity of purpose” and a direct approach to the subject.20 A general longing for a unifying American idiom in the arts, literature, and theology permeated society in the period after the Civil War and into the 1890s.21 American writers on art urged “younger men” coming home from Europe to abandon painting aspects of foreign life and focus on American themes. As early as 1867, the American art historian Henry Tuckerman, who acknowledged the superior art galleries and artistic training available in Europe, pressed American artists to appeal “to the national mind or average sympathies”: “Let a bold genius scan our history, note our civilization, examine our life, and he will

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

discover innumerable themes characteristic enough to excite the interest of the people.”22 Tuckerman proposed as pictorial themes subjects from American history, scenes from American life, and genre themes dealing with “the customs” and “native peculiarities” of our land and our shared experience. Adding urgency to his plea, Tuckerman implored the novelist, the historian, and the artist to “conserve the aspect and traits of life and manners soon to become things of tradition” in a country “perpetually in a transition state.”23 Such appeals for a postwar American art to express “the nation’s life” and to equal European standards indicate more than national pride. Deeper anxieties concerning the dramatic changes in American life underlay these demands for a national art. The escalating diversity of the population as a result of immigration, and widening rifts between life at work and life at home, between city and country, between rich and poor arising from the quickened pace of industrialization that followed the Civil War, increased the yearning for some unifying ethos.24 Critics hoped that art would serve a cohesive function.25 Tuckerman stressed the importance of art’s elevating and refining influence in “this land of railroads and elections,” even of the necessity for an American art as an “antidote” to American preoccupation with the useful and the practical, with getting and spending.26 The compelling call for a civilizing and moralizing influence in American life reveals grave uncertainties about postwar American society. Hovenden may well have read Tuckerman’s words; in any case, he responded to the felt need Tuckerman voiced for grasping “the aspect and traits of life” that appeared to be slipping away.

Regional and national art exhibitions and expositions in the last half of the nineteenth century fueled the growing interest in all things American. The Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 stimulated national nostalgia as well as pride in native subjects. Pictures on display at the exposition, such as George Henry Boughton’s Pilgrims Going to Church (1867, New-York Historical Society), Frederic Edwin Church’s Cotopaxi (1862, Detroit Institute of Arts), and Eastman Johnson’s The Old Stage Coach (1871, Milwaukee Art Museum), celebrated the country’s identity in history, landscape, and genre scenes.27 The desire for subjects celebrating national identity continued through the late 1870s and into the 1880s.Writing about the National Academy of Design’s 1879 exhibition, for example, one reviewer complained about the paucity of distinctively American work and wished for a “manifestation of national character in spirit and in manner.” Unlike Tuckerman, however, the newspaper critic despaired of artists finding “subjects at home” because modern life in the United States, of all modern life, was “least picturesque, least beautiful.” American artists had to search diligently to discover what “little that our machine-made work-a-day life affords us of the characteristic and the beautiful.” This writer found almost no “inherent charm,” in American genre subjects that were in the exhibition.28 Art critic S. G. W. Benjamin was more optimistic about an American art, encouraging the American artist to find inspiration “at his own door” because patriotism, a “wholesome enthusiasm for one’s own country,” lay at the basis of a native art and “native art founded on knowledge” was “always the truest art.”29 Hovenden probably knew Benjamin’s writings and the artist owned

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the issue of American Art Review with an editorial statement of faith in “the development of a truly national school.” In that same issue, an essayist bluntly stated: “A man who paints for four or five years in Brittany, and then, in his New York studio, can turn out nothing but Brittany landscapes from his sketch-books, has wasted his time and mistaken his vocation.”30 A general fear that American artists trained in Europe would become “denationalized” and would “incapacitate themselves from painting American scenery or American compositions,” was articulated by one writer.31 Henry Cabot Lodge, American author and, later, U.S. senator, deplored “denationalized Americans who are painting pictures and carving statues and writing music in Europe or in the United States in the spirit of colonists,” thereby losing their “originality and force.” The landscape painter Alexander H. Wyant expressed his firm view about what an American artist should paint: “If an American artist is to do any good and real work, he must do it here in response to home inspirations, and in loyalty to home impressions.” Wyant’s advice appeared in an issue of Harper’s Weekly, published when Hovenden became his fellow resident in the Sherwood Studio Building.32 No doubt Hovenden read an essay in early 1881 titled “Why Americans Should Buy American Pictures,” printed in Studio and Musical Review adjacent to an article hailing Hovenden as a great American painter. The essayist was sympathetic to returning artists and recognized the problems they faced: “The foreign-bred American artist has discovered that in returning to his country to practice his art upon national subjects, he is groping in the dark; his accustomed master is not

at his side; the friction of keen competition felt in the foreign studios is absent; his first years are thus spent in a bewildering uncertainty.”33 Summing up his argument, the essayist wrote: “What is here claimed is that our home life should be interpreted by American masters, and that the public should be prompt to promote and foster such a worthy effort to nationalize painting in this country.”34 Noting that even foreign critics complained about the scarcity of American themes in works exhibited abroad, the critic approvingly singled out Hovenden as one of the new generation that realized “the necessity of doing purely American work”: “Certainly, such painters as bridgman and hovenden would be men of the first rank in any land. mr. bridgman we understand, will continue to reside abroad; but mr. hovenden will bring his master-hand to bear upon purely American subjects, and we know we speak the almost unanimous sentiment of our art world when we predict for him such a success as has never yet crowned the efforts of an American figure painter.”35 Hovenden must have identified with an 1883 essay that appeared in a catalog he and his wife owned. Titled “What Shall American Artists Paint?” it addressed problems of reentry for European-trained American artists: “The gravest charge against ‘the young men’ is, that they don’t know that what they have achieved in the improvement of technique is but the first step from the foot of Parnassus—the means and not the end.”36 Each of the young men, the writer, E. H. Clement, claimed, “has his dreams of a grand composition,” but that “great picture” is invariably based on some European ideal remembered from the “revelation of great art” seen

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abroad. For the present generation of artists trained abroad, the very idea of great art is associated with “the atmosphere of the past and its romance.” Clement advised American painters to look around them for inspiration, disagreeing with those who felt that America was lacking in pictorial subject matter.37 Thus upon his return to the United States in 1880, Hovenden was faced with cries for American subjects from several fronts, including critics, the public, and his own patrons. Fortunately, the time Hovenden spent in Brittany concentrating on painting history and genre subjects had prepared him well to meet the homecoming challenges. Hovenden was able to translate his awardwinning French scenes into an American idiom that further solidified his reputation as well as his popular and critical success. A New Life in Plymouth Meeting Soon after his return to the United States, Hovenden was immersed in a new life that promised abundant native themes. Hovenden married Helen Corson in 1881 and the couple settled in Plymouth Meeting, a village near Philadelphia, where he found ample scenes of American life nearby to inspire his art. Hovenden lived and worked there for the remainder of his life, except for a year’s sojourn in England in 1891–92 and a winter’s stay in Washington, D.C., the following year. His life and art were inextricably fused. Neighbors in and around Plymouth Meeting became the artist’s models. In the village astride the two townships of Plymouth and Whitemarsh— themselves case studies in microcosm of American society and way of life in the years following the Civil War—the artist found variations on his

theme of transition and change. Hovenden grounded his subjects in what he saw, what he knew, and what he felt, as he had done with his Breton subjects in Pont-Aven.38 Long-settled Anglo-Saxon communities of farms and small villages, the townships of Plymouth and Whitemarsh in which Plymouth Meeting was located exemplified the dramatic economic, sociological, and technological changes experienced by most Americans in the decades following the Civil War. Although the area remained rural and sparsely populated, work patterns had been irrevocably altered by industrialization. A hundred or so men still worked as independent craftsmen—blacksmiths, fifteen to sixteen in each township, carpenters, stonemasons, painters, shoemakers, tinsmiths, saddlers, bricklayers, potters, printers, or weavers—but they were a minority. Almost three hundred men worked as farmers and farmhands, but many more men and some teenaged youths worked in cotton, paper, and rolling mills, mined iron ore, or worked at iron furnaces and in the lime industry. The 1880 Census enumerator for Whitemarsh Township, Samuel M. Corson, a teacher and Helen Corson’s older brother who lived with her in their father’s homestead, noted the impact of industry on the economy of the township. More than 7 percent of the dwellings in the township were unoccupied “owing to the dullness of the marble and iron trade.”39 Immigration had begun to alter the early, more homogeneous society in the townships. Although Pennsylvania-born whites made up by far the largest group in the adult population, Irish immigrants comprised about 20 percent of the adult population, and an additional 10 percent

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born in Pennsylvania had parents who were born in Ireland. Immigrants, mainly from Germany and England, made up only about 4 percent of the adult population in the two townships, and no immigrants came from Southern or Eastern Europe or Asia. The most prestigious occupations in the townships—in the professions and in business— were held by American-born men, as were jobs as merchants, clerks, farmers, and craftsmen. African American men in the small black populations of the two townships worked as coachmen, farmhands, shoemakers, and laborers, one of whom, Samuel Jones, became Hovenden’s favorite model. Most immigrants and adults of Irish descent were laborers and factory workers, and most teenaged workers were their children. Almost all married women, immigrant, black or white, were housewives with “housekeeping” recorded as their occupation. The few women who worked in cotton or paper mills were single or, rarely, widows. Several women also worked as schoolteachers and dressmakers, one as a tollgate keeper, and another as a doctor. Plymouth Meeting suited Hovenden well and he readily discovered American genre subjects “at his own door,” to use Benjamin’s phrase. Hovenden began painting genre pictures of white, middle-class Americans that went beyond any “readable” story to touch on common hopes and fears for the country in which they lived, for its social fabric they saw changing, and for its religious tenets and work ethic they felt were being lost. With these subjects in the first year or two after his return, Hovenden captured the same sense of history and nostalgia as in his earlier Breton paintings,

creating scenes of traditional American ways of life and time-honored values that were gradually slipping away. Continuing working methods firmly established in Pont-Aven, Hovenden chose models and posed them to suit his ideas, used and reused furniture and other material art that he owned, and made preliminary sketches and developed drawings. Hovenden also reduced the scale of many of his genre paintings of this period to about one-third the size of his Salon-scaled Elaine, making them appropriately proportioned for the middle-class American home. Producing contemporary “scenes” of ordinary people in recognizable domestic settings, Hovenden reached a broad public.40 A newly returned citizen at the time of the 1880 presidential campaign, Hovenden probably identified with the subject of one of the earliest works painted after his return, The Puzzled Voter, the most literally anecdotal picture of the group of paintings in the early 1880s (fig. 52). A solitary citizen sits in his plainly furnished kitchen in shirtsleeves and stocking feet. The daily newspaper he has been reading lies on the floor with only the word “Vote” legible in a headline. On this election day morning, the citizen looks directly at the viewer and scratches his head in a gesture of bewilderment over how he should vote.41 In a domestic setting of everyday American life, used dishes remain on the table and an undressed chicken rests on the shelf below the cabinet. Practical, ordinary objects such as the rolling pin and wooden spoon hang within reach, along with a handcrafted horseshoe, a commonly known symbol of good luck in America, and a reminder of the ingenuity of independent craftsmen and

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

52. The Puzzled Voter, 1880. Oil on canvas, 20 ⳯ 14 in. Private collection.

the imminent obsolescence of handmade artifacts with the advent of industrialization.42 Hovenden’s pensive prospective voter is reminiscent of Thomas Waterman Wood’s Cogitation (1871, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), an earlier genre painting that similarly captures a solitary citizen mulling (or “cogitating”) over an important issue. Against the sparse background of a simple, rustic barn inte-

rior, stands a farmer dressed in work clothes and boots; leaning his arm on a scythe, the man stares intently out before him, brow furrowed in concentration. Although the title of Wood’s painting did not refer overtly to contemporary politics, its timing in advance of the 1872 presidential election and a subsequent engraving of the picture in Harper’s Weekly with a more explicitly political subtitle suggest that, like Hovenden,

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Wood intended connections between his work and the American electoral process.43 Although the subject of Hovenden’s picture was a new theme for the artist, news, newsboys, and politics had become popular subjects in American genre painting by midcentury. Daily newspapers spread the latest information on national events, such as the war with Mexico, politics, finance, and, increasingly after midcentury, general social and cultural matters. Technological advances in printing and circulation spurred a phenomenal growth in the publishing industry. By 1880, there were almost one thousand daily newspapers in the country and well over eight thousand weeklies, which were cheap and reached a mass audience.44 Several earlier American genre painters had incorporated the news theme into their paintings, including Richard Caton Woodville’s War News from Mexico (1848, National Academy of Design), George Caleb Bingham’s election pictures, and Eastman Johnson’s Evening Newspaper (1863, Amherst College). Hovenden’s contemporary, the Irish-born Philadelphia still-life painter William M. Harnett, depicted newspapers frequently from 1877 until nearly the end of his career (fig. 53). Hovenden carried on the news theme in his genre painting The Puzzled Voter. Critics of the day recognized Hovenden’s skill in creating a largescale figure and conveying a sense of naturalism in pose and expression.45 Yet in spite of Hovenden’s somewhat humorous approach to the voter’s quandary, the painting’s subtitle, “Why Must the Chinese Go?”46 alludes to more divisive elements in late nineteenth-century America, such as rising anti-immigrant and nativist sentiments. Mass immigration between 1877 and 1890 resulted in an

influx of over 6 million people, many from countries in Asia and eastern and southern Europe, and fueled concerns over ethnic purity, urban crowding, and labor conflicts.47 Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, a book published just a few years after Hovenden painted The Puzzled Voter, aptly captures the sense of nativist unease of the 1880s and 1890s. Its author, Reverend Josiah Strong, set out to warn Americans about such “Perils,” declaring that immigration threatened to “complicat[e] our moral and political problems by swelling our dangerous classes.” Professor Austin Phelps, author of the book’s introduction, claimed that immigration endangered “the original stock of American society” with “the interfusion of elements alien to our history and to the faith of our ancestry.”48 These fears, combined with economic depressions such as the Panic of 1873 and labor conflict in the 1870s, led to a growing wave of animosity toward foreign-born individuals. The zealous desire to maintain the purity of the American population and its culture and to create a bulwark against the perceived threat of foreigners spurred the formation of a number of patriotic, ancestral societies, including the Sons of the American Revolution, as well as political and labor organizations that aimed to stem the tide of immigration.49 In particular, the subtitle references the charged issue of Chinese immigration: the slogan “The Chinese must go!” was popularized in the 1870s, a decade of peak Chinese immigration, by Denis Kearney, a California labor organizer. By mid-November 1880, the United States signed a Chinese Exclusion Treaty with China, which gave the nation the power to regulate the number of Chinese laborers entering the country.50

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

53. William Michael Harnett, Still Life with Letter to Thomas B. Clarke, 1879. Oil on canvas mounted on masonite, 111⁄8 ⳯ 15 in. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. 1941.71. Gift of Harold Clarke Durrell.

While not overtly endorsing such antiChinese sentiments,51 the seemingly innocuous scene in The Puzzled Voter belies its references to intensifying nativism in late nineteenth-century America. Its subject, a white man in a quintessentially “American” home, represents the racial purity and national values that many perceived to be under attack from an increasingly heterogeneous society. The “Vote” headline in the newspaper referenced a right that remained hotly contested or even denied to many Americans,52 while the painting’s subtitle raised the specter of troubled race relations and anti-immigrant movements. Hovenden’s painting certainly

heeded the call for American subjects; moreover, it may have addressed concerns not only about “denationalized” American artists, but also about a “denationalized” country amid swelling tides of immigrants. “Our Home Life” Our home life should be interpreted by American masters,and the public should be prompt to promote and foster such a worthy effort to nationalize painting in this country. —“Why Americans Should Buy American Pictures,” Studio and Musical Review, 1:4 (19 February 1881): 51

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Hovenden continued to meet the voiced need for American artists to portray “our home life,” painting Americans at home and at work throughout the 1880s.53 His genre paintings The Old Version, also known as Sunday Afternoon (fig. 54), and The Revised Version (fig. 55) refer to a topic of general cultural interest in the early 1880s: the publishing of English Revisions of the Old Version or the King James Version of the Bible. American periodicals carried articles on the work of the American Revision Committee, including one in which the writer favorably reviewed the American Version of the Revised New Testament for correcting “universally conceded” inaccuracies in the King James Version. Not surprisingly, most Americans preferred what they were accustomed to and continued to use the Old Version in which they recorded events of birth, marriage, and death.54 In The Old Version, a couple keeps the Sabbath by sharing reading from their large family Bible. Creating the ambiance of a usual Sunday afternoon in a comfortable but plain household— in contrast to one with ornate Victorian furnishings—Hovenden depicts colonial or early nineteenth-century material arts, such as the corner cupboard and pillar-and-scroll wooden shelf clock, and the simple bench against the wall. The husband, dressed in a white shirt with dark vest and trousers, sits easily with his legs crossed in a rocking chair. With his graying, bearded head bent over the large volume of the Bible in his lap, he peers through steel-rimmed glasses and reads aloud to his wife. Bible pages turned well past their midway mark indicate that he is reading from the New Testament. She sits stoically in an upholstered chair to his left, wear-

ing a calico dress, white apron, and similar framed spectacles; gazing off into the distance, she contemplates the words of scripture uttered by her husband. Earlier genre painters had treated the Biblereading theme prior to Hovenden: Eastman Johnson depicted an elderly man reading from a large book to his wife in Reading the Bible (1863, private collection) and Pennsylvania artist Thomas Hicks conveyed the loneliness of an older generation left at home after their grown children departed in No Place Like Home (1877, Schweitzer Gallery, New York). Popular Currier & Ives prints and periodicals such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine offered illustrations of the aging generation at their firesides, entertaining grandchildren or reading a large book. Gentle resignation and melancholy pervade these depictions.55 Hovenden’s reinterpretation of the theme, however, presents a couple who are still active in their middle years; daylight floods their neatly kept home and no fire is needed to dispel the chills of age. The subject of Hovenden’s painting is not the melancholy of the evening of life, but rather a scene of reading scripture, a “free Sunday,” family solidarity, and marital fidelity. The custom of Sunday observance was thought to be “one of America’s three bulwarks of liberty—a free ballot, free school, and a free Sunday.” Hovenden’s picture is a metaphor of time-honored American values, values rooted in farms and small towns where most Americans still lived in 1881 and still believed was the locus of the good life. The couple in The Old Version appear to be human counterparts to their frugal home and traditional furnishings: plain-faced,

54. The Old Version (also known as Sunday Afternoon), 1881. Oil on canvas, 24 ⳯ 19 in. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 1993.35.17.

55. The Revised Version, 1881. Oil on canvas, 20 ⳯ 121⁄4 in. National Academy of Design, New York. 595-P.

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

dressed in simple garments, the man and woman seem rooted to their chairs and the floor, symbols of moral rectitude that will endure in spite of change.56 Hovenden’s image suggests the Victorian cult of domesticity that became more pervasive as advancing industrialization and an altered economy upset stable patterns of living in one place with kith and kin nearby. Changes imperiled old familial and communal bonds associated with the idea of home, which came to be thought of as a private haven from a competitive outside world, the nuclear family’s spiritual core, a fitting place to read the Bible. Furthermore, Sunday was a family day, a “domestic Sabbath,” the one day an American family man was supposed to stay at home.57 Painted in the year of Hovenden’s own marriage, The Old Version suggests that righteous Sunday observance ensures a steadfast marriage, a timely moral message when divorce was a serious social issue.58 A contemporary journalist, deploring the frequency of marital separations among newlywed couples in Philadelphia in 1881, believed that Hovenden’s picture conveyed “an air of steadfastness,” cited the couple as a model of the “old version” of marital constancy, and believed that Hovenden provided “a better sermon than is preached from many a pulpit the year round.”59 Hovenden’s reassuring image of unchanging American home life received mixed reviews when it was exhibited in Philadelphia and New York.A Philadelphia newspaper critic observed with approval: “The subject is, if anything in these galleries can be said to be so, absolutely American.” The critic also appreciated the characterization: “It hardly needs the suggestion in the title to be

made aware that the ‘Revised Edition’ is not in favor. The stern, if rather abstracted gaze of the [wife’s] spectacled eyes, the firm compression of the mouth, and the unconquerable elevation of chin denote the conservatism which is born of abhorrence of all new-fangled ways.”60 A sophisticated New York City critic, however, thought Hovenden’s “story” seemed typical only of a provincial aspect of American life—“ ‘Sunday afternoon’ at the farm”—and was too “prim and prosaic,” although “full of good character.”61 Serving as a pendant to The Old Version, The Revised Version was Hovenden’s characteristic work required by the National Academy of Design from a newly elected academician. In The Revised Version, Hovenden reprises the same setting, cropping the scene to focus on the solitary figure of the old man in the rocking chair; although The Old Version has been put aside on the table behind the reader, the chair, rug, corner cupboard, and bench are familiar. More muscular and larger-boned than the husband of The Old Version, this reader fills his chair, while other details in the painting indicate he is an active farmer observing the day of rest: his workingman’s hands with thick, short fingers, the striped blue workshirt, and what is probably the Farmer’s Almanac hanging on the wall.62 The mood of The Revised Version is more elegiac than that of The Old Version; instead of reading aloud to his lifelong companion, this man sits quietly absorbed in the book at hand in the almost claustrophobic space of the corner of the room. He may be a widower who seeks solace in the revised New Testament as he reviews his own broken life, signified by the picture on the wall of a woman reading that shows a carefully painted crack to denote the broken glass covering the picture.

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Just as Hovenden had relied on local residents in Pont-Aven as models for his genre and history paintings, the artist succeeded in his direct and individualized portrayals in his American domestic scenes through his reliance on Plymouth Meeting neighbors as models. Mary Yetter, the tollgate keeper on Conshohocken Pike, and Mark Jones, for example, sat for The Old Version. Presentation of plain American folk of faith adhering to the Protestant tradition of Biblereading and the American custom of “Sunday Rest” bring to mind the artist’s sympathetic paintings of humble Breton peasants who held fast to their traditions and family bonds.63 Hovenden was affected by the experience of living in a Quaker village, surely reminiscent of life in Pont-Aven, and by his marriage to a woman and fellow artist whose opinion and talent he respected. From the time of Hovenden’s marriage onward, the artist’s paintings often recall, as did Plymouth Meeting itself, the simpler rural and village life of an earlier time in America and a Quaker honesty, tolerance, and quietude infuse them.64 Expanding on the theme of domestic life, Hovenden painted several pictures centering on family continuity in the 1880s,65 a theme that he would reprise in his major works of the early 1890s. Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof ? represents a youth “planting an apple tree in a door-yard” while an old man seated on the frame of a grindstone looks on “in a meditative way” (figs. 56 and 57).66 From the oil study (fig. 57) to the finished painting, Hovenden slightly altered the appearance of the older man. By removing the man’s hat, Hovenden highlighted the man’s bare head, emphasizing his advanced years and pensive state. The Biblical title signifies spiritual sowing and

harvesting67 and underscores the contrast between the man seated by a fully grown tree and the youth’s planting a sapling. The sapling, an apple tree, represents the tree of Paradise and the fall from Eden; by the time the youth eats of its fruit, he will have lost his innocence. The two trees allude to nature’s continuity and the cycle of growth, decay, and renewal.68 Hovenden portrayed intergenerational ties in The Quiet Hour or The Chimney Corner (ca. 1886), presently known by his etching after the painting, in which an elderly man sits in front of a glowing fire with a young girl on his lap “gazing dreamily into the coals, the one seeing there the future, the other the past.”69 A similar theme is evoked in Grandma’s Second Sight (ca. 1893–94), which features a girl threading a needle for her grandmother in format of half-length figures.70 American childhood had become sentimentalized by midcentury and sunny images of youth served as metaphors for lost innocence during the turbulent decades following the Civil War. By linking youth with old age in these familiar scenes, Hovenden offered viewers comfort amid the harsh realities of social change and economic turmoil, optimism about the future, and reassurance of the continuity of American life.71 American Craftsmen Hovenden’s affinity for life in early America, combined with his own experiences as a gilder and a framemaker, shaped the selection of yet another “purely American subject”—the craftsman. Respected as honest and hardworking since Colonial times, admired for his ingenuity and skill learned through apprenticeship and practice, the craftsman was often depicted in American paint-

56. Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof ? (also known as Arbor Day), 1883. Oil on canvas, 35 ⳯ 27 in. Private collection.

57. Study for Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof ? n.d. Oil on canvas, 111⁄2 ⳯ 91⁄2 in. Birmingham Museum of Art. Photograph: Birmingham Museum of Art.

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

ings such as John Singleton Copley’s Paul Revere (1768–70, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), John Neagle’s Pat Lyon at the Forge (1826–27, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and Eastman Johnson’s The Blacksmith Shop (1863, New York State Historical Association), and Hovenden’s A Village Blacksmith of 1882 (fig. 58) continued that tradition.72 Against a dark, shadowy background the lone figure of a graying, bearded blacksmith stands erect, his face dramatically lit from the sunlight streaming through a window to the left. Dressed in a simple white shirt, rolled up to the elbows, a brown vest, worn leather apron, and boots, the blacksmith grasps a pair of tongs in his right hand over a smoldering fire, while he turns to look at the viewer, left hand on his hip. Aside from the highlighted passages in the hazy smoke and the blacksmith’s face, beard, and shirtsleeves, the rest of the room is dark and murky. The only objects that Hovenden has chosen to emphasize are the blacksmith’s tools, hung neatly on the brick wall behind him, and an anvil resting with a hammer on a stump to the right. A number of pencil drawings and an oil sketch of A Village Blacksmith (fig. 59) indicate Hovenden’s usual method of working. He chose an actual blacksmith in Plymouth Meeting as his model and sketched him in different poses often with details of the head or limbs, handling the figure to express his thematic message. In working on the final painting of the blacksmith, Hovenden altered his medium-sized black-and-white oil sketch to increase concentration on the figure, making it seem more heroic—achieved by cropping the space above the head and below the feet. Other artistic decisions, such as the addition of a window, strengthen the composition,

suggest more space around the figure, and enhance the impact of the American blacksmith who can “look the whole world in the face” and bring honor to his homeland.73 Hovenden’s imposing figure of a blacksmith conveys the village smithy’s proud humanity and a nobility, like that of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s craftsman in his 1842 poem “The Village Blacksmith,” which inspired Hovenden: His brow is wet with honest sweat He earns whate’er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man. Longfellow’s own interpretation reveals the additional meaning the painting had in the nineteenth century: Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought.74 Hovenden endowed an American craftsman with heroic dignity, as he had the Breton peasant. Before the advent of the horseless carriage and the streetcar at the end of the century, the blacksmith was essential to nineteenth-century American life; however, as with the Breton peasant, the spread of industrialization threatened his way of life and work. Increasingly, both artisan and peasant became anachronisms as the handcrafted and hand-harvested yielded to the machine-made and mechanically reaped. The American craftsman, usually native-born, white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, and the Breton peasant represented

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58. A Village Blacksmith, 1882. Oil on canvas, 36 ⳯ 193⁄4 in. Private collection.

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

roots in the past. In a time of rapid and widespread industrialization, this image of a stubbornly self-sufficient individual was reassuring as an enduring exemplar of an age of supposed simplicity and goodness. The Centennial in Philadelphia reinforced this belief in the dignity of manual labor and the American craft tradition. Displays there, such as an old New England kitchen with Windsor chairs and a spinning wheel, vividly recalled the colonial craftsman’s use of native woods and “honesty” of construction, appealing to a public feeling too rapidly distanced from its heritage. Dominating the main building at the Centennial, however, was a thirty-foot-high Corliss steam engine, an inescapable symbol of mechanization and modernity that amazed citizens. Critics and millions of visitors were torn between the Centennial’s focus on industrial progress and new industrial arts, and nostalgia for the past’s simple, finely crafted work. General enthusiasm for reminders of colonial days boosted the Colonial Revival of the 1870s and 1880s.75 Hovenden’s interest in the theme of the craftsman relates to both the Colonial Revival and the Aesthetic Movement, which spread through the United States from the mid-1870s through the mid-1880s and led the way for the Arts and Crafts movement in the 1890s. Both the Colonial Revival and the Aesthetic Movement offered refuge and solace from the machine-made and the modern; architecture, interiors, and furnishings became both symbols of and connections to simpler times, rural life, and moral order.76 Aesthetic sensibilities responded to the artistic qualities of colonial styles, linking the revival with the movement. Economy and expediency rather than

59. Study for A Village Blacksmith, n.d. Pencil on tan paper, 151⁄2 ⳯ 12 in. Kennedy Galleries, New York.

craftsmanlike design and finishing or decorative ornamentation had become the gauge of machine production, while department stores with manufactured goods at competitive prices and mass advertising of brand names supplanted the direct democratic relationship between independent craftsman and buyer. The industrial worker, in contrast to the artisan or designer, performed small, separate mechanical tasks rather than relying on skill, experience, and individual judgment. The factory worker, unlike the blacksmith, cabinetmaker, clock-mender, or other craftsmen

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could not “Each morning see some task begin, / Each evening see its close”; unlike the smithy, he did not control his work or see it whole. As mechanization took command, labor became dehumanized and the earlier craftsman became idealized. Hovenden’s blacksmith represents that ideal in the ennobled figure of an individual entrepreneur; unlike the repetition of piecework in larger workshops or factories, the lone blacksmith enjoys mastery over his work and a variety of tasks. In his discussion of the perils of the industrial system in Our Country, Josiah Strong deplored the loss of human skill to machine production in the 1880s: “A blacksmith, for instance, was not master of his trade until he could make a thousand things from a nail to an iron fence. There was relief in autonomy, and scope for ingenuity and taste. . . . Once the man who made the nail could make the iron fence, also; now he cannot even make the nail, but only feed a machine that makes it.”77 Hovenden’s blacksmith was quite different from the realities of the industrial system, as well as from other contemporary portrayals of modern wage earners such as Charles Frederic Ulrich’s The Glass Blowers (1883, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico), set in New York, and The Village Print Shop (1885, Terra Museum of American Art). In The Glass Blowers, the workers share the same confined workshop space without communicating with each other as they sit crowded at a bench. Far from the independent artisan in Hovenden’s painting, these workers are wage earners with little control over their production. In contrast to the hand tools hanging in the blacksmith’s shop in Hovenden’s picture, the

scene in The Village Print Shop pans back to reveal the machinery responsible for the publishing. The role of the human workers is significantly reduced here in the wake of a growing reliance on mechanized processes. A Village Blacksmith thus makes a striking contrast to The Glass Blowers and The Village Print Shop; while Hovenden’s blacksmith represents autonomy, pride in workmanship, and the heroic figure of the white artisan, Ulrich’s images resonate with an increasingly stratified and anonymous workforce, routinized tasks, and mechanized production.78 When Hovenden showed A Village Blacksmith at the National Academy of Design in 1883, a critic hailed it as the “one picture in the exhibition before which the visitor mentally takes off his hat”: “The best things that were ever said or sung about the nobility of man as man, and the superiority of his nature to all the accidents of his condition, come back to you as you look at it; and one feels that this, at least, is a genuine work.” Praising, in particular, Hovenden’s strong craftsmanship, the “manliness” and “dignity” of Hovenden’s image, and the recognizably American character of the subject, the critic concluded that the painting “indicates more clearly than almost any other picture of the year the direction from which much is to be expected for a distinctly American art.”79 The self-reliant and resourceful artisan typified an American ideal that continued as myth, outliving its actual embodiment.Again in the late 1880s and early 1890s, Hovenden was drawn to the subject of craftsmen, painting The Cabinetmaker (fig. 60) and The Traveling Clock-Mender (fig. 61). In the former, the experienced cabinetmaker sits between his worn workbench and a window; on the

60. The Cabinetmaker, 1888. Oil on canvas, 201⁄8 ⳯ 16 in. Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. Gift of Herbert W. Plimpton: Hollis W. Plimpton (Class of 1915) Memorial Collection. AC 1978.71.

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61. The Traveling ClockMender, 1893. Oil on canvas, 22 ⳯ 27 in. Private collection. Photograph: Roy Wilson.

wall behind him his tools and a Farmer’s Almanac hang within easy reach. Dressed neatly in a white shirt and dark vest, he relaxes from his day’s labor and takes advantage of the light from the late afternoon sun to read a newspaper, which he has temporarily cast aside on the window sill in order to engage with the viewer. Like the figure of the blacksmith, the cabinetmaker is an older man: his balding head, graying beard, and wrinkled face are bathed in the warm light streaming in from the window. His right hand, which rests on his knee, emphasizes the connection between the artisan’s hands, tools, and workbench, and alludes to the passing of handcrafted objects to machine-made goods.With a single figure, a few simple forms, and red-browns, creamy whites, and touches of green and orange, Hovenden created an image of a kindly, aging American craftsman, still curious and friendly, still working and independent; a citizen who reads his newspaper, an artisan who

knows his craft, he also knows his world is changing. Hovenden gave this craftsman a quieter dignity than that of the village smithy, as suits a more domestic calling, and, perhaps, after the passage of six years, the artist’s less sanguine outlook. In The Traveling Clock-Mender, an elderly itinerant craftsman is accompanied by two attentive young onlookers, for whom Hovenden’s children Thomas and Martha posed, as he examines a clock’s inner workings. The clock-mender holds up a perfectly formed metallic star enclosed within a small metal circle for careful study. The nine-year-old girl smiles, appreciating its precise shaping, while her older brother remains quietly thoughtful. In this scene, Hovenden again reprises the themes of the cycles of life and transitions. On one level, the craftsman’s intricate task to restore the silenced timepiece refers to small slices of time—minutes, hours, days, and nights—and the clock’s function to track time’s

“WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

62. George Bacon Wood, Jr., Interior of Blacksmith’s Shop, 1875. Oil on canvas, 14 x 18 in. Kennedy Galleries, New York.

progress through daily life. Carefully arranged around the table, the figures of the young children and the elderly clock-mender represent more significant stages in life, alluding to the passage of time from youth to adulthood and eventually old age. Finally, the painting’s subject signals an emergent modern culture regulated by clocks—in school, at the workplace, and in the home.80 In these artisan paintings, Hovenden drew on his tutelage under Cabanel to present a contemplative moment and to establish an ambiance for his expressive and dominant figures with adequate space, apt settings, and a selected few well-chosen still-life objects, melding all elements with his facile painterly style and

subtle, richly harmonious palette. The sketchy renderings of the craftsmen in Hovenden’s pictures lend them an air of spontaneity, as if the artist had rapidly painted them at work. Hovenden does not rely on numerous descriptive or anecdotal details to depict his craftsmen, as in the style of earlier American genre paintings, such as Pennsylvania artist George Bacon Wood, Jr.’s Interior of Blacksmith’s Shop (fig. 62). In Wood’s painting, the artist’s emphasis is on the shop interior, replete with the blacksmith’s numerous tools, utensils, and materials. Hovender’s pictures, by contrast, isolate the craftsmen and present them as thoughtful, monumental figures.

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In the decade following his return from France, Hovenden translated his academic training and his experiences painting Breton peasant themes in Pont-Aven into quintessentially American pictures that celebrate native traditions and national characteristics. His domestic genre scenes of simple interiors with colonial-inspired furnishings and honest, plain folks, and his heroic artisans standing steadfast in the face of industrialization, appealed to the growing sense of nostalgia for earlier times and pride in the nation’s history. Hovenden’s paintings offered themes to meet Tuckerman’s plea for an art dealing with the “native peculiarities” of our shared experience,

and conserving this country’s “aspect and traits and manners soon to become things of tradition” in a civilization “perpetually in a transition state.” On returning home from Europe, Hovenden took more than the “first step from the foot of Parnassus” and found inspiration “at his own door,” as S. G.W. Benjamin thought an American artist could.81 He led American art in a new direction by choosing subjects from common life that were resonant with meaning, and treating them not as amusing anecdotes but seriously, giving a commanding monumentality to the naturalistically realized figures and effective renderings of light and space.

Chapter 4

Painting the “Good Ole Times” Scenes of African American Life

Among his popular American themes of the 1880s, Hovenden created a significant group of paintings of African Americans. His subject matter, working methods, and compositions parallel the artist’s endeavors in his earlier Pont-Aven works as well as in his other domestic genre pictures of the decade. Selecting men and women from in and around Plymouth Meeting as models, Hovenden staged scenes of picturesque poverty reminiscent of his Breton peasant paintings: in humble, often careworn interiors, African Americans engage in typical everyday activities such as cooking, mending, and ironing, or simply enjoy the pleasures of home and family. A number of factors, both political and artistic, encouraged Hovenden to explore African American subjects during this decade: critical discussions of the need for American themes and for adequate depiction of African Americans; praise for Winslow Homer’s Virginia paintings of the mid- to late 1870s; general public interest among white Americans in images of African Americans, evidenced by coverage—often racist—in the illustrated popular press, photography, and literature; and the political climate of reconciliation following Reconstruction. In his approach to African Ameri-

can life, Hovenden moved beyond the stereotypical images of blacks as happy servants, outsiders to white society, or objects of ridicule, to create “honest and sincere paintings of black life and culture.”1 Before Hovenden went to France, the political and economic thrust toward reconciliation of the North and South in America had begun; by the time of his return, the mood of détente was pervasive and New South spokesmen and Southern mythmakers had won over the North. Economic reasons underlay rapprochement, as Southern spokesmen for a New South courted Northern capital to build a viable industrial economy in the homeland of the Confederacy. Admitting that the Old South of slavery and secession was over, New South advocates deplored the South’s former economy, where the tyranny of cotton caused the spread of slavery and dependence on that “peculiar institution.” These advocates claimed to recognize that the black man had civic and political rights. Never, however, did New South leaders abandon belief in the superiority of the white race. The movement’s chief spokesman, Henry Woodfin Grady, a colleague of the author Joel Chandler Harris at the Atlanta Constitution,

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confidently expressed this conviction: “But the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever . . . because the white race is the superior race. This is the declaration of no new truth. It has abided forever in the marrow of our bones, and shall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts.”2 Reputable scientific opinion gave credence to the idea of racial hierarchy and white superiority, establishing a “newly respectable racialism” and rationale for domination.3 Within two months of Hovenden’s return to the United States, the presidential election of 1880 marked a turning point—both political party platforms abandoned the cause of Southern blacks, and Southern home rule triumphed. In 1883, the Supreme Court voided the 1875 Civil Rights Act that provided equal access to public places and public transportation. By the later 1880s and in the 1890s, many people in both the North and the South began to believe that African Americans had degenerated since freedom and that emancipation was a failure. Without white control, the argument went, the

people of African descent reverted to a childlike state, moral decadence, and savagery.4 The theme of reconciliation extended beyond the realm of politics and into the realms of fiction, journalism, and the visual arts. White Northern novelists pressed home the theme in fictional accounts of the war, while white Southern authors of books and magazine entries spun the myth of an idyllic Old South of large plantations and devoted slaves. In guilty reaction to the South’s defeat and ruin, and the grinding poverty and utter humiliation that followed the war, Northern sympathy for the South replaced abolitionist ardor. Northerners felt the pull of a legendary aristocratic Old South of moonlight and magnolias, of courtly ways and happy slaves, an ideal removed from Yankee materialism and the mammonism of the Gilded Age.5 Two pictorial examples from the Reconstruction period reflect the conciliatory outlook of the time. In his genre painting Goodbye, Ole Virginia (fig. 63), the Northerner James Henry Beard depicted exslaves looking backward with fond memories,

63. James Henry Beard, Goodbye, Ole Virginia, 1872. Oil on canvas, 25 ⳯ 351⁄2 in. Location unknown. Image from Patricia Hills, The Painters’America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810–1910 (New York: Praeger, 1974), No. 89.

PAINTING THE “GOOD OLE TIMES”

64. William Aiken Walker, Plantation Economy in the Old South, ca. 1876. Oil on canvas, 22 ⳯ 42 in. Courtesy of the Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

but suggested some ambivalence in showing the younger generation what lay ahead. William Aiken Walker, the best-known painter of Southern black genre in his day, pictured a romanticized agrarian life with African Americans cheerfully harvesting cotton in sun-drenched fields bordered by neat cabins in Plantation Economy in the Old South (fig. 64).Walker pursued the rural idyll, unequivocally sympathetic to Southern Redemption. Educator and writer Alain Locke in his pioneering early study, The Negro in Art, describes this “plantation formula” that prevailed in American art through the mid-1870s, shaping popular ideas about African Americans that persisted into the twentieth century: “Superficial types of uncles, aunties and pickaninnies” in genre pictures reflected midcentury blackface minstrelsy stereo-

types of the African American as “half-clown, half-troubadour.”6 Several of Hovenden’s artistic contemporaries, including Eastman Johnson and Winslow Homer, painted exceptional images of African Americans throughout the 1870s. On the eve of the Civil War, Johnson had depicted the “plantation formula” of carefree and happy slaves in his Negro Life at the South, later known as Old Kentucky Home (1859, New-York Historical Society), a picture that established his reputation. The war changed him and, in 1863, he painted A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves (fig. 65), a memorable image of an African American family’s heroic flight to freedom based on a scene Johnson witnessed near Manassas in northern Virginia.7 Homer’s depictions evolved from his often

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65. Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves, ca. 1863. Oil on board, 22 ⳯ 261⁄4 in. Brooklyn Museum of Art. Gift of Miss Gwendolyn O. L. Conkling. 40.60.

stereotypical early Civil War illustrations to more sympathetic paintings based on post–Civil War trips to Virginia. Hovenden would have seen two of the Virginia paintings, A Visit from the Old Mistress (fig. 66) and Sunday Morning in Virginia (fig. 67), on exhibition at the 1878 World’s Fair

in Paris, where his own Breton Interior was also displayed.8 These works rightly earned high praise in Homer’s own day as “the most successful things of the kind this country has yet produced.” Peter H.Wood and Karen C. C. Dalton have commented on the “dignity, centrality, and force

66. Winslow Homer, A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876. Oil on canvas, 18 ⳯ 241⁄8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.28.

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67. Winslow Homer, Sunday Morning in Virginia, 1877. Oil on canvas, 18 ⳯ 24 in. Cincinnati Art Museum, John J. Emery Fund. Photograph: Walsh 9/1999. 1924.247.

[of the] black figures” in A Visit from the Old Mistress and Dressing for the Carnival (1877, Metropolitan Museum of Art) of a year later.9 Thomas Eakins, another of Hovenden’s contemporaries, also pictured African Americans without overt racist clichés. Hovenden would have known of Eakins through Milne Ramsey, a Philadelphian who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before going to Paris

68. Thomas Eakins, Will Schuster and Black Man Going Shooting for Rail, 1876. Oil on canvas, 221⁄8 ⳯ 301⁄4 in. Yale University Art Gallery. Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903.

and Pont-Aven, and through Helen Corson, who used the academy’s student classrooms for drawing practice in 1876.10 Eakins frequently depicted black Americans in a less derogatory manner. In his Will Schuster and Black Man Going Shooting for Rail (fig. 68), although the title only names the white man who hired the guide, making clear the black man’s subordinate status, Eakins rendered both figures as specific individuals.11 Eakins also

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made an arrestingly individualized wash drawing of another unnamed black man for an illustration in Scribner’s Monthly Magazine, The Poleman in the Ma’sh (ca. 1880–81), a figure the artist excerpted from one of his earlier paintings. Eakins’s belief in unrelenting observation and reliance on actual models help explain the directness of his approach.12 Hovenden had similarly tapped into the interest in African American subjects in the 1870s with his painting The Old Nurse’s Visit (see fig. 6) and his illustration A Home Missionary (see fig. 7), but his viewpoint shifted in the 1880s after his return from Paris. Hovenden’s more liberal attitude was a result of his Pont-Aven experience, the influence of Helen Corson, his close association with several African Americans as individuals rather than as occasional models, and his friendship with the noted African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner.Within five years, between 1881 and 1886, Hovenden painted fourteen known portrayals of African Americans, as well as a very large history painting of the abolitionist John Brown. Only after a hiatus of two years, however, did Hovenden again paint one more African American subject, his last, largest, and least prejudiced African American subject, Their Pride (see fig. 82), which stands as Hovenden’s considered response to the extreme climate of the late 1880s. After painting Breton peasants in Pont-Aven, Hovenden found striking analogies between their situation and that of African Americans in the post–Civil War decades.13 Like the French peasants, blacks in America were isolated from the mainstream of national life and were poor in material goods. African American educator and

author W. E. B. DuBois wrote in 1899: “We forget that once French peasants were the ‘Niggers’ of France.”14 Both Breton peasants and African Americans were thought to possess the innocence of children of nature, uncontaminated by the ills of society; both were seen as exotic “primitives.”15 The long struggle of African Americans for survival paralleled the stubborn struggle of Bretons for preservation of their customs and beliefs. The transition for African Americans from the rural life of slavery to emancipation and assimilation into a more technologically advanced and urban America could be compared to the rural Breton peasant’s gradual incorporation into a more technologically advanced, modern France. As one late nineteenth-century critic wrote: “No French painter of peasants has got nearer to the heart of his subject than Hovenden in his negro pictures.”16 The most compelling influence on Hovenden’s African American subjects was that of Helen Corson. After Hovenden married Corson in 1881 and the couple settled in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, Hovenden experienced firsthand her family’s Quaker heritage and commitment to abolition. A Pennsylvania historian writing about the Corson family three years after Hovenden’s marriage to Helen Corson stated: “With few exceptions, the whole Corson race have been cultivated in mind and are notorious for their love of free thought. They have been outspoken for freedom,—the deadly foes of slavery.” Helen Corson’s immediate family held the most open-minded white attitudes of the day toward African Americans and demonstrated their resolute commitment to the anti-slavery cause. From 1830, before Helen was born, her

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father George Corson had been actively involved with the anti-slavery cause when Benjamin Sundy, “the little meek New Jersey Quaker, the first of American Abolitionists,” spoke about slavery in Plymouth at a meeting in Corson’s house.17 George Corson’s father and uncles were among six Corsons who served as prominent “conductors” for escaping slaves making their way north through Montgomery County on the “underground railroad.” Many Quakers or descendants of Quakers were among those who collected money, food, and clothing for the stations where fugitives could eat and sleep en route. The section of the “Northern Route” that passed through Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, just northwest of Philadelphia “was deemed extremely perilous, because it lay near a great city to which news of escaped slaves was promptly reported especially after the advent of the tele-

graph. . . . The danger was further increased by the strong public opinion in favor of sustaining the law, especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, in 1850.”18 Because “Even the Friends of Plymouth . . . refused the Meeting House to the anti-slavery people,” George Corson had a second floor with a large hall built above his stable to accommodate anti-slavery meetings where Lucretia Mott, organizer of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, and William Lloyd Garrison, the journalist and newspaper publisher of Massachusetts, were among other earnest speakers. The building also served as a refuge station for fugitive slaves. George Corson died in 1860, just a week after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president. The remaining building, still known as Anti-Slavery or Abolition Hall (fig. 69), has become symbolic of the Corsons’ dedication to that cause.19

69. Abolition Hall is the large building behind the cows. It was built in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, by George Corson and used by Thomas Hovenden as a studio. The small low building was added for a studio by Hovenden around 1882. Photograph: Hovenden Stanley Dry Plate Negative.

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When Helen Corson returned home after spending “several years studying art in Paris . . . she made the old hall her studio.” Once she and Hovenden settled in the Corson homestead, they added a big north window to the large meeting room in the hall and converted the former kitchen into a photography room. Corson, who was skilled at photography, documented many of Hovenden’s works, and he occasionally used study photographs.20 Later, when Hovenden was commissioned to paint his John Brown painting, he had a small, one-story studio built adjacent to Anti-Slavery Hall.21 Joining Corson’s historical dedication to the abolitionist cause, living

in George Corson’s homestead, and using Abolition Hall for a studio, heightened Hovenden’s interest in African American subjects and fostered a more thoughtful and sympathetic approach to that subject. Among African Americans living in the adjoining townships of Plymouth and Whitemarsh, Hovenden found a favorite model, Samuel Jones, who posed for all six of Hovenden’s known genre pictures of African Americans in 1881–82 as well as a portrait (fig. 70).22 In this portrait, Hovenden concentrated on the half-length figure seated close to the picture frame and avoided details that would detract from Jones’s easy poise as

70. Portrait of Samuel Jones, ca. 1882. Oil on canvas, 10 ⳯ 8 in. Private collection, formerly property of Schweitzer Gallery. Photograph: Schweitzer Gallery.

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he looks directly at the viewer. It is an intimate portrait that Hovenden painted in grateful tribute to a personable man whom the artist had gotten to know and grown to respect. The fortunate collaboration was a fruitful one for the artist. Samuel Jones was a seventy-one-year-old laborer who lived in Plymouth Meeting within a mile and a half of the Corson-Hovenden house with his seventy-year-old wife Hester, who kept house for him and their two grown unmarried sons, George and Samuel, also laborers.23 Jones’s sturdy build, strong hands, and work clothes suggest that he was a capable laborer, while his bearing demonstrates self-assurance and amiability. In 1882, a New York art reviewer lamented the loss of Samuel Jones, adding “all lovers of Mr. Hovenden’s negro subjects will be sorry to hear [of Jones’s death].”24 At the National Academy of Design’s 1881 annual spring exhibition prior to their June marriage, Hovenden and Corson inaugurated the exhibition of their paintings of African American subjects—his Dat Possum Smell Pow’ful Good (fig. 71) and her Uncle Ned and His Pupil (fig. 72), presently known from a surviving pencil drawing. Samuel Jones posed for both genre paintings and the artists used similar “props”—chair, stove, broken mirror—and even the cat, but the themes are not the same.25 Hovenden portrays the strongly realized and individualized figure of a man described by a contemporary reviewer as “bending gleefully over a stove where an opossum is being cooked.” In the South, particularly in Virginia, hunting opossum at night was considered a sport and its white meat a culinary delicacy.26 As in Hovenden’s Breton peasant scenes, the artist conveys a condescending romanticization of

poverty in the man’s tattered clothing and the somewhat dilapidated look of the sparse interior, with its torn magazine illustration on the wall, broken mirror in a wooden frame, and fraying rush-bottomed chair. As Frederick Douglass, author and anti-slavery lecturer, said in 1883: “[The black man] is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which fetters all his movements. . . . If he comes in ignorance, rags, and wretchedness, he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome.”27 Despite similarities in the settings and the figures’ dress in Dat Possum and Hovenden’s The Puzzled Voter (see fig. 52), painted a few months earlier, the latter painting referenced a right denied to African Americans, as well as the pervasive racism all too familiar to African Americans. In Dat Possum, Hovenden provides an unequal contrast to The Puzzled Voter: whereas the white American’s concern is with the news and the body politic, the black American’s concern is with simple pleasures—a satisfying meal, a filled pipe, and a warm corner. Despite Hovenden’s individualized treatment of the subject in Dat Possum, the artist’s message is problematic and the stereotyping title is disturbing. The use of “Negro dialect” in a title signifies a superior attitude, while also setting the African American subject apart as “other,” or “quaint,” that is, not like “us”—the artist, the spectator, or the buyer. Intended to appeal to a white audience, Hovenden’s picturesque scene and colloquial title were part of larger cultural practices that promoted and legitimated racial prejudice and hierarchies; as Karen S. Linn has noted, “titles and song texts that appear today as crudely racist were not viewed in the late nineteenth century as being in poor taste: they were

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71. Dat Possum Smell Pow’ful Good, 1881. Oil on canvas, 191⁄2 ⳯ 14 in. Robert Hull Fleming Museum, University of Vermont. Gift of Mr. Allen Gerdau, 1956.49.3.

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72. Helen Corson, Uncle Ned and His Pupil, 1881. Pencil drawing. Private collection.

part of a widely accepted belief system.”28 A contemporary commentator thought that viewers would at once identify the man in Dat Possum Smell Pow’ful Good as “Uncle Tom!”29 Hovenden painted Samuel Jones as the recognizable individual he was, but Hovenden held the white attitudes of his day. In the same year as he painted Dat Possum, Hovenden painted Never Too Late to Mend, a picture presently only known from an engraved

reproduction in Harper’s Weekly (fig. 73), showing another bachelor sewing on a jacket button in a plainly furnished interior with similar suggestions of casual housekeeping. Propped up on the chest of drawers is an illustrated page from Harper’s Weekly showing a bearded man (Abraham Lincoln perhaps), while another illustration, possibly of a man making a speech, is on the wall. Samuel Jones’s strong hands now appear dexterous and he threads a needle with the help of reading

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73. Engraving of Hovenden’s Never Too Late to Mend in Harper’s Weekly 26 (3 June 1882): 344.

glasses. Seen directly from the front, the mender dominates the space in which he sits. In both Dat Possum and Never Too Late to Mend, Hovenden portrays blacks in their own surroundings, not on the fringes of white society as in earlier American art: both the pot-watcher and the mender are self-sufficient men. Hovenden’s romantic interpretations are visual analogues of ideas of the period circulated by the New South movement— African Americans shown in nostalgic, nonthreat-

ening settings, which suggest none of the tensions of the period.30 Both Hovenden and Corson explored the popular theme of the banjo in their paintings of African Americans. Corson’s 1881 drawing for her presently unlocated painting, Uncle Ned and His Pupil, shows a black man teaching a white youth how to play the banjo; her theme is the passing on of musical skill and cultural knowledge, just as the old former slave Uncle Remus instructed a white youth in black folklore in Joel Chandler Harris’s acclaimed stories of the period. One art critic at the National Academy exhibition thought that “Miss Helen Corson is seen at her best in Uncle Ned and His Pupil,” and described the setting as “a comfortable negro hut” where “an aged colored man . . . is endeavoring to explain to his young pupil the mysteries of the banjo instrument.” “Uncle Ned,” a racial stereotype for older black men who had been slaves, derived from songwriter Stephen Foster’s popular “Old Uncle Ned.”31 Corson’s picture, painted a few years after the end of Reconstruction, resonates with some of the racial tensions of the period. On the one hand, Corson’s representation counters the belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority and questions the Southern myth of happy race relations: the African American teacher possesses knowledge and authority, while the drinking gourd on the wall symbolizes the Big Dipper, the constellation that guided fugitive slaves on their flight northward.32 The banjo, originally a West African instrument fashioned from a gourd shell taken to the West Indies and North America by black slaves, was shunned by African Americans once it was adopted by whites and used in blackface minstrelsy. Thus, on the other hand, although the

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74. Thomas Eakins, Negro Boy Dancing, 1878. Watercolor on off-white woven paper, 181⁄16 ⳯ 229⁄16 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1925 (25.97.1). Photograph, all rights reserved, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

image in Corson’s painting negates the usual nineteenth-century use of the banjo to imply that blacks were pleasure-loving rather than hardworking, in the popular mind, the African origin of the banjo still carried exotic, “primitive,” “half-barbaric” implications.33 By mid-nineteenth century, the generally accepted white image of the “ole” banjo was in the hands of a kindly, elderly plantation “darkey”; for African Americans, the banjo thus became a conflicted symbol, signifying their West African origin and heritage but also slavery, denigration in

blackface minstrelsy, Dixie, and white racism thinly veiled in Southern romance.34 Thematically, Corson’s picture recalls Eakins’s earlier watercolor Negro Boy Dancing (fig. 74), in which three ages of man, implying generational bonds and time’s passage, form an intimate group of blacks seriously concentrating on the youth who dances in time to the rhythm the banjo player strokes and the older man taps out with his foot. Although Eakins and Corson depart to some extent from the overtly racist representations of blacks and blackface minstrel

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75. I’se So Happy! 1882. Oil on canvas, 26 ⳯ 18 in. Location unknown. Photograph: Roy Wilson.

figures that proliferated in late nineteenth-century visual culture, both paintings subtly reinforce stereotypes of the period: blacks are consigned to familiar roles as musicians, offering white viewers comforting, unchanging scenes of African American life.35 Hovenden also turned to the banjo theme

by the autumn of 1881 when he painted I’se So Happy! (fig. 75), which was purchased by Thomas B. Clarke directly from the artist.36 A stereotypical image of an elderly black man with a banjo with a vernacular title, this portrayal would have appealed to Hovenden’s white middle- to upperclass audience of the time as aptly “characteristic” of its African American subject. No doubt Corson and Hovenden were well-intentioned, yet the stereotypes associated with the theme of the banjo and the racist references in the titles carry unsettling connotations, revealing the artists’ patronizing viewpoints. Hovenden’s individualized portrayal itself, nonetheless, appears to be candid and the skilled musician possesses an innate composure that takes precedence over details of setting and clothing. The banjo player looks directly at the viewer, creating an impression of forthrightness and also indicating a direct connection between artist and model that seems genuine. The banjoist plays for his own enjoyment and recollection, and the music he plays is a legacy from plantation slaves who merged West African styles and Irish and Scottish folk-dance tunes heard in America into a new musical form. At the turn of the century,W. E. B. DuBois said in his remarkable book, The Souls of Black Folk, there is “no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave.”37 Hovenden’s Dem Was Good Ole Times (fig. 76) is akin to I’se So Happy. A contemporary newspaper critic described the picture: “an old white haired darkey, with an expressive and strongly painted face, clad in garments as many colored as those of Joseph, is seated on a table, pipe in hand . . . chucklin out,‘Dem was good old times.’”38 Against a dark, plain background, the

76. Dem Was Good Ole Times, 1882. Oil on canvas, 161⁄8 ⳯ 121⁄8 in. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia. Purchased with funds provided by the Chrysler Museum Landmark Communication Art Trust; an anonymous donor; Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Waitzer; Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Barry III; and the Museum’s Accession Fund. 92.49.1.

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77. Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Oil on canvas, 49 ⳯ 351⁄2 in. Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia.

musician, dressed in patchwork garments in cream, greens, and browns, takes a break to enjoy his pipe and smile at the viewer while the banjo rests on the comb-back Windsor chair. While the painting’s title may refer to the good times the musician has enjoyed playing his instrument, the phrase “dem was good ole times” also resonated with mythical views of the Old South circulating in the post–Civil War decades. In

Thomas Nelson Page’s hugely successful story “Marse Chan,” published two years after the painting was completed, a former slave uses the phrase, “Dem wuz good ole times, marster,” specifically meaning times were better under slavery.39 Neither Hovenden, who admired the abolitionist John Brown, nor Jones, the artist’s model, could have intended a justification of slavery as did the Virginia author, yet Hovenden’s title similarly conjures up nostalgic scenes of plantation life.40 Hovenden’s humane image is at odds with the painting’s title, revealing the artist’s ambivalence toward African Americans as well as his desire to create a work that would appeal to white audiences and buyers.41 Hovenden’s sensitive portrayals of African American life likely inspired fellow Philadelphia artist Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) to explore similar themes in the early 1890s in paintings such as The Banjo Lesson (fig. 77). Tanner’s and Hovenden’s initial meeting dates back to the early 1880s, when the former was studying under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Tanner and Hovenden maintained connections during the 1880s and 1890s in Philadelphia, where Hovenden taught at the academy and Tanner had a studio. A friend of Tanner’s Philadelphia patron Robert C. Ogden, Hovenden was also a juror at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and may have been instrumental in Tanner’s invitation to give a paper on “The American Negro in Art” at the Congress on Africa in Chicago in August 1893. The following April, Hovenden and Tanner exhibited together at Earle’s Galleries in Philadelphia.42 An article published in the Baltimore Herald two years after Hovenden’s death referred to his

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influence on Tanner, stating that “Mr. Hovenden did more than instill into Tanner a good technical knowledge of painting. He [Hovenden] seemed to infuse into him [Tanner] a comprehension of and sympathy with the broader and deeper things of life and art.”43 As Tanner scholar Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., claims, Hovenden’s paintings of African American life in the 1880s, such as Dat Possum and Dem Was Good Ole Times, seem to have “served as a major catalyst” for Tanner’s decision to paint several genre pictures of African American subjects when the latter came back to the United States from France.44 Tanner’s portrayal of an elderly man passing on his knowledge and skill to a youngster in The Banjo Lesson, perhaps the most significant and affecting painting of the banjo theme, recalls Eakins’s watercolor Negro Boy Dancing. It is also probable that Tanner was familiar with Hovenden’s and Corson’s banjo pictures, at least as drawings, as well as Hovenden’s 1884 painting of John Brown, famous as “Old Osawatomie Brown,” Henry Ossawa Tanner’s namesake.45 Hovenden’s I’se So Happy! clearly influenced Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson in the central dominance of the seated man with legs spread apart, the angle of the held banjo, and the simple domestic interior setting for a genre scene. Even Tanner’s loosely applied, visible brush strokes and interest in the play of light are like Hovenden’s paintings of 1893–94 in the Impressionist manner shown in the two artists’ 1894 joint exhibition.46 Hovenden would have agreed with Tanner, who believed that many representations of African Americans showed only the “comic” or the “ludicrous” aspects of black life. Tanner believed and proved in The Banjo Lesson that “other things being equal, he who

has most sympathy with his subject will obtain the best results.”47 Just as Hovenden’s years in Pont-Aven and his genre paintings of Breton peasants were crucial in his efforts to depict sympathetic scenes of African American home life, Tanner’s summer trip to the western North Carolina mountains, where white banjoists carried on the banjo music of plantation slaves, and his later summers in Brittany, including Pont-Aven, were formative for his creation of The Banjo Lesson. Like Hovenden, who probably urged Tanner to go to Brittany, Tanner sensed parallels between peasants and African Americans.48 In addition to his single-figure pictures of African Americans, in the 1880s Hovenden also painted several genre scenes involving couples or family groups that met with critical praise. Sunday Morning (fig. 78) features a scene of a longmarried couple preparing to dress for church; they share with wry amusement the wife’s discovery of a sock in need of mending as her husband sharpens his razor. Hovenden’s neighbor Samuel Jones was the model for the husband and Samuel’s wife Hester probably posed as the wife. The narrative is set in a sparse interior, similar to that of Dat Possum (see fig. 71): the cream-colored walls are virtually bare, save for a few items hanging in the background such as the powderhorn; the simple furnishings include a colonial-style bench against the back wall, like the bench in The Revised Version (see fig. 55), and a table, dresser, and chair. A mirror stands propped against a pitcher on the dresser, while a beautifully painted white cloth lies crumpled next to the shaving mug on the table. Early morning sunlight streams in from the window at the left, illuminating the man’s rich brown face

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78. Sunday Morning, 1881. Oil on canvas, 181⁄4 ⳯ 151⁄2 in. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

and the back of his wife’s kerchief and shoulders. The disrepair of the couple’s meager comforts, such as the broken mirror and the footstool’s split wood, and their worn and patchwork garments, recall the interiors and costumes in

Hovenden’s earlier Pont-Aven paintings such as The One Who Can Read (see fig. 37) and A Breton Interior in 1793 (see fig. 39). Although Hovenden presented similar themes in The Old Version (see fig. 54) and Sunday

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Morning—conjugal sharing, fidelity, domestic tranquility—Sunday observance for African Americans held particular significance. DuBois wrote that because family life was destroyed by slavery, the church “represented all that was left of African tribal life and was the sole expression of the organized efforts of the slaves.” With the week’s work over, the custom was to sleep late, eat a good breakfast, “sally forth to church well dressed and complacent,” and attend the eleven o’clock service followed by social events. To DuBois at the beginning of the new century “black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.”49 A few years later, James Weldon Johnson, in The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, wrote about the guiding authority of the black preacher and singing leader who “led the race from paganism . . . to Christianity” and kept African Americans in the faith through the years of slavery. Attendance at religious gatherings was one freedom allowed African Americans during slavery and the faith and fellowship sponsored by the black church knit African Americans together in a caring community and kept alive their common heritage and their hopes.A late twentieth-century writer stated: “Without the black church, modern American culture would be unimaginable.” Its music, gospel singing, underlies contemporary American music; its theology drove the civil rights movement.50 Understanding the importance of the church in African American culture, Hovenden was drawn to the theme that celebrated a legacy that survived slavery, Reconstruction, and even Southern redemption. Once again, Hovenden’s message was that traditional values could outlast the onslaught of change and give hope to the future.

Hovenden’s choice of subject and treatment, however, project a conflicted image. Critical differences between The Old Version and Sunday Morning reveal Hovenden’s bias. First, an amusing incident that occurred one Sunday morning is hardly comparable to the subject of reading and seriously contemplating the Bible. Further, one picture presents a middle-aged white couple in a comfortably furnished keeping room, while the other presents a middle-aged black couple in a constricted, bare-floored domestic corner with signs of picturesque poverty. Despite their sparse surroundings, good cheer suffuses the picture, calling to mind the myth of contented slaves. As Hugh Honour states, Hovenden’s Sunday Morning was the kind of image “beloved by the general public on both sides of the Atlantic,” showing blacks as whites liked to see them, with “local color” and living “complaisantly apart.”51 Hovenden again presents the older couple of Sunday Morning in Chloe and Sam (fig. 79), the largest and the culminating painting of the group of paintings from the early 1880s.When Chloe and Sam was exhibited at the National Academy of Design along with The Old Version, a New York critic described the painting as “a negro cottage interior, with an inimitable and charming pair of old negro types,” and admired both pictures for being “excellent American genres.”52 Hovenden reused the setting, “props,” and models that appear in his previous works: dried ears of corn and a banjo are among the articles hung on the rough, bare walls in the room, while a window to the left with a geranium on the sill provides the only light source to the setting.A dresser cluttered with pottery, a table, and Windsor chair—all of which appear in other genre paintings from the period—furnish

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79. Chloe and Sam, 1882. Oil on canvas, 221⁄2 ⳯ 27 in. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. 1992.3.

the room. The older, spectacled woman wearing a kerchief resembles the figure of the mammy in The Old Nurse’s Visit (see fig. 6) and the wife in Sunday Morning; the figure of “Sam,” the pot-watcher, and the iron stove recall the scene in Dat Possum; and the banjo on a shelf echoes that theme in I’se So Happy and Dem Was Good Ole Times. “Chloe” irons a red cloth on the table, from underneath

which a piece of blue, white, and red fabric hangs. “Sam” attends to the meal simmering in the pot, holding the lid in his hand while he checks on the progress of the dish within.A second iron also heats up on the stove, ready for use once the one in Chloe’s hand cools. Hovenden uses a few patches of bright colors to highlight certain areas of the composition: Chloe’s bright yellow and red

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80. Taking His Ease, 1885. Oil on canvas, 153⁄4 ⳯ 193⁄4 in. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd. 1979.7.59.

kerchief and cream-colored speckled shirt, the greenish-colored bedding on the chair to the right, and the green swathe of carpet on the floor, stand out from the dark background of the shadowy room and emphasize the activity in the foreground space. Once again, Hovenden presents a nonthreatening image of African Americans in a quaintly picturesque setting, much like his Breton peasant interiors of the 1870s.What the couple now share is no longer explicitly described as was the humorous incident in Sunday Morning; they seem somewhat isolated from each other, engrossed in their own thoughts. More evocative

and more pensive, the mood is quieter than Hovenden’s other genre paintings of African Americans in 1880 and 1882. In the later 1880s, Hovenden painted several African American genre pictures using the same new male model as in Taking His Ease (fig. 80), a picture praised for being painted in a “masterly fashion” when exhibited in 1885 at the National Academy.53 The firm figural statement, dark palette, and painterly highlights enhance the male theme of enjoying a pipe in a relaxing, contemplative moment beside a sunny window. In An Old Shaver (fig. 81), Hovenden again concentrates

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81. An Old Shaver, 1886. Oil on canvas, 201⁄2 ⳯ 14 in. Private collection. Image courtesy of Thomas Colville Fine Art.

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82. Their Pride, 1888. Oil on canvas, 31 ⳯ 40 in. The Union League Club of New York.

on the figure: the man is posed close to the picture plane, looking directly at the viewer as he holds a shaving brush and razor in his hands.A corner cupboard, framed picture on the wall, and a Windsor chair to the right provide a simple background for the scene. The play of sunlight from a source to the left illuminates the bright white cloth hanging from a nail and highlights the man’s white shirtsleeves, collar, and beard. Hovenden justly considered Their Pride

(fig. 82) the most significant of his paintings of African Americans, both for its complex, multifigured composition and its meaningful theme. When the artist exhibited the painting at the National Academy of Design he listed a higher price for it than for his genre pictures with fewer figures.54 Casually posed around a room similar to that in Chloe and Sam, the artist portrays an intimate family group at leisure: the central figure, a young woman wearing a stylish dress,

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skeptically gazes at her reflection in a hand mirror to judge the effects of a new bonnet. An open hat box on the floor at her mother’s feet alludes to the new purchase. To the young woman’s left, her mother looks up solicitously, clutching a piece of fabric between her hands on her aproned lap. The father leans back pensively in his rocking chair by the window, enjoying a cigarette as he watches the proceedings, while the girl’s younger brother grins up at her as he slumps over the table. The interior in Their Pride is more ordered and the furniture more substantial than that of other domestic interiors in Hovenden’s paintings of African Americans; the bench under the window, the corner cupboard, and the clock on the wall all resemble the “props” in The Old Version instead of the more dilapidated contents seen in Chloe and Sam. The young woman’s stylish dress and flowered hatbox also suggest a certain economic stability. Tanner scholar Woods states that “Hovenden was the only artist of that century to successfully lift the depiction of blacks from the depths of poverty and present them amid comfortable surroundings.” The family scene of emancipated blacks within their own social setting shows a lifestyle and expectations like those of other urban middle-class Americans. For that reason Their Pride is an exceptional painting.55 Hovenden’s subject illuminates the generational differences within a family at a time of momentous change for African Americans, as Hovenden’s empathetic journalist friend Sears explained: “These two generations stand for two dispensations in the career of their race. Between them lies the great gulf of the civil war. The parents were born and brought up in the day of African slavery—the daughter is a free born

American. Her youth has been so different from what their[s] was that they recognize their inability to fully understand her character and position. Their tacit admission of her superiority reflects the change in the estate of the colored people wrought by emancipation.”56 The young African American woman of Their Pride exhibits confidence in herself and in a new future; she symbolizes new hope for African Americans. DuBois wrote that for African Americans despairing over the triumph of home rule in the South and the Supreme Court’s overturning the 1875 Civil Rights Act in 1883, “a new vision” replaced the hope of the free ballot as the way to liberty and fulfillment. The new guiding ideal was education: “Book learning” was “the mountain path to Canaan, longer than the highway of Emancipation and law”; it “changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect.” Freed African Americans filled Sabbath schools and Freedmen’s Bureau free schools for African Americans all over the South, and the new black colleges— Wilberforce University, Atlanta University, Fisk University, Howard University, Hampton Institute—were founded, the last four within the first three years following the Civil War. Education seemed the way to the Promised Land.57 Their Pride was welcomed by critics, praised by the author George W. Sheldon for being “American in subject” and by others for its lifelikeness, figure painting, composition, and harmony of color, although their comments often reveal underlying racist viewpoints.58 Hovenden’s moderately sized canvasses of American subjects at affordable prices for middleclass buyers attracted patronage and favorable

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contemporary response, as his first patron John W. McCoy predicted. This was especially true for the artist’s paintings of African Americans: Dem Was Good Ole Times was reported to be among the few paintings that brought the highest prices in the sale at the Philadelphia Society of Artists in early 1883. Thomas B. Clarke, the New York businessman and leading patron of American art, bought or spoke for Dat Possum, I’se So Happy, and Chloe and Sam directly from the artist’s studio and almost doubled his investment when he sold Dat Possum a few months after he acquired it.59 Hovenden continued to paint several moderately sized genre pictures of African Americans in the later 1880s. His contemporary, the author S. R. Koehler, commented on the kinship of these genre pictures with Hovenden’s earlier genre paintings and believed that no other artist of that time, except Thomas S. Noble, had Hovenden’s “deep insight” and “sympathy” for African American subjects.60 Critical reception of Hovenden’s African American genre pictures was positive to enthusiastic, often exceeding that of his white genre pictures. One reviewer of the 1881 National Academy exhibition thought that if Hovenden’s Dat Possum were larger than its nineteen by fourteen inches it would have received a place of honor. The critic believed that no figure painter in America could “come near” Hovenden, lauding the artist’s “extraordinary power of characterization” in his ambitious In Hoc Signo Vinces (see fig. 41) and in his modest Dat Possum.61 At an exhibition showing Elaine (see fig. 48) and Dem Was Good Ole Times, a critic preferred the latter to the former. Admitting that the big picture, Elaine, was justly hung in the place of honor, the writer thought Dem Was Good Ole Times was the “gem” of

the exhibition and an “example of the highest achievement art can attain, namely the expression of noble sentiment in human portraiture.” This critic concluded: “When an artist paints a human countenance, aglow with loving kindness, suffused with fond memories and tender sympathies, touched with a latent sense of native humor, and withal as true to nature as nature herself, then his works praise him beyond the power of words to tell.”62 Another appreciative critic of Hovenden’s Dem Was Good Ole Times, exhibited in a watercolor version, believed it a better example of the artist’s work than his “excellent single figure” The Revised Version, praising Dem Was Good Ole Times as “one of the most brilliantly painted and beautifully colored” pictures in the American Water Color Society’s exhibition.63 White buyers, critics, and gallery visitors were especially drawn to Hovenden’s relatively humane depictions of African Americans. His portrayals were expertly painted, pleasant, and— perhaps most important—totally unthreatening. Such portrayals may even have helped to alleviate any sense of guilt and to hinder any recognition of personal prejudice in that time and place. Unfortunately, judging by critical comments, the deeper implications of Hovenden’s themes in his African American genre pictures, unlike those in his Euro-American genre pictures, eluded most critics, who were white, and probably most of the public, also white, who admired the paintings for artistic mastery and picturesqueness, “local color,” or “native humor.” The author George W. Sheldon had a fuller understanding. Comparing Hovenden’s Their Pride with his Breton Interior (see fig. 39) of ten years earlier, Sheldon thought that Hovenden’s technique had improved. Then Sheldon

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made this assessment of the artist: “Before he had been in this country two years it was said of him: ‘He has shown himself capable of independent poetic expression. . . . He has done enough to satisfy his friends that he is an artist. He manifests the power of awakening sentiment.’ Certainly nothing less than this can be said of Mr. Hovenden to-day.‘The Pride of the Family’ [Their Pride] is worthy of a place beside the best efforts of Winslow Homer.”64 Hovenden painted several single-figure pictures of young African American men and women

in the 1880s that were marketable subjects intended to appeal to the artist’s white middle- to upper-class audience and buyers.With restraint, even tenderness, Hovenden presents a meditative Young Woman Holding a Cabbage (fig. 83) in a bare interior. The sensitive interplay of light grayed browns, whites, and warm skin tones enhances the quiet, reflective mood. Such solemnity brings to mind the traditional memento mori or vanitas theme. This painting’s pensive, melancholy tone accords with the general sense of despair among those sympathetic to the situation of African

83. Young Woman Holding a Cabbage, n.d. Oil on canvas, 163⁄4 ⳯ 125⁄8 in. Private collection. Photograph courtesy of Schweitzer Gallery, New York.

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84. Youth Blowing Smoke Rings, 1884. Oil on canvas, 20 ⳯ 157⁄8 in. Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Gift of Laura A. Clubb. 1947.8.71.

Americans in the 1880s: in 1883 the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, and throughout the 1880s and 1890s enthusiasm for Reconstruction waned and animosity toward African Americans increased, even among formerly sympathetic abolitionists in the North.65 Hovenden’s large-scale history painting The Last Moments of John Brown (1882–84) (see fig. 88), a scene depicting the tragic end to the legendary abolitionist’s fight against slavery, was created during the same period as the artist’s African American genre pictures and reveals Hovenden’s sympathies for the abolitionist cause (see Chap-

ter 5 for a discussion of The Last Moments of John Brown). Hovenden’s two lighthearted paintings of African American boys, Youth Blowing Smoke Rings (fig. 84) and Ain’t That Ripe (fig. 85), presented accessible subjects with widespread appeal to late nineteenth-century viewers; such images tapped into the popularity of pictures of childhood in the decades after the Civil War. Paralleling a sense of the nation’s irreparable loss of young manhood during the conflict, the popularity of the subject of childhood, especially of white children, increased. As Sarah Burns has argued, such

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85. Ain’t That Ripe, ca. 1884–85. Oil on canvas, 2115⁄16 ⳯ 1515⁄16 in. Brooklyn Museum of Art. Gift of the Executors of the Estate of Colonel Michael Friedsam. 32.825.

nostalgic subjects offered comfort in the wake of the upheaval of war and appealed “to what was simple, rural, and untroubled by the problems of modern urban life.”66 In the spirit of “boys will be boys,” Hovenden’s youths fit the widely accepted image of boys in genre pictures and in literature as being mischievously entertaining, contrasting with the cliché of sweet, gentle girls. Youth Blowing Smoke Rings recalls its subject, focus on the figure, and dark palette, the cocky young boys in works by Munich-trained artists such as William

Merritt Chase’s Impudence (or The Leader, 1875, Addison Gallery of American Art) and Frank Duveneck’s Whistling Boy (1872, Cincinnati Art Museum).67 Hovenden revels in the underage smoker’s delight in admiring his smoke rings while neglecting assigned chores, such as polishing the pot in the picture’s lower right corner. Painted about a year after Youth Blowing Smoke Rings,Ain’t That Ripe features the same model, now slightly older, displaying a ripe watermelon to prove his perceptive judgment

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86. Winslow Homer, Watermelon Boys, 1876. Oil on canvas, 241⁄8 ⳯ 381⁄8 in. Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York. Gift of Charles Savage Homer, Jr., 1917–14–6. Photograph: Mildred E. Baldwin.

about a variety of melon, which originated in Africa and became a staple in the American South. Hovenden’s later picture bears a striking resemblance to several of Homer’s paintings of African American youths from the mid-1870s, including Taking Sunflower to Teacher (1875, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia), Weaning the Calf (1875, North Carolina Museum of Art), and, in particular, Watermelon Boys (fig. 86).68 Ain’t That Ripe presents the stereotype of a broadly smiling African American with a ripe watermelon that brings to mind crudely offensive and grotesque racist caricatures of African Americans that appeared in nineteenth-century blackface minstrelsy and the illustrated media. Hovenden’s image of a young African American is ingratiating and it contrasts with the wary attentiveness of the central figure of Homer’s three youths and with the tense numbness and suggested loss of innocence of William Michael Harnett’s youth in Attention, Company! (fig. 87).69

Hovenden’s disturbing stereotypical depiction, painted soon after the completion of a monumental painting honoring the abolitionist hero John Brown, is perplexing and lays bare Hovenden’s fundamental ambivalence and his unthinking acceptance of some of the most rankly prejudiced attitudes of his day. An obvious explanation for Hovenden’s using such a repugnant “popular convention” was his desire “to create saleable images of African Americans.”70 When Homer’s Watermelon Boys was exhibited in the 1870s, some critics viewed the artist as “serving a public taste that wanted pictures to amuse [and] thrill”; perhaps Hovenden, too, was seeking to capitalize on the popular appeal of such images a decade later.71 Indeed, Hovenden was always conscious of the need to support himself, and, later, his family. Early letters to McCoy indicate the concern about what his work would bring and his thrifty habits. Inevitably, Hovenden reflected his place and time. After 1885, Hoven-

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87. William Michael Harnett, Attention, Company! 1878. Oil on canvas, 36 ⳯ 28 in. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. 1970.230.

den stopped using dialect in titles, and he stopped painting black subjects altogether after the late 1880s, perhaps because of the increasingly blatant and offensive imagery of African Americans in the 1890s and the deteriorating climate of opinion they reflected. In Hovenden’s humane, single, paired, or familial portrayals of African Americans, the artist continued to mine distinctly American subjects and to portray them in simple domestic interiors with furnishings and daily contexts reminiscent of his Pont-Aven paintings. He honored their rich

contributions to American life in folklore, oral expression, music, and the ongoing struggle for equal rights twenty years after the end of the Civil War. For no other social group of the late nineteenth century was change so sudden and traumatic. In that often dispiriting decade of the 1880s, Hovenden sounded for African Americans—as he did for Breton peasants in the 1870s—his theme of leaving the old and facing the new, of preserving the values of family and community to enrich and give meaning and hope to an altered present and an uncertain future.

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Hovenden’s approach to his African American subjects reveals on the one hand a sympathetic interest in their struggles for freedom, shared customs, culture, and faith, inspired in part by his affiliation with Helen Corson’s Quaker family and his friendships with his African American models. On the other hand, Hovenden’s romanticized visions of black poverty and contentment tapped into a pervasive nostalgia for the legendary Old South and a demand for unthreatening images of

black Americans at a time when racial conflict was intensifying across America. Although Hovenden’s ambitious canvas The Last Moments of John Brown, the focus of the next chapter, suggests that he was sympathetic to the situation of African Americans in the 1880s, Hovenden was certainly not immune to the prejudices of his day and his genre paintings of that same decade reveal the artist’s ambivalence toward blacks in America.

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Images to “Appeal to the National Mind” [Few artists] appeal to the national mind or average sympathies; let a bold genius scan our history,note our civilization,examine our life and he will discover innumerable themes characteristic enough to excite the interest of the people. —Henry Tuckerman, Book of the Artists: American Artist Life (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1867), vol. 1, 39 While most of Hovenden’s works from the 1880s and early 1890s center on domestic genre themes, the artist also explored subjects from American history in several significant paintings of the period. Writing soon after the end of the Civil War, the art historian Henry Tuckerman called for painters to “scan our history” for national themes. “Our Colonial, pioneer, and Revolutionary eras,” he suggested, could offer possible subjects with broad appeal. Remembering America’s past might unite an increasingly fragmented society and renew a sense of nationhood after the upheaval of the Civil War.1 Although the earliest of his three key American history paintings, The Last Moments of John Brown (fig. 88), hardly presented late nineteenth-century audiences with a unifying theme, Hovenden’s subsequent paintings, In the Hands of the Enemy (fig. 89) and The Founders of a State (also known as The Opening of the West, fig. 90), offered more agreeable scenarios that appealed to a growing sense of reconciliation in the post–Civil War decades. The Last Moments of John Brown, a depiction of the abolitionist in the final minutes prior to his execution, continued to ignite heated opinions

over this controversial figure and the divisive issue of slavery—both volatile topics into the 1880s. By contrast, In the Hands of the Enemy, an imagined scene at the turning point of the Civil War, joins soldiers from both sides of the conflict in a tender domestic scene. Finally, The Founders of a State, left unfinished at Hovenden’s death, celebrates the optimism and promise of the American frontier. Hovenden approached these paintings inspired by defining episodes of America’s past—the fight against slavery, the Civil War, and westward expansion—in much the same way he had created his Breton history paintings: he cast these national themes in human terms, capturing portentous moments with which ordinary Americans could identify. Although the challenge of portraying themes from America’s history attracted Hovenden, there was an abrupt decline in American history painting after the mid-1860s. Editor and critic S. R. Koehler could not cite “a solitary example” of history painting shown at the Philadelphia Society of Artists exhibition in 1880 in which “Paris-Americans”—Hovenden, Picknell, and Corson among them—were exceptionally strong, although there

88. The Last Moments of John Brown, 1882–84. Oil on canvas, 773⁄8 ⳯ 631⁄4 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel, 1897. (97.5) Photograph © 1982 Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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89. In the Hands of the Enemy, 1889. Oil on canvas, 53 ⳯ 72 in. Ellen Battell-Stoeckel Trust. Photograph: Courtesy Ellen Battell-Stoeckel Trust.

was an assortment of subjects from all other categories. Traditional academic hierarchies of painting and the belief in the absolute priority of history painting were collapsing by the 1880s.2 A critic in an 1881 issue of American Art Review made a plea for native subjects, asking “Where are the artists who are to immortalize themselves” by painting “our remarkable scenes?” the writer continued, urging, “Now is the time to paint them.” Such entreaties for “the true American historical subject” continued into the latter decades of the nineteenth century.3 In part, the paucity of “seri-

ous and notable achievement” in the United States was a result of a lack of patronage: Congress did not give commissions to reputable artists, and public institutions and private collectors bought many foreign works.As one critic lamented, now the “American painter seldom can afford to devote his time to a serious composition” and instead paints “excellent but comparatively insignificant studies of everyday life for which he finds a ready market.”4 Fortunately, a patron, Robbins Battell, sought out Hovenden for a specific commission

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90. The Founders of a State, 1895. Oil on canvas, 53 ⳯ 72 in. Historical Society of Montgomery County, Norristown, Pennsylvania. Photograph courtesy of Lee M. Edwards, New York.

to paint “a historical picture of the last moments of John Brown.” Battell, a descendant of four Mayflower pilgrims, was a New York manufacturer and philanthropist who lived in Norfolk, Connecticut, and was a collector of American art, a bibliophile, a music lover, and a citizen interested in historical matters, and local, state, and national public affairs.5 Either the landscape painter Thomas Worthington Whittredge (1820–1910), or Eastman Johnson, then busy with portraiture, or both of them, recommended Hovenden to Battell. Seeing Hovenden’s Elaine (see fig. 48), which was prominently hung at the 1882 National

Academy of Design’s annual spring exhibition, may have further persuaded Battell. By June 1882, Battell and Hovenden were discussing the artist’s advance for the commission.6 The finished painting The Last Moments of John Brown is a Salon-scale work, measuring over six feet high. The grand format for Hovenden’s painting, larger than Battell originally expected, suggests that the artist was consciously emulating French academic examples, drawing on his exposure to large-scale history paintings at the Paris Salon and his academic training under Cabanel. In addition, Hovenden may have discovered that

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he needed a larger canvas in working out the multifigured composition.7 In the picture, Hovenden records the final minutes of John Brown’s life as the captured abolitionist leader is led to the gallows for execution. The stage for this dramatic moment is the porch of an old red brick jail; Brown and his jailers—one holding the death warrant—descend the wooden steps in the center, flanked by militiamen and sympathetic African Americans on both sides. Hovenden chose the more pictorially effective frontal representation of Brown’s departure instead of a profile view of Brown descending steps alongside the building, as shown in the 1859 published sketch (fig. 91). Based on specific descriptions Hovenden obtained about what Brown wore on 2 December 1859, the artist depicted him in a dark brown suit and maroon velvet carpet slippers.8 A rope restraint is visible around Brown’s right arm, and the noose draped around his neck foreshadows his death by hanging. Military guards to the left of the painting, dressed in dark blue coats and blue trousers with red stripes, watch over

their shoulders as they attempt to keep onlookers from coming too close to the prisoner; the rifle and bayonet of the soldier in the foreground point to the apex of the triangle formed by the procession of figures. Several African Americans may be glimpsed around this group of figures to the left: a man in dark clothing peers over one soldier’s shoulder, holding his hat in his right hand; to the far left, against the wall of the jail, a woman stares intently at the proceedings; and a small boy looks out from the side of the stairs. Hovenden repeats a similar cluster of guards to the right of the painting, standing erect, rifles pointed upward, but the artist has moved the men further away from the steps to give view onto a tender scene between Brown and a few faithful supporters. A young African American woman, dressed in tattered clothing and a kerchief, holds her baby up to Brown’s face as he leaves the jail—the baby reaches gingerly toward Brown’s neck while he leans over to kiss the child.A white girl and a second black child huddle close to the woman while they catch a glimpse of the infamous abolitionist.

91. After A. Berghaus’s pencil sketch, Execution of Brown,Who Is Coming Down the Steps of the Jail, 1859. Wood engraving, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 17 December 1859, 41. Photograph: Library of Congress.

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Hovenden went to great lengths to create authenticity in the painting, and press discussions of his earnest investigations for historical accuracy were approving.9 He read midcentury accounts of Brown’s execution and made trips to Charlestown, West Virginia, to study the site of the original jail destroyed in the Civil War. He also interviewed Brown’s jailer, Captain John Avis, and researched the uniforms worn by the Virginia State Militia, called Jefferson Guards. The four state guardsmen, according to Hovenden’s journalist friend John V. Sears, wear the U.S. artillery uniform with the insignia of the State of Virginia on their belts and hats.10 To have the outdoor light necessary to paint a resemblance of the midmorning scene of the abolitionist’s last moments, Hovenden had a small studio with large windows added to Abolition Hall. After choosing appropriate models, he positioned them on the steps of a neighbor’s house. The artist himself served as the model for the figure of the sheriff holding the death warrant; Helen Corson Hovenden posed for the black woman leaning against the wall of the jail; and the Virginian standing to the sheriff’s left resembles H. Bolton Jones.11 The public and the critics expected accuracy in Hovenden’s portrayal: for instance, one writer objected to the artist taking unnecessary “license” in picturing the rope around Brown’s neck “unless the rope was actually worn to the scaffold.” Hovenden responded with a letter to the editor naming Brown’s jailer as his authority for the depiction.12 John Brown (1800–1859), a fearless, insurrectionist leader in the fight against slavery, was never a universally acclaimed American hero. Many acknowledged, however, that he played a

pivotal role in American history and that he, as hero or as villain, was the firebrand who ignited the Civil War. John Brown hated slavery and was convinced that he was doing God’s will in fighting it with violent means (fig. 92).13 In Kansas he planned the murder of five pro-slavery settlers and resisted an attack on the settlement of Osawatomie by pro-slavery supporters, earning his nickname “Old Osawatomie Brown.” He solicited financial support, rifles, and iron pikes in Massachusetts, and, with a zealous band of twenty-odd other men, attacked a U.S. Armory and Arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Jefferson County, Virginia, on the night of 16 October 1859.

92. Unknown photographer, John Brown in 1856. Ambrotype taken at Osawatomie in 1856. Library of Congress, Thomas Featherstonhaugh Collection. Photograph: Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-106337.

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Federal troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee regained possession of the Armory and Arsenal the next day. Lee and his troops captured Brown and some of his men and turned the prisoners over to Virginia authorities who jailed them in Charlestown, Virginia (West Virginia since the Civil War). Brown was tried and convicted of murder and treason. On 2 December 1859, the sheriff and two other men led John Brown from the heavily guarded jail to a horse-drawn wagon that drove them to the gallows set up in an open field outside of Charlestown, surrounded by over one thousand uniformed militia in the field and eighty-five cadets from the Virginia Military Institute immediately behind the gallows (fig. 93). According to Major J. T. L. Preston, an officer of the Virginia Military Institute who witnessed the hanging and immediately after returning from the field wrote his wife a detailed

account of it, “a very small crowd” only of “recognized citizens” was there besides the military presence. No blacks were present. Preston gave a moving description of the execution: His manner was without trepidation, but his countenance was not free from concern, and it seemed to me to have a little cast of wildness. He stood upon the scaffold but a short time, giving brief adieus to those about him, when he was properly pinioned, the white cap drawn over his face, the noose adjusted and attached to the hook above, and he was moved blindfolded a few steps forward. It was curious to note how the instincts of nature operated to make him careful in putting his feet as if afraid he would walk off the scaffold. The man who stood unblanched on the brink of eternity was afraid of falling a few feet to the ground.14

In the North, Brown was regarded as a champion of liberty who upheld God’s will. In the South, he was regarded as a lawless murderer who

93. Unknown artist, John Brown Ascending the Scaffold Preparatory to Being Hanged, engraving, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 17 December 1859, 33. Photograph: Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-132551.

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assailed the sovereign state of Virginia and broke “God’s Holy Law.” Soon after the Civil War began, a Massachusetts regiment made up the song with the words “John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave, but his soul’s marching on.” The chant became the marching song for Northern troops tramping into Virginia.15 For Battell and for Hovenden, the most significant source on John Brown was most likely Franklin Benjamin Sanborn’s Memoirs of John Brown, an appreciative study of “the first great martyr” to the cause of black freedom. The Memoirs, along with James Redpath’s 1860 biography of John Brown, are likely to have been in Battell’s substantial library at his permanent home on the family estate in Norfolk, Connecticut.16 Hovenden read Redpath’s biography about the time he received the commission; when he painted a monochromatic oil sketch of Brown lying on the guardroom floor addressing his captors (fig. 94), he wrote on the back of the canvas a quotation from Sanborn of Brown’s words after his capture: “You may dispose of me very easily, I am nearly disposed of now, but this question is still to be settled—this negro question, I mean.”17

94. John Brown After His Capture, Century Magazine, 26, no. 3 (July 1883): 413.

In addition to written sources, some years before Hovenden painted The Last Moments of John Brown, two other American artists painted major American history pictures of John Brown that influenced Hovenden’s treatment of the theme. In 1860, the year following Brown’s hanging for treason, Louis Liscolm Ransom (1831–1926/27) painted a very large but presently unlocated work, John Brown on His Way to Execution.18 The image is known today by a lithograph of the painting, John Brown Meeting the Slave-Mother (fig. 95), published by the popular printmakers Currier & Ives with the long title, John Brown Meeting the Slave-Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charlestown Jail on His Way to Execution, and the following subtitle: “The artist has represented Capt. Brown regarding with a look of compassion a Slave-mother and Child who obstructed his passage on his way to the Scaffold . . . Capt. Brown stooped and kissed the Child . . . then met his fate.”19 Hovenden, who arrived in the United States in 1863, might have seen or learned about Ransom’s big painting on exhibit at P. T. Barnum’s Museum in New York from that May until midJuly, when fear of inciting draft rioters caused

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95. Currier & Ives, after Louis Ransom, John Brown Meeting the Slave-Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charlestown Jail on His Way to Execution, 1863. Photograph: Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-2890.

Barnum’s to remove the painting from the exhibition. The American painter Thomas Satterwhite Noble (1835–1907) also represented John Brown meeting a slave mother and child on his way to be hanged. Noble’s painting John Brown’s Blessing Just Before His Execution (fig. 96) is, like Ransom’s, impressive in size, and a print of it was published. While Hovenden attended classes at the National Academy of Design, he is likely to have known about or seen Noble’s painting.20 Hovenden’s foremost guardsman on the left

recalls Noble’s prominent officer, yet Hovenden’s figures appear to be less posed while Noble’s figures are still close to the academic tradition of firmly drawn figures executed from posed models lit by studio light. Hovenden’s John Brown is less heroic than Ransom’s or Noble’s figure. The two older artists relied on James Wallace Black’s widely known photograph after a daguerreotype of John Brown (fig. 97) for Brown’s facial features, hair, beard, clothing, and pose, although Brown’s actual appearance was less commanding

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96. Thomas Satterwhite Noble, John Brown’s Blessing Just Before His Execution, 1867. Oil on canvas, 841⁄4 ⳯ 601⁄4 in. Collection of the New-York Historical Society, 1939.250.

97. James Wallace Black, John Brown, after daguerreotype attributed to Martin M. Lawrence, 1859. Photograph, albumen silver print, 81⁄2 ⳯ 6 in. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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on the day of his execution when his beard was considerably shorter and grayer.21 Hovenden also had access to a photograph of John Brown (probably Black’s), but he relied on a Plymouth Meeting neighbor as his model for Brown’s facial appearance and lifelike stance. Hovenden transformed a historic moment into the even, actual light of an everyday, and a heroic figure into— characteristically for Hovenden—a familial image, a “benign father figure,” as Boime describes him, while Ransom and Noble set Brown apart and gave him an iconic majesty with their dramatic use of light and the figure’s central placement, dominating height, and stiffly erect pose.22 Central to all three paintings—Ransom’s, Noble’s, and Hovenden’s—is the poignant connection between Brown and a mother and her baby. After commissioning Hovenden to paint the picture, his patron Battell specifically urged the artist in a letter to make the incident of Brown’s kissing the child the focus of the painting: I am quite satisfied with what you have done; and the ideas you have in regard to the picture. The incident of the kissing of the child must have occurred as stated and published at the time.You are familiar I suppose with Whittier’s [the “Quaker poet,” John Greenleaf Whittier] beautiful allusion to it written a few weeks afterward.When I return [to New York] I will look for the correspondent’s account in the New York Tribune in the files of that paper. It has probably occurred to you that you might represent the child in its mother’s arms, extending one or both of its little hands toward the man, with a wistful look which he pleasantly recognizes, and is about to kiss it. But I remember that we spoke of this.

After describing the scene he envisioned in Hovenden’s painting, Battell added: “Whatever you

may decide to represent in the picture it will be most satisfactory if you consult your judgment and that of your artist friends and especially that of your accomplished and esteemed wife, Mrs. Hovenden.”23 Battell’s recalling “we spoke of this” and his references to both Whittier’s poem and the 1859 published report, encourage the impression that Hovenden expressed some hesitation and was interested in authenticating the incident. Battell obliged Hovenden’s reservations and twelve days after his letter of 10 June to the artist, he enclosed “an extract” of a published account of the incident, a long, unsigned article that appeared in the New York Tribune on 5 December 1859, attributed to its correspondent Edward H. House.24 The report described Brown’s leaving the jail for the gallows: “As he stepped out of the door [of the jail] a black woman, with her little child in arms, stood near his way. The twain were of the despised race, for whose emancipation and elevation to the dignity of children of God, he was about to lay down his life. His thoughts at that moment none can know. . . . He stopped for a moment in his course, stooped over and, with the tenderness of one whose love is as broad as the brotherhood of man, kissed it affectionately.”25 This reported event was also quoted in James Redpath’s early biography.26 Hovenden’s apparent hesitation to include the incident was prescient, as it never actually happened. Several years after Hovenden completed the painting and Battell owned it, Edward H. House admitted in a private interview that he had not written the article; in fact, he had not even been present at the hanging. House explained that the account was “what newspaper

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people called a ‘hash’ article,” written by three or four people for Charles Dana, the editor, who heard the story and included it in the news report of the execution.27 Battell’s certainty that the incident occurred and the “proof ” of the newspaper article seem to have quelled reservations Hovenden may have had. He fulfilled his commission and wrote “Corrected Proof 8/18/85” on a small sixteen-page pamphlet to accompany his painting. The pamphlet’s essay on John Brown mentions Hovenden’s “patient and careful study and inquiry” at the site of the execution and his attention to details of the event “recorded by newspapers of the period, especially from the report of Mr. Edward H. House . . . from which alike the poet Whittier, and the painter Hovenden founded their inspiration.” Some stanzas quoted from Whittier’s poem, “Brown, of Ossawattomie,” end the pamphlet’s essay: John Brown of Ossawattomie spake on his dying day: “I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in slavery’s pay, But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free, With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!” John Brown of Ossawattomie, they led him out to die; And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child, pressed nigh; Then the bold blue eye grew tender and the old harsh face grew mild, As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro’s child! The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart;

And they who blamed the bloody hand, forgave the loving heart; That kiss from all its guilty means, redeemed the good intent, And round the grisly fighter’s hair the martyr’s aureole bent!28 When The Last Moments of John Brown was completed and exhibited in New York in May 1884 and later in Philadelphia, art writers praised Hovenden’s work as a history painting.29 A New York critic hailed the painting as “the most significant and striking historical work of art ever executed in the Republic,” and a Philadelphia critic thought it the “best American historical picture yet produced.” One perceptive writer recognized the informal approach of late nineteenth-century history painting in Hovenden’s interpretation of his historical subject, stating that the “magnificent common-placeness” of Hovenden’s treatment gave the work “a modern artistic quality which is a new element in historical painting.”30 Koehler’s long review of The Last Moments of John Brown was devoted to descriptive interpretation and appreciative aesthetic analysis: “It is by far the best, the most genuine, the most truthful, yet at the same time the most artistic historical picture of a thoroughly American character that has been painted since the days of Trumbull, with the single exception, perhaps, of Mr. Winslow Homer’s admirable Prisoners from the Front [fig. 98].”31 Yet neither Homer’s painting of anonymous soldiers nor Eastman Johnson’s historical painting The Boy Lincoln (1868, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor) came close in scale to Hovenden’s monumental canvas.

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98. Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front, 1866. Oil on canvas, 24 ⳯ 38 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank B. Porter, 1922. (22.207).

The specifically American meaning and patriotic appeal of Hovenden’s large picture made it seem even more significant: “Mr Hovenden might have painted savonarola going forth to his death with all the technique and masterly spirit that he painted john brown, but it would not have been so important a picture.”32 Battell’s choice of subject matter reflected the preference in the United States for history paintings inspired by American history, rather than by the Bible or classical mythology. Hovenden’s painting continued the legacy of American history painting, beginning with Benjamin West and John Trumbull (fig. 99) in the eighteenth century, and continuing into the mid-nineteenth century with works such as Robert W. Weir’s Embarkation of the Pilgrims (1843) in the U.S. Capitol’s Rotunda, and Emanuel Leutze’s well-known Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851, Metropolitan Museum of Art).33 Although Hovenden had painted “several very beautiful smaller things” of aspects of American life, another writer stated, the artist

had “for the first time seriously taken up a distinctly American theme” with The Last Moments of John Brown. Yet another writer commented that the commissioning of “an American painter for an American picture of the highest order” seemed to represent the progress “of American ideals and the advancement of American education” through art.34 Such yearning for patriotic images after Reconstruction reflects the ardent wish to revive American pride and direct national purpose, as it discloses the underlying fear that the nation’s social, economic, and cultural unity were at risk. Among Northern writers and critics, Hovenden’s focus earned him critical approval for the depth of sentiment expressed in The Last Moments of John Brown; one critic, for instance, touched on the range of emotions: “Brown’s arms are pinioned but his right hand, which is open, is extended in a gesture full of mute pathos,” and “there is something more than curiosity . . . in all those upturned faces . . . something, for the

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99. John Trumbull, Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 1786. Oil on canvas, 255⁄8 ⳯ 375⁄8 in. Yale University Art Gallery, Trumbull Collection.

moment, of tender admiration and of respectful sympathy.” John Sears concluded a lengthy article by describing John Brown’s “strong fearless, resolute face, suffused with the tenderness that a child’s caress stirs in the heart of a father; no more.”35 The New York art collector Thomas B. Clarke wrote Hovenden that he made “a daily pilgrimage to see your great picture” at Knoedler’s and congratulated the artist on the “just article” from the “competent critic” S. R. Koehler, which Clarke enclosed in his letter.36 Hovenden must have been particularly grati-

fied to hear from the author Earl Shinn, Wylie’s friend of Philadelphia and Pont-Aven days, who wrote from Paris to compliment Hovenden on his John Brown painting, which was reproduced in a French illustrated newspaper. Shinn urged Hovenden to send the painting to the Salon where it “will be sure to be noticed,” remarking that he saw people looking at the picture in a newspaper shop window and that “such historical pictures do a great deal of good.” Also, Shinn noted, the subject was “apropos at the moment because of Victor Hugo’s birthday”: Hugo admired John Brown and

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100. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, 1859, 1883. 121⁄2 ⳯ 20 in. Presently unlocated. Photograph courtesy of Chapellier Fine Art, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

wrote a letter on his behalf in an effort to spare his life.37 Despite general praise for Hovenden’s history painting of an American theme, his powerful interpretation, and his artistry, critical reception of The Last Moments of John Brown was not entirely favorable.A major reservation was that the composition was too crowded and too flat so that, as Koehler phrased it in his primarily positive review, the “figures do not stand out sufficiently and seem to be almost on one plane.”38 Hovenden may also have felt that the space seemed too tight for so many figures and for that reason increased the scale of the painting. Some years later, Hovenden

told Sears that “artistically” he preferred his oil sketch, John Brown at Harper’s Ferry (fig. 100), to The Last Moments of John Brown.39 The artist’s judgment was apt; that composition of six figures in an interior seems more effective.With a broader and simpler approach, omitting narrative detail and concentrating on more expressive figures, Hovenden creates a hushed interior and centers on Brown’s eloquent gesture and facial expression to achieve nobility and a drama lost in the narrative and sentimental elements of The Last Moments of John Brown. In retrospect Hovenden said, “I really was thinking more of John Brown than I was of myself or my reputation, when I

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selected this incident [of the mother and child].” Nonetheless, in choosing the painting’s focus, Hovenden primarily considered what his patron wanted. Battell, after all, had commissioned the painting, issued advances to the artist, and would pay for the finished work. The general criticism most often raised about The Last Moments of John Brown was its lack of drama. Even Koehler mentioned the “curiously restrained expression in the faces” and acknowledged that “a somewhat more dramatic intensity would have been more to our liking.40 Hovenden’s defensive answer to such criticism was that to represent the incident truthfully, “I was obliged to have the straight steps, line after line, across the centre of the picture, and then also to be directly in front of them, as otherwise I could not see John Brown for the soldiers.” Furthermore, Hovenden continued, “And then those present treated John Brown differently on that morning from what Whittier in his beautiful poem seems to think they did. There were no ‘jeering ranks.’ Just imagine how much the picture would have gained, how much more dramatic the effect if I could have put in a jeering crowd, wild and excited, and then the quiet action with the great calm of the man. It would have been much more to my mind to paint in this way, had truth permitted.”41 Explaining the continuing message of The Last Moments of John Brown for the future, Koehler also articulated misgivings that he and Hovenden harbored about their own time. Later generations, he wrote, might misjudge nineteenth-century America, seeing only its accelerating capitalism, obvious commercialism, and often ruthless pursuit of wealth, but Hovenden’s painting would be “an inspiring reminder, upon which they cannot

look unmoved, and to coming generations, whether of the North or of the South it will be a visible token of the fact that their ancestors, however deeply immersed they may have been in materialism of the grossest kind, had yet the power to go to death calmly for the sake of that which they held to be just and true.”42 In addition to criticisms of Hovenden’s composition and lack of drama, a more major controversy erupted over the authenticity of “the incident” depicted in the painting—Brown’s kissing the child on his way to the scaffold. Debates about its veracity that ensued in the press when the painting was exhibited indicate how provocative the subject of John Brown still was and reveal persisting sectional tensions. In his letter to the Baltimore Sun refuting the incident, the agitated R. B. Green wrote that “before all things else” an artist must “be truthful.” Green charged that Hovenden’s picture was “pandering to a diseased sentimentality somewhat prevalent further north of us.” After all, Green wrote, Brown “deserved what he got and got what he deserved.”43 “Further north” of Baltimore, the New York Daily Tribune immediately took up the defense, citing the thoroughness of its correspondent’s account published three days after the hanging. The very next day Hovenden’s friend John V. Sears wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the “eye witness,” Edward H. House, “verbally confirmed from memory the accuracy” of his report to the New York Tribune. Sears, however, sought the higher—and safer— ground above the fray: he diplomatically suggested that what mattered was the “spirit of the truth,” not the incident’s authenticity, which could not validate or invalidate “the truthfulness of this picture any more than of Whittier’s poem.”44

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The source of the controversy over Hovenden’s painting of John Brown lay deeper than the debate over the painting’s historical accuracy. The figure of John Brown called up the Civil War’s unforgettable horror and its unhealed wounds, especially in the South. For some viewers, vague ideas of miscegenation hovered over the picture. Hovenden, who was not polemical by nature, probably had no such intent, but Ransom had raised the issue by picturing the slave mother with light skin and the child with even lighter skin. The Currier & Ives firm purposely defused that issue with their published print by presenting both mother and child with dark skin.45 The Last Moments of John Brown evidences Hovenden’s humane approach to his subjects as individuals, yet also presents a level of ambiguity that permeates his prior paintings of African Americans. At first glance, Hovenden’s treatment of Brown as a martyred hero and of the African American adults and children seems sympathetic, compared with his portrayal of the arrogance of the whites in charge—the sheriff, the Virginian holding a gun directly behind Brown, and the sergeant on the left pushing back the eager black man.Yet the inclusion of a white girl in the charge of the black mother—a house slave—and the contrast between the clothes worn by African Americans and whites underscore the gulf between the two races.46 Hovenden’s hierarchical arrangement of the jail officials and John Brown elevates whites and makes blacks marginal, revealing a tacit acceptance of a world of white authority and black subordination. Brown’s blessing of the kiss is no blessing but noblesse oblige, paternalism.47 To many in his day, Hovenden’s John Brown

painting was more than an “inspiring reminder” of a man with the courage to face death nobly for a just cause in which he believed. With the instinct of a genre painter, Hovenden envisioned “a supreme national crisis” in everyday human terms. The hero he honored was not the fanatic fighter of Kansas but a man of strong faith and simple humanity. Brown was a mythic champion who died to make all people free in a land dedicated to freedom, an “American Samson” whose soul went marching on. Thinking of the historical perspective, Sears believed The Last Moments of John Brown to be “a summary and a symbol of an era in our history, an expression of the spirit animating this people in a supreme national crisis.”48 In the Hands of the Enemy Five years after painting The Last Moments of John Brown, Hovenden completed another historical genre painting, In the Hands of the Enemy (see fig. 89), his most ambitious work since the earlier, controversial picture. In the intervening years, Hovenden had time to ponder his reservations about the John Brown painting, its unfavorable reception among Southern viewers, and an appropriate subsequent theme. Later Hovenden told a journalist, “I was much infatuated with the subject of the painting” and that In the Hands of the Enemy “was all thought out long before” he spent seven or so months at work on the large, multifigured canvas.49 In the Hands of the Enemy won immediate acclaim when exhibited at the National Academy of Design, hanging in the place of honor as the “star picture” of the more than five hundred works in the exhibition, and was the first sold. On the first day, Robbins Battell spoke for the picture, paying $5,500 for it,

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reportedly the highest price ever paid for a picture at the Academy.50 Hovenden portrays an imagined occasion following the battle of Gettysburg: a Union family solicitously cares for a wounded Confederate soldier who finds himself in the hands of the enemy. Although history informs the subject, the work is a historical genre painting, a picture of a scene that could have happened to everyday people near the path of war. A quarter of a century after the Battle of Gettysburg, the war was not forgotten; veteran’s benefits, for instance, were still an important political issue as late as 1889 when an omnibus pension bill was pending and ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes spoke of the national debt owed Union soldiers.51 The setting of In the Hands of the Enemy is “the ‘keeping room’ of a Pennsylvania farm-stead,” an ordinary, comfortable household of Americanborn citizens with simple material furnishings. The time is early morning and the new light of day filters through the white, gauzy curtains on the window to the left, next to which two Union soldiers—one clearly wounded with his arm in a sling—sit over a game of checkers. The painting’s central focus is the injured Confederate soldier who is being looked after in the home of Union supporters. Propped up against a pillow in a comfortable, upholstered chair, the soldier exhibits at least two injuries—his right arm rests in a sling and his right foot lies propped upon a stool— while a Union soldier attends to his bandages. An older gentleman, presumably the head of the household, and his daughter stand by the chair and contemplate the scene with an expression of concern. It is the mother, however, who has the most direct connection with the enemy: she offers

him a cup of tea and comfortingly touches his left arm, allaying his fears and suspicions. The theme of the painting is clearly one of reconciliation between unknown opponents and, in some cases, even between family members who were pitted against one another during the Civil War. Additional narrative details further underscore some of the American values that Hovenden emphasized in his domestic genre scenes of the early 1880s.A copy of Harper’s magazine lies facedown on the carpet, indicating the family’s literacy and middle-class status, while the Bible on the table signals the importance of religion in their daily lives. The portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall confirms the household’s wartime allegiance as well as the artist’s intention to evoke the spirit of Lincoln’s words at his second inaugural: “With malice toward none; with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.” For Hovenden, the message still seemed timely nearly twenty-five years after the end of the war.52 Hovenden’s painting brings to mind the French artist Pascal Adolphe Jean DagnanBouveret’s genre painting, An Accident (fig. 101), as a contemporary critic noted. The interior scene of the French painting presents a peasant family and a young doctor bandaging their son’s cut hand, a painting that Hovenden surely knew, as it won first prize at the 1880 Salon where Hovenden exhibited In Hoc Signo Vinces (see fig. 41) and was purchased by Hovenden’s early patron, William T. Walters. Hovenden’s specifically American subject parallels the French artist’s effective composition in the grouping of figures and the focus on bandaging a wound. The picture’s shallow space is characteristic of Hovenden and

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101. Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, An Accident, 1879. Oil on canvas, 353⁄4 ⳯ 511⁄2 in.Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 37.49.

also of Cabanel, under whom Dagnan-Bouveret studied briefly.53 The same observant journalist compared Hovenden’s painting with DagnanBouveret’s “famous Accident in the Walters Gallery” and preferred Hovenden’s depiction because it seemed “less repulsive” and his characters “of a higher type and of more sensitive and sympathetic nature.” Hovenden’s figure style and treatment of light seem more naturalistic than Dagnan-Bouveret’s, while the placement of

the large-scale figures closer to the picture plane creates a sense of immediacy; the critic perceived Hovenden’s characters to be of a “more sensitive and sympathetic nature” than those of the French painter.54 Thematically, In the Hands of the Enemy was a sequel to The Last Moments of John Brown: it offered a message of healing and unity in contrast to the potentially divisive subject matter of the earlier painting. In recalling the tragedies of

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Brown and of the Civil War, Hovenden offered some enduring meaning and hope. Alluding to the turning point of the Civil War at Gettysburg, Hovenden provided a national image for the end of the 1880s—a decade filled with the social and economic crises of industrial strikes and lockouts—to remind Americans that even bitter and divisive struggle could be overcome. Critics recognizing the need for “an expression in enduring form . . . of the nation’s life,” hailed the picture because it was “semi-historical.” Welcoming its gravity, one writer compared it with the relatively “inconsequential experiments with storytelling or color alone” that artists had turned to with the demise of history painting. Another, apprehending Hovenden’s aim and achievement, argued that In the Hands of the Enemy was a history painting because its “pathos and dignity” raised it “from the level of mere genre representation to the higher plane of historical painting.”55 Literary analogues to Hovenden’s subject appeared frequently in the 1880s. New South writers in the years following Reconstruction often used the theme of reconciliation, symbolized by intersectional marriage. Joel Chandler Harris, for instance, rewrote one of his stories for a national audience in 1880, changing the ending so that the Yankee, whom “Uncle” Remus shot and killed to save his master, instead lives to marry the Southern belle who nursed him. The romance between a Southern belle and a Union officer became a popular type of play that promoted rapprochement between Southern and Northern. The first important play on the theme was William Hooker Gillette’s Held by the Enemy, produced in mid-August 1886 at the Madison Square Theatre, New York City, boasting seventy

performances; in 1887, it played in London. A number of Civil War dramas in the American Theatre followed this success.56 Gillette’s play about a Confederate and a Union officer and two young Southern women turns on a romance between one of the women and the Yankee colonel, the very kind of topical subject expressive of prevalent attitudes and sentiment that would pique Hovenden’s interest. In fact, Hovenden’s painting reminded at least two contemporary newspaper journalists of Gillette’s play, but Hovenden claimed the play was unknown to him until after he finished his painting.57 Critical reception of In the Hands of the Enemy was enthusiastically positive; for instance, one critic for a Pennsylvania weekly publication stated: “No such masterly piece of sympathetic painting has ever been done here before.” The consensus was that the painting was a finer one than The Last Moments of John Brown. Hovenden agreed, believing that In the Hands of the Enemy was one of his best works and that it was “more important than any of my recent pictures.” He worried, however, about its reception, modestly unprepared for such thorough approval: “I really was very much surprised at its reception in New York by the art critics and artists of all schools, as well as the public; the fact that it was about the first picture sold at the Academy should be a hopeful thought for artists who are minded to paint more important canvases than have been generally attempted heretofore in America.”58 Critics appreciated both the painting’s narrative elements and its technical merits. Some contemporary descriptive comments in a small pamphlet published to accompany Hovenden’s painting and Hamilton Hamilton’s etching of it

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reveal how Hovenden involved his public in narrative, interpretive responses. The mother and daughter are “ministering angels,” the mother’s “sympathy [is] as deep as the ocean,” the Confederate soldier is manly and courageous—his “resolute face” is “damp and haggard with pain; and the awakening romance between the Confederate “officer,” attended by a Union “trooper,” and the “radiant” daughter of a Yankee household, seems patriotic. The painting brought the artist praise for his “happily-chosen subject” and his “power . . . to render and to express human thought and feeling.”59 Charles M. Kurtz, the editor and author of the National Academy of Design’s 1889 exhibition catalog and notes, lauded the artist on aesthetic grounds for his technical excellence and concluded: “This is a great picture” that “will not be forgotten by those who see it.”60 The New York Herald reviewer in March 1889 called the painting a “Picture of Peace in War” and praised it as the “finest genre of a scene of the Civil War that has yet been painted,” as well as “the most important work so far of an exceptionally gifted American painter and also his best one, and one which “does great honor to American art.”61 A contemporary Boston critic thoughtfully described it as “admirable and elevated . . . emblematic and prophetic . . . a picture of wonderful penetration, honesty and suggestiveness, truly worthy of being called historical.” Thomas Hovenden is “a great enough artist to paint a historical picture, . . . and make the past real to us . . . and stir the American heart.”62 Remembering John Milton’s phrase, “Peace hath her victories no less renown’d than war,” and inspired by Lincoln, Hovenden saw beyond

the horror of Gettysburg, suggesting instead the import of the contrast between the young Confederate officer and the compassion of the Northerners whom he has been taught to hate and despise. The Boston Evening Transcript critic found “this contrast between prejudice and truth” to be “the moral significance which makes Mr. Hovenden’s work great and permanent.”63 Hovenden’s focus, like Lincoln’s, was on binding up the wounds, being a Good Samaritan, and rekindling brotherly love. By means of setting, participants, and sentiment, the artist conveyed the “moral” of the “immorality of war,” causing the critic to admire the painting for its moral weight and for its ability to express “the pulse of the man, the emotional life of the artist, the taste and sensitive perceptions of the painter” and to proclaim that Hovenden was “no trivial story-teller.”64 The Founders of a State Hovenden began the largest painting of his career, The Founders of a State (see fig. 90), several years after painting In the Hands of the Enemy. Left unfinished at the time of Hovenden’s sudden death in August 1895, the painting was exhibited posthumously at the National Academy of Design, where it hung in the place of honor, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.65 After Hovenden’s death, Helen Corson Hovenden removed the painting from Hovenden’s studio and hung it in a picture gallery in her house.A Helen Corson Hovenden photograph of Hovenden’s studio shows a small canvas of the head and shoulders of the young wife, which closely resembles that portion of the figure in the unfinished painting.66 Hovenden painted his image of pioneers heading West at the very time when Frederick

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Jackson Turner, a young history professor from the Midwest, delivered a paper in Chicago in July 1893, stating “the frontier has gone, and with its going was closed the first period of American history.”67 Despite Turner’s assertion, however, westward expansion continued: the federal government’s opening up of land from former Indian Territory to homesteaders, also in 1893, is likely to have inspired Hovenden’s pioneer theme. Those broad fertile areas lay in what would become the state of Oklahoma in 1907. Rapid population growth in adjacent areas between 1870 and 1890, along with decreasing availability of unassigned land, caused frontiersmen to increase pressure on the government for white occupation of these lands. On 22 April 1889 and on 16 September 1893, thousands of pioneers rushed into the opened-up areas to stake out claims on farm sites and town locations, taking over the Cherokee’s richest grazing range, a strip of land almost sixty miles wide by 220 miles long in what would be northcentral Oklahoma, called the Cherokee Outlet or the Cherokee Strip. The area, three times the size of the land the government had opened for settlement in 1889, marked a historic moment in the white settlement of the West and the end of unassigned land for homesteading. Nineteenth-century white Americans generally believed that settlers beyond the Mississippi fulfilled the myth of the Great West as Eden, the Promised Land. As the rancher and future president Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his popular book about frontier life, The Winning of the West (1889), Anglo-Saxon Americans conquered the American West as the Garden of the New World.68

Hovenden pictures an early evening scene as a band of pioneers begins to unload provisions to set up camp for the night; their Conestoga wagons dot the landscape and grazing horses enjoy a respite from hauling their heavy loads across the country. In the right foreground, a young man and woman stand in front of their wagon, gazing over the vast expanse of the prairie. He gestures with his hand, perhaps indicating a natural feature of interest on the horizon or possibly pointing out the direction of travel for the following day. Both appear optimistic about the prospects of a new life in the West. The frontier of fertile land and the future lie before them, an expanse of space and time implied by the horizontal format, the large scale of the painting, the open field and outdoor setting, and the empty left half of the picture’s foreground space. Hovenden’s last painting presents a stylistic synthesis of his academically learned figure style and the new aesthetic of Impressionism in its commanding, firmly threedimensional figures and lightened palette. The Founders of a State is Hovenden’s only large painting with a completely outdoor setting; Hovenden painted out of doors at the same time every day to capture the “first flush of the early evening,” following Impressionist practice.69 Although Hovenden’s color is subdued compared with the sunlit brilliance of an Impressionist palette, the variety of separate hues, the colored shadows, and the visible, spontaneous brushstrokes, especially in the grassy field, reflect the influences of Impressionism. The idea for the large area of open space in the painting may have been inspired by a picture

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102. Douglas Volk, The Pioneer’s Rest. Photograph: Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, Book of American Figure Painters (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1886; reprint ed., New York: Garland, 1977), plate 18.

with a similar motif, The Pioneer’s Rest (fig. 102) by Douglas Volk (1856–1935), or by Thomas Eakins’s Cowboys in the Bad Lands (fig. 103). Based on a stay of more than two months in the Dakota Territory in the summer of 1887 during which

Eakins sought the “camp cure” at the B-T Ranch, Cowboys in the Bad Lands features two minutely detailed cowboys in the left half of the canvas gazing out over the endless rolling hills of the prairie. As in Eakins’s canvas, in which the unin-

103. Thomas Eakins, Cowboys in the Bad Lands, 1888. Oil on canvas, 321⁄4 ⳯ 45 in. Courtesy of the Anschutz Collection. Photograph: William J. O’Connor.

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104. Portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing, 1890. Oil on canvas, 16 ⳯ 22 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of Mrs. F. H. Cushing. 1985.66.312,6.

habited space stretches before the cowboys and horses to the right, a third of Hovenden’s foreground is empty.70 Hovenden’s interest in the West may also have been piqued by his friendship with the southwestern anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing (1857–1900), whose portrait the artist painted in 1890 (fig. 104). Cushing, a wellknown but controversial figure, was invited by the Bureau of Ethnology in the late 1870s to conduct several years of fieldwork living among the Zuni of New Mexico. His knowledge of the western United States and Native Americans may

have inspired Hovenden to explore the pioneer theme. Interestingly, the Cushing shown in Hovenden’s portrait—an austere image of a respectable, middle-class man dressed soberly in a black jacket, white shirt, and tie—contrasts markedly with the image of the ethnographer presented in Eakins’s 1895 portrait (Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma). In the latter painting, Eakins and Cushing collaborated to create a striking scene in which Cushing is depicted in a costume that is “half-Indian, half-Mexican vaquero,” surrounded by “exotic” artifacts collected from native peoples.71

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These comparisons—between Hovenden’s The Founders of a State and his portrait of Cushing and Eakins’s images—also highlight another distinctive aspect of Hovenden’s final painting: the inclusion of a woman standing alongside the man in the scene, and the allusion to home and domestic life. The taming of the frontier was usually associated with more adventurous male activities, such as conquering the land and fighting Native Americans, which were celebrated in Roosevelt’s writings and in art and literature of the period. Numerous adventure stories about the American West filled the pages of periodicals such as Outlook and Harper’s Weekly, while paintings such as Frederic Remington’s The Advance Guard (1890, Art Institute of Chicago) dramatized exclusively masculine scenes of danger, violence, and death.72 Despite the large number of women who made the journey across the country, “in art the West remains a masculine domain in which women are conspicuously absent, or at best, marginal to the main events and concerns.”73 The prominence of the female figure in Hovenden’s picture thus shifts the perspective on frontier life from one of masculine-centered adventures in harsh, threatening surroundings, to one in which couples and families set out to establish homesteads and towns in a land of abundance.

In his historical genre paintings from the mid-1880s until the end of his life, Hovenden reprised some of the key themes from his earlier Pont-Aven works of the 1870s: bravery, valor, and compassion in the face of an epic struggle; a commitment to strongly held beliefs and traditional moral values; ties of family and community; and defining moments of courage, change, parting, and loss. The Salon-sized scale of The Last Moments of John Brown, In the Hands of the Enemy, and The Founders of a State—all of which measure from just under four and a half to six feet tall and from five to more than seven feet wide—marks them with a distinctive importance in comparison with the smaller, more intimate domestic genre scenes of American life, such as The Old Version (see fig. 54), Dat Possum (see fig. 71), and Sunday Morning (see fig. 78), which are one and a half to two feet in height and width. Hovenden’s images of John Brown and of the injured enemy soldier during the Civil War elicited great popular and critical response when they were exhibited during the artist’s lifetime. Clearly, Hovenden’s large-format depictions of significant episodes in American history heeded the pleas for images to “appeal to the national mind or average sympathies.”74

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Home Life Center of “Our Joys or Sorrows” The blessings and sorrows of motherhood and fatherhood, the joys and griefs of childhood. —S. R. Koehler, American Art (New York: Cassell & Company, 1886), 54

Hovenden’s interest in depicting the home life of ordinary people culminated in the production of some of his best-known and most popular paintings in the early 1890s. Nearly half of Hovenden’s major works—his most complex in figural and compositional treatment and most important in scale—engage domestic genre themes, including a number of important paintings completed before his untimely death in 1895: Breaking Home Ties, 1890 (fig. 108); When Hope Was Darkest, 1892 (fig. 117); Bringing Home the Bride, 1893 (fig. 121); and Jerusalem the Golden, 1894 (fig. 127). Of these, Breaking Home Ties won fame and extraordinary public acclaim for Hovenden, particularly during its exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Yet despite his success with critics and the public in the 1890s, Hovenden found himself at the center of debates that polarized artistic taste at the close of the century. As Impressionism gained acceptance in American art circles, the artist was faced with the challenge of maintaining his emphasis on narrative, figural works painted in an academic style or accommodating the demand for a new, more modern aesthetic. Before the mid-nineteenth century, a Unitar-

ian minister in Massachusetts defined domestic life as “that life in which now almost all our joys or sorrows are centered.”1 The veneration of domesticity in Victorian England and the United States encouraged artists to portray variations on the home theme and attracted an expanding middleclass audience, who welcomed and identified with the nostalgia of such pictures. In post–Civil War America’s transition to modernity, domestic scenes offered balm for anguished memories of war and the disillusionment of Reconstruction and suggested solace for an anxious present. Home was a haven as unstoppable forces of industrialization shifted the economy from farm to factory and from the handcrafted to the machine-made, fragmented close-knit home and community life, and fanned a growing materialism and secularism.With the rupture of traditional patterns of working and living, the nuclear family and home seemed the only stolid refuge; in the words of the influential English critic and essayist John Ruskin, “the place of Peace: the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.”2 Hovenden reinterpreted the American tradition of domestic genre painting popular in the

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105. John Lewis Krimmel, Country Wedding: Bishop White Officiating, 1814. Oil on canvas, 163⁄16 ⳯ 221⁄8 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Paul Beck, Jr., 1842.2.1.

first half of the nineteenth century, exemplified by John Lewis Krimmel’s Country Wedding: Bishop White Officiating (fig. 105) and Francis William Edmonds’s The Image Peddler (fig. 106). Eastman Johnson had continued the tradition in the 1860s and 1870s with paintings such as The Earring (1873, Corcoran Gallery of Art) and The New Bonnet (fig. 107), but by the 1880s Johnson had turned his attention to portraiture. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, Hovenden concentrated on domestic genre painting,

endowing his pictures with artistic professionalism and contemporary meaning. Compared with Edward Lamson Henry, a contemporary of Hovenden’s who painted historical and modern domestic genre scenes, carefully recording details of customs, costume, furnishings, and architecture, Hovenden’s works are more pensive, omitting elaborate details and going beyond anecdote to plumb deeper emotions and themes. Hovenden referred to dislocating changes in modern life with melancholic undertones and

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106. Francis William Edmonds, The Image Peddler, 1844. Oil on canvas, 331⁄4 ⳯ 421⁄4 in. Collection of the New-York Historical Society, 1858.71.

warned of loss of meaning in contemporary society, while the moral core of his work continued to offer messages of hope.3 Hovenden’s plain, interior home scenes of intimate family groups often center on a familiar turning point in life’s cycle, some rite of passage, or a significant arrival or departure.Avoiding ceremony and humorous incident, he depicted some telling and pregnant moment common to the lives

of many Americans in the late nineteenth century and welling out of his own experience of parting and change, of leaving the old and facing the new. Hovenden chose easily understood yet serious subjects that would convey shared concerns of his day, enshrine the enduring ties of family, and preserve time-honored values. These associations were comforting to his late nineteenth-century audience and had personal resonance for Hovenden,

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107. Eastman Johnson, The New Bonnet, 1876. Oil on cardboard, 203⁄4 ⳯ 27 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1925. (25.110.11).

who was orphaned as a child and broke ties with his homeland as a young man. Throughout his life, the artist preferred the quiet family, farm, and village life he was born into in Ireland, observed in Pont-Aven, and cultivated in his own home in Plymouth Meeting to life in large cities such as Paris and New York.4 Breaking Home Ties: When “the Old Life Is to Be Severed from the New” In painting his most popular and best-known picture of this period, Breaking Home Ties (fig. 108),

Hovenden seems to have heeded the writer and art critic S. R. Koehler’s complaint a few years earlier that American artists had not paid enough attention to subjects of family life, to “the blessings and the sorrows of motherhood and fatherhood, the joys and griefs of childhood.” Hovenden elevated American family life to the status of history painting in this work: its fourby-six-foot dimensions defied the nineteenthcentury definition of genre painting as “a picture of small dimensions representing human character dramatically by means of clothed figures.”5

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108. Breaking Home Ties, 1890. Oil on canvas, 521⁄8 ⳯ 721⁄4 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Ellen Harrison McMichael in memory of C. Emory McMichael, 1942. 1942-60-1.

The painting’s carefully thought out, finely drawn, and firmly structured composition and figural style also parallel history painting in the academic tradition, thus imbuing it with weightier connotations. Indeed, Hovenden’s journalist friend John V. Sears, an editor of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, claimed historic importance for Breaking Home Ties: “Technically speaking it is a genre composition but it may be fairly considered as a historic picture and as of national importance since it represents a turning of the tide in the

affairs of men which leads on to fortune not only personal but public, to the founding of the private welfare and the upbuilding of the state.”6 Breaking Home Ties captures the poignant moment as a son bids farewell to his mother before leaving the family home to go off and seek his fortune. Hat in hand, the young man stares blankly ahead, uncertain about the future that lies before him. His mother, wearing a calico dress and white apron, places her hands upon his shoulders for a final embrace. Around the room,

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other family members ranging in age from the young sister seated by the family dog to the left, to the grandmother in the background, regard the tender scene. The boy’s father walks toward the door with a suitcase in hand as a driver waits in the doorway, signaling the son’s imminent departure to the harsh world beyond. The family home, once the core of shared labor within a larger village family, had become in the late nineteenth century a refuge for the nuclear family from the competitive outside world of work. Hovenden’s painting pictures the home as a haven that accords with Alan Trachtenberg’s description of the concept: “the image of the domestic sphere with its hearth, its parlor table, its warm kitchen and loyal wife-mother, served as the centerpiece of a cluster of images representing the norm of

American life.”7 Characteristically, Hovenden’s figures carry the narrative and the emotional tension of the theme by pose, gesture, and glance, while the artist’s realism and sincerity save the painting from saccharine sentimentality. The naturalism of his figures came from Hovenden’s academic training and skill, and from studies of actual models he found among his neighbors in Plymouth Meeting (fig. 109).8 Critics identified the interior as that of “the common rural Pennsylvania household” with a “high old-fashioned mantel” supporting a pitcher and tall “antique” candlesticks. Helen Corson Hovenden’s photograph of Hovenden painting Breaking Home Ties indicates that Hovenden patterned the setting after an actual fireplace mantelpiece in his house and furniture he kept

109. Model for Breaking Home Ties and Manikin. Photograph, Hovenden Stanley dry plate negative. Private collection.

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110. Helen Corson Hovenden, photograph of Thomas Hovenden painting Breaking Home Ties, with son, Thomas Hovenden, Jr.

in his studio (fig. 110). In selecting spare, strong, and self-sufficient furniture—plain American “stick” construction, bent-bow, and comb-back Windsor chairs—as furnishings for a typical American home, Hovenden chose material artifacts that suggested continuity with the nation’s colonial past.9 As in Hovenden’s Breton paintings, the setting for the scene and the furnishings further underscore nostalgia for a simpler, purer time unspoiled by industrialization and urbanization. Colonial revival artifacts and interiors offered a way to enter history and to graft the nation’s idealized, agrarian past onto the present. References to a supposedly simpler, more vigorous lifestyle during America’s colonial days and to handcrafted goods also served to alleviate late nineteenth-century fears about the loss of authority, virility, and vitality among middleclass men in an increasingly sedentary, industrialized society.10 A detailed description of Breaking Home Ties

at the time the painting was first exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1891 (fig. 111) is worth quoting at some length because Hovenden’s friend Sears probably was the author. Sears incorporated this description into the “Catalogue Raisonné” he compiled of Hovenden’s works with Hovenden’s approval: The boy who stands on the threshold of his home in this picture is going out into the world to make his own way. . . . He is just a good, honest, faithful, right-minded pure souled lad, with a great lump in his throat, trying his best not to break down and cry like a baby while parting from his mother, holding himself in hand for her sake as much as for his own credit. . . . The mother and son constitute the principal group standing together in the central foreground, the family having risen from the breakfast table on the announcement that the stage or wagon is waiting at the door. The drift of movement is naturally and necessarily toward the threshold, across which the old life is to be severed from the new. The broad backed farmer, a little

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111. Advertisement for the Sixty-First Annual Exhibition, 1891. Archives of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

anxious to get at the day’s work and a little afraid of a parting scene has picked up the old-fashioned carpet bag and started for the stage. The pretty little sister stands leaning against the door, waiting to say good-bye. The grand mother turns stiffly in her high backed chair with the wooden immobility of age; and the elder sister is seated on the left holding in check the too eager interest of the big house dog.11

Another long Philadelphia review of Breaking Home Ties carried reproductions of Hovenden’s drawing of the mother and son and the whole picture and stated: “No other picture at the Academy in an exhibition which is so far in advance of any before, approaches this painting in the attention it has gained from the public or the love it has won from its gazers.” The writer believed that art’s highest aim was to convey appropriate feeling. Despite the artist’s understanding of space, “lovingly rendered,” and of figures that “live and move,” the critic felt that “technical accuracies and excellence” were insignificant compared with the

expressiveness of the mother’s face. For this reviewer, Hovenden’s overriding achievement was presenting “a passing but dramatic moment in the great drama of life.”12 It is indeed the figure of the mother that provides the painting’s center of emotional strength and comfort; her stalwart character and unassuming dress and manner embody a distinctly native version of the Victorian “angel of the house” that stands apart from most contemporary British and American depictions of motherhood and domesticity.13 Hovenden’s friend Sears, who was familiar with the artist’s intentions and is likely to have known Helen Corson Hovenden, probably wrote the following description of the mother in Breaking Home Ties. It goes beyond honoring motherhood to define a woman of pluck, ability, intelligence, and compassion: “She is the preeminent type of American motherhood; a noble woman, nobly planned; the impersonation of the maternal character that has rocked the cradle and

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ruled the world in the Western Hemisphere; a woman of fair proportions and of goodly presence, strong, dignified, and competent; a righteous woman, conscientious, faithful, and selfsacrificing; a wise woman, sagacious and of sound judgment; a tender hearted woman, sensitive, kind, charitable and infinitely loving; a sympathetic woman, touched by sorrow and helpful in grief.”14 Similarly, in answer to an inquiry about the painting, the artist himself wrote what is doubtless a tribute to the American woman he knew best, his wife and the mother of their children: “I cannot now recall the time when the idea of Breaking Home Ties first came to me—I only know that it was with me for several years before I commenced to paint it and that I had it very much

112. Francis Coates Jones, Mother and Child, ca. 1885. Oil on canvas, 19 ⳯ 16 in. Daniel J. Terra Collection, 7.1981. Photograph © 1997. Courtesy of Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago.

in my mind and that it took a great hold of me. I had in my mind the mother; that was almost the picture to me. I think I have succeeded pretty well in giving my idea of her—the American mother—as I have seen her in the country.”15 In Hovenden’s painting, the mother is middle-aged, plainly dressed, thrifty, hard-working, and pragmatic. Compared with her British cousins, such as the richly dressed young wife in George Goodwin Kilburne’s Poor Relations (1875, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), Hovenden’s figure is democratically unconcerned with social class, society, manners, or dress. Nor does she resemble the pretty, young mothers in late nineteenth-century American painting such as the Mother and Child (fig. 112) by Hugh Bolton Jones’s

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113. Edmund C. Tarbell, The Breakfast Room, ca. 1903. Oil on canvas, 25 ⳯ 30 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Clement B. Newbold. 1973.25.3.

younger brother, Francis Coates Jones, nor the decorative, aristocratic women of Thomas Wilmer Dewing and Edmund C. Tarbell (fig. 113), nor the idealized women robed in Greek chitons of Frederick Dielman and other artists of the American Renaissance. Instead, Hovenden’s realistic treatment of the figure and the mother’s pose bring to mind Robert Koehler’s central figure of a striker’s wife in The Strike (fig. 114), a painting Hovenden would have known.16 The mother in Breaking Home Ties has the strength and virtues of Quaker women, such as Lucretia Coffin Mott and Susan B. Anthony, who

served as ordained ministers and were leaders of reform movements. Helen Corson Hovenden and her sister Ida Corson—one of twenty-nine women who were graduated from Vassar College in 1872—were born and brought up in a Quaker community and both supported women’s suffrage. Yet even such progressive women still revered motherhood as the American woman’s noblest calling. As nurturer, comforter, and keeper of the home sanctuary, the American mother was the heart of the home, the binder of family ties, and the source of acute sensibility. Her accepted mission and place were at home. For instance, only

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114. Robert Koehler, The Strike, 1886. Oil on canvas, 711⁄2 ⳯ 1081⁄2 in. Private collection.

16 percent of native white women of all ages who were born of native parents worked in gainful occupations in Philadelphia in 1890; fewer than five married women, white, black, or immigrant, worked outside their homes in Plymouth and Whitemarsh Townships in 1880. Barred from the economic, political, and intellectual worlds, the American woman’s significant role as wife and mother carried influence in the moral, emotional, and religious spheres of life; her job was to persuade not assert, to serve not compete.17 Beyond the lone figure of the mother in Breaking Home Ties, the painting’s larger narrative

and message were also praised for their native appeal. One critic admired the painting because it “speaks of the national heart and characteristics,” while yet another reviewer pointed out that, without the benefit of picturesque costume or heroic history, as in In Hoc Signo Vinces (see fig. 41), the artist portrayed “the homely truth of our everyday life.”18 Breaking Home Ties was praised as “essentially American,” the home as that of a native farmer, the son as a new pioneer. The unpretentiousness of the scene and its participants was admired for its “American” virtues of honesty, simplicity, and sincerity. The young man with

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“honest blue eyes” was an “American boy” “destined to succeed.” This hero of the American dream was of nativist, blue-eyed “American” stock. Hovenden’s young man in Breaking Home Ties symbolized national greatness and the painting celebrated America. The editor Sears phrased it well: “The American boy always does well. Thousands like this one are going out from the home every day to make homes for themselves, to create new conditions, to acquire property, to marry well and establish another family, to become good citizens and valued members of new communities, to develop that estate of American manhood which is the strength of the strongest nation in the world.”19 The “essentially American,” white, blue-eyed, native son in the painting, and Sears’s references to professional and financial success, manhood, and strength, all attempt to counter the realities of an increasingly heterogeneous, nonnative society, and diminishing opportunities for advancement and power for middle-class men in late nineteenth-century America. By the 1890s, white, middle-class men were challenged by women’s increasing presence in public and in the workplace, by immigrant and working-class men, and by the prospect of being reduced to cogs in the machinery of the corporate workplace. The son’s anxious expression in Breaking Home Ties may allude to larger social concerns about the futures of similar young men; as historian Gail Bederman has argued, the expansion of low-level clerical jobs and the recurring severe economic depressions in the last three decades of the nineteenth century meant that “the sons of the middle-class faced the real possibility that traditional sources of male power and status would remain closed to them forever—

that they would become failures instead of selfmade men.”20 Criticism of Breaking Home Ties at the time of its Philadelphia exhibition in 1891 often focused on story and sentiment, appealing to a public accustomed to novels and stories in popular periodicals. For example, a New York journalist wrote of the “wealth of tenderness in the mother’s rather careworn face” and described the young man as “somewhat affected at this last moment of parting”: “The peaceful days that have slipped away now appeal to him, perhaps for the first time, and give a touch of regret to his expression. . . . There is that in this picture which will appeal to many a man whose experience it fairly parallels. There is something almost solemn, and much that is affecting in it. It is one of the few pictures that touch the heart and make one think. Mr. Hovenden found a subject ‘worth painting’ and he has painted it so that the ‘story’ has lost nothing in the telling.”21 Hovenden’s message was clear to his audiences in Philadelphia and in New York: reviewers responded favorably to the American and democratic character of its theme, and rarely objected to the sentiment and storytelling nature of the painting.22 Generally, contemporary critics considered the Pennsylvania Academy’s 1891 annual exhibition outstanding. They noted striking examples of portraiture, landscape, and figure subjects such as Hovenden’s Breaking Home Ties, and of still life, including Hovenden’s one known still life, Peonies (fig. 115). In Peonies, delicate harmonies of pink and white peonies are set off by the stoneware container, blue glass vase, and dark background. Peonies delighted the wife of the academy’s director, who bought it for $400.23 Breaking Home Ties

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115. Peonies, 1886. Oil on canvas, 20 ⳯ 241⁄8 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Edward H. Coates (Edward H. Coates Memorial Collection). 1923.9.2.

also sold at the time of the academy exhibition: Charles C. Harrison, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, bought the painting for his private collection for $6,000, said to be the highest amount paid “by a Philadelphian for a Philadelphia picture in many years.” Loyal Philadelphians thought the sale brought honor to the artist, the buyer, the academy, and Philadelphia.24 Harrison loaned Breaking Home Ties to the

National Academy of Design’s large 1891 spring exhibition, where the painting was given a place of honor in the principal gallery and received wide critical acclaim. The experienced critic Charles M. Kurtz, editor of National Academy Notes, found Breaking Home Ties “perhaps the strongest picture shown this year.” The New York Herald’s reviewer praised the “remarkably well-handled scene in a farmhouse,” calling Hovenden’s paint-

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ing a “masterly canvas” and the “most important figure piece” in the exhibition. The art critic for the middle-class journal Harper’s Weekly judged Hovenden’s painting better than any of his prior work, with the possible exception of In Hoc Signo Vinces and “one of the best scenes of American life yet painted by anybody.”25 Although many critical responses to Breaking Home Ties largely ignored Hovenden’s artistic mastery of a complex figural composition—comparing it instead with the new controversial aesthetic of Impressionism—a few recognized Hovenden’s “power to compose and ability to paint well a large number of figures in one scene,” his facility with paint, and his “strong sense of color.”26 First officially introduced in the United States during an 1886 exhibition in New York, French Impressionism connoted “artistic chaos and incoherence” and threatened “moral and mental harmony” into the mid-1890s. Its frequent lowlife subject matter, aggressive, broken brushstrokes, and shrieking colors created unfamiliar, disturbing visions of

modern life.27 Responding to the paintings at the 1886 exhibition, “artists, critics, and amateurs cried out against them in angry chorus.”28 Reviewers commented on the marked difference between Hovenden’s painting, composed and painted in the studio, and other pictures in the Philadelphia and New York exhibitions that reflected the practice of plein-air painting and the style of Impressionism. One Philadelphia critic lauded the “chromatic wealth” of Breaking Home Ties, but Hovenden’s traditionally dark palette seemed sombre near daylit outdoor scenes at the 1891 Pennsylvania Academy exhibition, such as Daniel Ridgeway Knight’s Hailing the Ferry (fig. 116) and Thomas Alexander Harrison’s The Wave (1888, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). One commentator, in fact, felt that it was unfair to Hovenden to hang his painting next to Harrison’s En Arcadie (1885, Musée d’Orsay), a “daring” painting of “nude figures speckled with sunlight.”29 In New York, Kurtz was even-handed, praising Breaking Home Ties, yet also seeing merit in

116. Daniel Ridgeway Knight, Hailing the Ferry, 1888. Oil on canvas, 641⁄2 ⳯ 831⁄8 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of John H. Converse. 1891.7.

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Edmund Charles Tarbell’s Three Sisters—A Study in Sunlight (1890, Milwaukee Art Museum), an Impressionist picture of three young women seated “under the trees,” which Kurtz thought was a “realistic bit of out-door painting.”30 Other New York journalists were openly opposed to the new aesthetic. Instead, they admired Hovenden’s “strong and steady” drawing and his “subdued” and “harmonious” color, and welcomed Breaking Home Ties as worthy art, unlike the “insincere dabbling” and moral emptiness characteristic of “French imitators.” They faulted art “for art’s sake,” which they associated with Impressionism, for disregarding the uplifting aim that was “the end of art.” The vehemence of attacks against Impressionism suggests that unsympathetic critics feared that a fundamental aesthetic shift in style and subject was taking place: from traditional art based on sketches, drawings, and preconceived compositional ideas executed in the studio, to a new art based on visual impressions of a modern life of leisure painted out-of-doors; from art with a message to art seemingly only for art’s sake, or, as one critic put it, an art that had no “influence upon human life,” an art lacking ethical purpose or significance.31 When Breaking Home Ties was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, critical reception differed noticeably from its reception two years earlier. In 1893, artists did not linger in front of the painting and critics did not even agree that the work was well done. Except for the mother and son, the figures were thought “woodeny,” and the subject, although touching “a sympathetic chord on the heart-strings of every one who loves home and family,” had “a certain triteness.” Some newspaper reviewers

were less charitable, calling the subject “timeworn,” “a little old-fogyish,” and certainly not “entrancingly artistic.”32 As Sarah Burns has argued, the painting served as a “kind of cultural battleground” for contemporary debates as to what American painting should be: a “democratic aesthetic”—legible, democratic, nativist art loaded with meaning—versus “cosmopolitan aestheticism”—elite art-for-art’s sake.33 The marked change in critical reviews within such a short period of time reflects the general critical acceptance of Impressionism by 1893. Despite initial outcries and resistance to the aesthetic in the mid-1880s and the beginning of the 1890s, critical evaluations of Impressionism became increasingly favorable from 1891 to 1893, and the Chicago Exposition marked its ascendancy. Few American genre paintings were exhibited at the Exposition and Hovenden’s Breaking Home Ties and Bringing Home the Bride (see fig. 121) were about the only works that could be designated as genre paintings of typical American home life.34 Taste became polarized and Breaking Home Ties served as a rallying point for more conservative critics who remained unconverted to Impressionism. A Philadelphia writer wrote in 1893 that Breaking Home Ties was “an achievement” at a time “when paint, for itself, is too dominant.”35 “Painting is more than paint,” argued the “Conservative Painter,” in a published discussion in which Breaking Home Ties was referred to as an example of narrative painting opposed to Impressionism. The Conservative Painter concluded, “A landscape as well as a figure means more than a symphony in color, a ‘pang in grey’ or a ‘whoop in violet,’ . . . We are going through a color fever now.” The elderly John Sartain, the Philadelphia engraver and

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Hovenden’s friend, remarked in 1895: “Impressionism grew mad with its blotches of color, its scorn of principles and reason, and its sloppiness does not appreciate the care and the technical education employed by painters who are not faddists. . . . I believe that the present ‘Decadent’ art is but a passing fancy.”36 Hovenden certainly realized that the style was victorious at the World’s Columbian Exposition where he served as one of the United States judges of oil painting. Another member of that jury, Henry F. Farny, commented that “the majority of the jury seemed inclined to impressionism.”37 Although professional criticism of Breaking Home Ties at the fair was largely unsympathetic, the appreciation of the general public was extraordinary. The painting was the popular favorite of the more than one thousand paintings exhibited. People were “always jammed” in the space in front of the painting, and the carpet had to be replaced several times. Numerous engravings of the painting and large artist-signed prints of a photogravure after the painting were sold at art stores in Chicago and elsewhere to many Americans to hang on the walls of their homes. A political cartoon appeared, “with apologies to Hovenden’s famous picture,” adapting Breaking Home Ties to show Queen Victoria sending her grandson William II of Germany into the world to win fame. The painting inspired poetic tributes. One began: There was a picture at the great world’s fair; A simple scene called “Breaking the Home Ties,” And day by day the people gathered there Spellbound, with husky throat and moistened eyes. A country boy, leaving the old home place Stands in the kitchen for the last “good bye.” 38

Not the storytelling subject, or the picture’s conspicuous size and imposing gilt frame, or Hovenden’s accomplished and understandable style accounts for the phenomenal public response to Breaking Home Ties. Hovenden gave such an effective visual expression to a common and heartrending experience in late nineteenth-century America that thousands of spectators identified emotionally with the story of the “country boy leaving the old home place,” saying, “I have been right there.” It was the sense of personal involvement that made the painting so memorable to so many.39 In the late nineteenth century, a general nervousness about “the triumphing industrial system” surfaced in articles, books, and government reports, and a speaker in the 1890 Kentucky legislature said: “The times are strangely out of joint. . . . Capital piles on capital, in combination reaching alpine heights. . . . The rich grow richer, and the poor become poorer; the nation trembles under the tread of discontented thousands.” 40 In an age that valued sentiment, Hovenden aptly captured in one image the sadness of departure from home and the sense of loss embraced in Howell’s phrase, “There’s no farm anymore to go back to”—in short, nostalgia for the lost innocence of youth and for a rural way of life that was vanishing.41 For a sound evaluation of Hovenden’s bestknown painting, it is helpful to turn to a thoughtful contemporary, the late nineteenth-century art historian, Samuel Isham. Isham concluded that Hovenden’s Breaking Home Ties represented a culmination for Hovenden after A Village Blacksmith (see fig. 58) and his African American genre paintings. Admitting the painting’s anecdotal quality, Isham nonetheless believed that the story was “clearly and beautifully” told. In Isham’s view, “It

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is as good a picture of the kind as has been painted in this country—less artistic, perhaps than Eastman Johnson’s work, but still excellent in its craftsmanship and profound and sincere in its sentiment.”42 The general public sensed Hovenden’s sincerity and responded to the artist’s expression not only of their patriotism and hopes, but also of their heartaches and anxiety in a time of upheaval in ways of living, working, thinking, and believing. An English Interlude Not long after the sale and successful exhibitions of Breaking Home Ties in Philadelphia and New York City in 1891, the Hovendens went to Cran-

brook in Kent, England, leased a property where Hovenden’s ancestors had lived, and stayed there for ten months. While painting Breaking Home Ties, Hovenden may have thought about his own roots and wanted to explore them or perhaps he and his wife wanted to go abroad to seek fresh inspiration for their art.Whatever the reasons for the sojourn, while in England Hovenden painted one large picture, When Hope Was Darkest (fig. 117), which was exhibited along with Breaking Home Ties and Bringing Home the Bride at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.43 Hovenden paid homage to the frequent late nineteenth-century English subject of its fisherfolk in paintings, literature, articles, and illustrations,

117. When Hope Was Darkest, 1892. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Lee M. Edwards, New York.

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118. Frank Bramley, A Hopeless Dawn, 1888. Oil on canvas, 481⁄4 ⳯ 66 in. Tate Gallery, London, Great Britain. Photograph: Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, New York.

when he painted a sailor’s return in When Hope Was Darkest. Set in the cozy interior of a small household, a young wife sits by the window with a wistful expression, rocking her baby in a cradle, while an older couple—her parents or in-laws— waits anxiously with her, as all fear her husband is lost at sea. Hovenden’s scene promises a happy ending, however, as the viewer catches a glimpse of the young sailor walking up the path through the open door. The theme of lost boats and wait-

ing women was popular in the 1870s and 1880s, as exemplified by the English social realist painter Frank Hall’s No Tidings from the Sea (1870) of a woman overcome with grief as she returns to her cottage where her mother and children wait, and by Frank Bramley’s A Hopeless Dawn (fig. 118), a key work of the Newlyn School at Cornwall, showing two mourning women in a daylit intenior. Hovenden’s title vaguely recalls Bramley’s, and Hovenden, like Bramley, includes a table set

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with a tablecloth and a few dishes. Hovenden’s sweetened and nontragic version of the theme reveals his emotional distance from the actualities of coastal fisherfolk life that English artists experienced directly at Cullercoats on the northeast coast and at Newlyn in Cornwall, and that Winslow Homer knew at Cullercoats at the beginning of the 1880s, and later in Maine and the Bahamas. Hovenden may have been thinking of his American audience, who would no doubt

119. And the Harbor Bar Is Moaning, 1886. Etching on woven paper, 223⁄4 ⳯ 143⁄4 in. Engraving from Choice Pictures by American Artists: Selected from the Book of American Figure Painters (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1892).

prefer a happy ending to confrontation with death and grief.44 Several years before Hovenden went to England, he painted the theme of fisherwomen anxiously awaiting their husbands’ return after a sudden squall. The picture, titled And the Harbor Bar Is Moaning (fig. 119), was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1886, where Charles Kurtz admired it for its expression, composition, and figural understanding. Mariana Griswold Van

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Rensselaer included a reproduction of the work in her impressive folio edition Book of American Figure Painters of 1886. Two monumental figures of fisherwomen frame the opening of a large doorway. Dressed in worn clothes, one woman in bare feet, they appear weary from the strain of waiting—the seated woman closes her eyes in thought, while the standing woman leans against the solid frame of the doorway and cranes her head, as if to catch a glimpse of her husband’s ship. Hovenden’s direct inspiration for the theme

120. Illustration of Walter Langley’s painting “For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep,” based on Charles Kingsley’s popular poem “The Three Fishers” from The Graphic, vol. 28, 1883.

was the English author Charles Kingsley’s popular poem, “The Three Fishers,” containing these lines: But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning.45 Hovenden may also have known the English painter Walter Langley’s watercolor “For Men Must Work and Woman Must Weep” based on Kingsley’s poem and reproduced in the popular London weekly The Graphic with the title of the same three lines of Kingsley’s poem quoted above (fig. 120). The age, pose, placement, and setting of Hovenden’s figures differ from Langley’s, but Hovenden, like Langley, presents two largescale figures close to the picture plane. Avoiding descriptive and narrative details, Hovenden concentrates on suggesting controlled tension in the two figures. The strong realism and sombre mood of And the Harbor Bar Is Moaning are closer in spirit to the English social realists and more poignant than Hovenden’s anecdotal and sentimental When Hope Was Darkest.46 At the first exhibition of When Hope Was Darkest, at Earles’ Galleries in Philadelphia soon after the Hovendens returned, critics commented on the painting’s Englishness. The author of a four-page pamphlet accompanying the exhibition explained the subject that was purposely set in the “heart of the hop country in Southern England.” A Philadelphia journalist reflected the nineteenthcentury’s nationalistic viewpoint in remarking, approvingly, that the painting was “as distinctly English as ‘Breaking Home Ties’ was American,” and that the story of “good wholesome English folk” proved how the spirit of every country must

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find its own expression in its art. The challenge of painting an “English” painting interested Hovenden, particularly following Breaking Home Ties, which was hailed for being so American.47 By the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, however, when the United States had become more cosmopolitan, politically, economically, and in cultural tastes, the importance of American-ness, so evident in the two decades following the Civil War period, began to wane. This shift in attitudes helps explain why When Hope Was Darkest occasioned little critical notice at the fair. Its parochial “Englishness” and its storytelling

emphasis seemed passé to critics and remote to the general public who did not identify with it. One wry critic remarked that in Hovenden’s pictures “somebody is either coming or going.” The comment was apt in speaking of the three Hovenden paintings at the 1893 World’s Fair, Breaking Home Ties, When Hope Was Darkest, and Bringing Home the Bride, and telling in its lack of critical appraisal.48 Bringing Home the Bride Hovenden began work on his Bringing Home the Bride (fig. 121) a few months after his return

121. Bringing Home the Bride, 1893. Oil on canvas, 56 ⳯ 78 in. O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota.

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from England and completed it in time for exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition, which opened on the first of May 1893. After the Exposition, Hovenden showed the painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ 1893 annual exhibition. On the last day of the exhibition, the dry goods merchant John Wanamaker (1838–1922) bought the painting for his own art collection for $6,000.49 Bringing Home the Bride was interpreted as representing the “little Lancaster [Pennsylvania] lad” of Breaking Home Ties who has made good and returns with his bride to his “simple country home.”50 While Bringing Home the Bride serves thematically as a sequel to Breaking Home Ties, the picture about a bride becoming a member of a new family, establishing bonds between generations, and providing continuity for the future, lacks the touching nostalgia and mythic connotations of Breaking Home Ties. The artist, characteristically, presented his subject of courtship and marriage within a domestic context—avoiding the romance, ritual, and customs English and American painters favored—and selected models from relatives, friends, or neighbors.51 Bringing Home the Bride depicts a new bride as she arrives for her first visit to her husband’s family. The bride seems self-assured, at ease, and almost urbane in the simple surroundings of the country home. She looks appealingly to her father-in-law sitting in a chair facing her, while her mother-in-law helps her remove her cape. Her husband sits informally on a chest as one of his sisters whispers in his ear; his younger sister sits on the windowseat gazing at her new sisterin-law, and in the background a woman standing and a man carrying a suitcase upstairs can be

seen. The parlor is comfortably but plainly furnished for Victorian times with a Colonial chest and Windsor chair, along with more contemporary furnishings, the floral wallpaper, the rattan rocker, and the geometric-floral rug. Helen Corson Hovenden’s photograph of Thomas Hovenden and their two children in front of the painting captures an amusing image of the rug on the studio floor running into its duplicate in the painting and the Hovendens’ eight-year-old daughter looking at her own image seated on the window seat (fig. 122).52 In choosing his subject, Hovenden may have thought of the popularity of the marriage subject among English Victorian painters and recalled a painting titled Bringing Home the Bride by the nineteenth-century German artist Otto Erdmann. Although Hovenden’s interior and placement of figures are different from Erdmann’s, Hovenden’s subject and title may have been prompted by the German painter (fig. 123). Another suggestive image may have been the comely young woman whose cape is being removed in Toby Rosenthal’s painting The Trial of Constance de Beverly (fig. 124), a painting that Hovenden could have seen when it was exhibited in New York in 1884. Rosenthal’s literary inspiration was Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion, a story about the discovery of a Benedictine nun’s disguise. Hovenden, however, treats his American subject in contemporary and everyday terms, and presents a significant moment common to human experience, a rite of passage, when a new generation marries and begins a new family.53 Like Breaking Home Ties, Hovenden’s Bringing Home the Bride evoked a similar sense of pride in its American-ness. With the bride as heroine, the painting earned notice for being a typical picture

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122. Helen Corson Hovenden, photograph of Hovenden, Martha, and Thomas in front of Bringing Home the Bride in Hovenden’s studio.

123. Otto Erdmann, Bringing Home the Bride. Photograph: Clarence Cook, Art and Artists of Our Time (New York: Selmar Hess, 1888; reprint ed., New York: Garland, 1977), vol. 4 (vol. 2 of reprint), 243.

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124. Toby Edward Rosenthal, The Trial of Constance de Beverly, 1883. Oil on canvas, 575⁄8 ⳯ 91 in. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gift of Joseph J. Szymanski in memory of Renate Lippert Szymanski. Photograph © 2005 Museum Associates/LACMA. AC 1993.233.1.

of “every-day folk” who live in an unpretentious “home of simple comfort” with papered walls and a “three-ply carpet.” Hovenden’s friend Sears, perhaps reflecting the artist’s own outlook, still adhered to earlier attitudes when he described the American-ness of the bride. She was not “an elegant splendid creature fit to wear a foreign coronet,” but “a beauty to be loved and respected here in our own land” who would “prove to be a competent helpmeet, a true wife and a good mother.” The newspaper art critic who praised the artist for picturing “every-day folk” took up the nationalistic strain: the bride

represented “American maidenhood,” as a “wellraised daughter of an American household; comely, wholesome, graceful, and attractive, sweet as a peach and good as gold.” This writer suggested compliance as an ideal of “American maidenhood,” in contrast to Sears’s “competent helpmeet,” which more appropriately describes Hovenden’s pictorial treatment of the bride.54 The shift in American artistic taste by the early 1890s that was reflected in the adverse criticism of Breaking Home Ties in 1893 also shaded evaluations of Bringing Home the Bride. Writers were attentive to the formal values of Bringing

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Home the Bride, discussing aesthetic qualities such as color and light while ignoring or hardly mentioning the picture’s story and sentiment.55 Even the critic who admired Hovenden’s presentation of “American maidenhood” noted the high-keyed palette of varied tones of pinks, oranges, and yellows: the flood of noonday light pouring through the window fills the interior with a roseate glow. The same critic concluded that the painting was “luminous and resplendent,” as a bride’s reception should be: “The picture is chromatically as resonant as a peal of wedding bells, being filled with light and suffused with color whose dominant note is red.”56 Hovenden’s enhanced sensitivity to light effects in Bringing Home the Bride, combined with his American genre subject in an indoor setting, confused one conservative journalist who disapproved of Impressionism. The journalist observed how the light “shines and scintillates” around the young girl seated in the window seat, yet, illogically, argued that Hovenden was not advancing “in the ‘Direction Moderne’ ” or following “any fad or fashion” (that is, Impressionism). Instead, the critic explained that Hovenden painted “his objects in sunlight or shadow, as he sees them at the time,” which is a fairly accurate description of Impressionist practice.57 Hovenden’s handling of light in Bringing Home the Bride suggests that he was mindful of the American critical acceptance of the Impressionist style and was at least intrigued enough by the aesthetic to fold aspects of it into his way of painting: his characteristically firm drawing, compositional order, carefully described accessories, and innocent sentiment are all subordinated to a unifying luminosity. In fact, Hovenden’s obvious delight in

coloristic light effects in Bringing Home the Bride belies a later report that the artist was not as pleased with it as with Breaking Home Ties. The artist seems to have been ambivalent, caught between his artistic training and beliefs and his enjoyment of painting the visual felicities of light.58 Hovenden’s experiments with Impressionism into the early 1890s, mainly in landscapes, marked a departure from his earlier storytelling genre scenes. He submitted A Morning in May (fig. 125), dated May 1893, to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annual exhibition of that year. As a Philadelphia reviewer of the exhibition described it, the picture presents a “girl, standing with arms akimbo in an apple orchard . . . filled full of the real ringing snap of nature.”59 Hovenden renders the landscape setting for the figure in a light, bright palette and loose brush strokes that catch sunlit reflections and, except for the prominent three-dimensional figure in the foreground, the artist shows scant interest in his accustomed solidity of form or compositional structure. Even more significant is the impression of an objective, instantaneous view of a passing moment and of a holiday mood, a sharp contrast to Hovenden’s usual subjects, which suggest a certain timeless typicality and sentiment and, often a serious mood tinged with melancholy. From 1893 through 1894 Hovenden continued to paint indoor domestic genre pictures in his usual style as well as some landscapes in the Impressionist style, one of which is Springtime (fig. 126). The figure of the young woman “picking buttercups and daisies” is no longer dominant in this painting but becomes, like the foreground tree, only an element in the truly Impressionist landscape.A sunfilled field of flowers surrounds the small figure in

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125. A Morning in May, 1893. Oil on canvas, 27 ⳯ 22 in. Private collection.

white; behind her a split rail fence bisects the canvas on a slight diagonal. Hovenden’s selective use of the Impressionist style for landscapes and not for genre work was not atypical: Americans frequently adapted the style only to outdoor scenes since the emphasis on drawing and threedimensional form in academic teaching continued to be influential for the “new men” who had studied abroad under academic masters.60 In the spring of 1894, A Morning in May, Springtime, and other landscapes were exhibited in Samuel P. Avery’s Gallery in New York, the

Earles Galleries in Philadelphia, and the Victor G. Fisher Art Gallery in Washington, eliciting critical reactions that reflect the polarized opinions about Impressionism.61 Avery wrote Hovenden about the reaction to his Impressionist landscapes when compared with his genre pictures in the same exhibition: “The amateurs seem to expect some darkey pictures, & the landscapes, while they are liked extremely, are such a surprise that no one seems to want to be the first to buy.”62 New York critics commented that in his landscapes Hovenden “rejoices in the colors that flower and the

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126. Springtime, ca. 1893–94. Oil on canvas, 18 ⳯ 22 in. Private collection.

rainbow have” as do painters of the “open air school,” and that his landscapes captured “a specific hour” and a certain atmosphere. Although the writers preferred Hovenden’s “new Manner,” they believed the artist’s genre pictures would be more popular with the general public; one critic predicted that Hovenden would continue to paint

“his long-established specialty as to subject” for the sake of assured sales.63 The landscapes attracted particular attention in Washington: one article in the Washington Post described Hovenden’s landscapes as “vivid, brilliant, outdoor things fairly alive with color and flooded with sunshine” and stated that they showed Hovenden to be a “master

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of two distinct styles.” The writer, however, who was biased against Impressionism, praised Hovenden for not being an extremist of the “new school.”64 The Philadelphia response to Hovenden’s new manner once more revealed strongly divergent opinions about American Impressionism. One unsympathetic critic—possibly John V. Sears—complimented Hovenden for bettering the “children of light” in the “modern movement” by avoiding their crude and violent colors and instead using discrimination and “delicate nuances” and “closer representation of truth,” while another welcomed Hovenden’s new way of painting. The latter writer believed that Hovenden’s genre paintings such as Breaking Home Ties and Bringing Home the Bride were popular “among those who know nothing about art,” and the new landscapes proved that Hovenden’s storytelling pictures and traditional realism were “unworthy of him.”65 Hovenden himself did not consider his genre pictures unworthy of him; for instance, he asked twice as much for Grandma’s Second Sight, the tender scene of a girl threading a needle for her grandmother—$1,000—as he did for A Morning in May—$500—although the canvasses were identical in size.66 In contrast to the New York critics, the Washington writer did not prefer Hovenden’s Impressionist landscapes, but instead admired the beauty of a sentimental genre painting Hovenden was completing that spring, Jerusalem the Golden (figs. 127 and 128). The critic mentioned its poetic charm and well-rendered figures, and was grateful that it was unaffected “by the delirium tremens of ultra impressionism.”67 Jerusalem the Golden, quiet and solemn in mood, is neither Im-

pressionist in style nor as firmly and realistically realized as Hovenden’s usual style. Unlike the carefully detailed, stagelike interiors of Hovenden’s domestic genre paintings, the figures in this picture are pressed close to the picture plane in a shallow, compressed space, and rendered with looser brushstrokes. In the painting, a young woman dressed in white and weakened by illness reclines listlessly in a chair while a young man sits beside her. Both look pensively into a glowing fire that soon will be dying embers. In the background to the right another young woman seated at an upright piano plays the popular Protestant hymn “Jerusalem the Golden,” the heavenly Jerusalem, “the home of God’s elect” where those “from care released” have “conquered in the fight” and are forever “clad in robes of white.”68 The words of the hymn give the picture its title and presage the tragic ending to come. In addition to its stylistic differences from Hovenden’s earlier works, the melancholy theme of Jerusalem the Golden further distinguishes the painting from his cheerful scenes of family and domestic life. Lee Edwards has identified English artist Frank Dicksee’s painting The Crisis (1891, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia) as a visual source for Hovenden’s subject matter and composition: Dicksee’s picture similarly presents a bedridden woman accompanied by a male companion in a dimly lit interior with subtle lighting.69 A similar pensive mood of sadness pervades Jerusalem the Golden in which “a very sick young girl” and “her lover” listen to her sister seated at the melodeon playing “Jerusalem the Golden,” a song about the joys awaiting the dying in the heavenly city.70 Several critics echoed

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127. Jerusalem the Golden, 1894. 30 ⳯ 40 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Helen C. Hovenden, in memory of her husband, Thomas Hovenden, 1895. (95.5). Photograph © 2004 Metropolitan Museum of Art.

the praise of the Washington critic mentioned earlier, commenting on the painting’s spirituality and design, although a New York Times reviewer described it as “a curious, sentimental and somewhat theatrical subject” without inspiration.71 Despite Hovenden’s Impressionist efforts in the early 1890s, this method of painting seemed too easy to him and the works appeared trivial compared to his earlier genre paintings. Hoven-

den remained committed to his academic techniques and his moral and patriotic messages, resisting the new artistic directions of the 1890s. As one journalist writing immediately after Hovenden’s death understood: He was a thorough master of the whole technical range of his profession and experimented with and mastered every new method that came along, though his own serious style

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128. Photograph of Thomas Hovenden with his painting Jerusalem the Golden, ca. 1894.

was already well formed. . . . He was a man of very positive views of the seriousness of art and was always ready to combat the “art for art’s sake” theory, so that some of the young painters thought him old-fashioned, though no artist ever was more receptive to new ideas or more generous in his appreciation of his fellow craftsmen. He held his opinions strongly, because they were based on knowledge.72

Hovenden’s late landscapes of familiar fields and woods around his Plymouth Meeting home and, in the last winter of his life, the view from his studio across meadows punctuated with trees and rooftops are as domesticated as his genre paintings (fig. 129). Quietly they tell of his love of the simple life close to the land and of the cycle of nature’s seasons—the sunlit joy of sudden spring and the understated beauty of winter. Although Hovenden’s career was cut short in the mid-1890s by his sudden death, the artist

created two of his best-known and most popular paintings, Breaking Home Ties and Bringing Home the Bride, during this decade. In these large-scale canvasses, Hovenden elevated his domestic genre themes—typically rendered in smaller formats— to the stature of his historical paintings such as In the Hands of the Enemy (see fig. 89) and The Last Moments of John Brown (see fig. 88). The popular success of both genre paintings indicates that Hovenden’s subjects continued to hold broad appeal for audiences; the ambivalent critical reception of the works at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, however, tellingly illuminates a waning appreciation of his narrative episodes and detailed domestic scenes in the face of the more cosmopolitan style of Impressionism. Hovenden incorporated some elements of the new aesthetic into works such as Springtime and A Morning in May—a lightened palette,

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129. A Study, Cold Point, Pennsylvania, 1895. Oil on canvas, 18 ⳯ 22 in. Private collection.

a looser brushstroke, and an emphasis on light effects and spontaneity over carefully staged compositions—but ultimately he denounced “art for art’s sake” and returned to a more meaningful subject for his final, unfinished painting The Founders of a State (see fig. 90). Until the

end of his career, Hovenden maintained his commitment to his academic training and the importance of the human figure; his interest in the themes of family, continuity, and tradition in times of change; and his belief in the elevated moral purpose of art.

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One windy winter afternoon following a snowstorm in early February 1895, Hovenden gave a lecture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts titled “What Is the Purpose of Art?” It followed a series of lectures given there by John La Farge, extravagantly hailed in advance publicity as being “the most important delivered on Art since the Ruskin lectures at Oxford.”1 In the large Exhibition Gallery, surrounded by paintings that a Philadelphia newspaper art critic called “impressionistic bits,” Hovenden delivered a paper in which he expounded his belief in the moral value of art and of the role of the artist.2 Hovenden’s thoughts echoed those of Joseph Hodges Choate, an incorporator and a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who explained in 1880 that the museum’s founders “believed that the diffusion of a knowledge of art in its higher forms of beauty would tend directly to humanize, to educate and refine a practical and laborious people.”3 Similarly, Hovenden conceived his purpose as an artist to be that of an advantaged interpreter with a moral responsibility: “If I can give pleasure, if I can give comfort, if I can give strength to those around me by any word or act of mine, what manner of man am I if I do not do it? For what object was power given?”4

Hovenden further articulated his aesthetic position in the lecture—that sentiment, as well as beauty, should be the goal of art—defending it against “art for art’s sake.” To Hovenden, this doctrine meant that technical skill was “the end and sole aim of art,” while he was convinced that sentiment, as well as beauty, should be the goal of art. He pointed out that “all the great figure painters of the past tried in some form to say something” and stated his own belief: The practice of art for art’s sake to the exclusion of art’s highest mission tends to narrow the practicers. It becomes self-centered, and tends to self-worship; and has not only bewildered the minds of the public, but the minds of the artist. . . . I hold that artists only can judge of our skill as artists, and that the public is the only one unprejudiced judge of the best use of that skill. . . . I think also that the very highest (which are the deepest) feelings in us can be touched [by art] . . . in a way as powerful as an orator’s or poet’s touch. . . . To say, as to-day so many men do, that art should not occupy itself with anything that appeals to the heart is, to me, so silly, so contemptible even, so short-sighted, so narrow, so small, that all the manhood in me revolts against it.5

According to one reporter, a number of those attending the lecture disagreed with Hovenden’s

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opinions. Yet his views were similar to those expressed by the art critic S. R. Koehler in his American Art published in 1886. Koehler wrote that the artist should “awaken an echo in those whom he addresses” and deplored the denigrating of art as literary whenver it manifested “deeper thought.” He believed, as Hovenden did, that “technique for technique’s sake, and as a last aim, is fatal. True art, like love, must have an object outside of itself.”6 Hovenden began writing down some of his ideas about art after the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.7 Only a handwritten draft remains and probably dates from 1894–95. The tenor of this draft corresponds with that of Hovenden’s lecture, although only a few phrases were actually incorporated. The following excerpts from the draft express Hovenden’s commitment to an art for the public and his defensiveness against the elitism of “art for art’s sake”: The best art . . . appeals alike to the great public and at the same time commends itself to the trained artist. . . .Are we to paint for artists and leave the public out of the question[?] It is very evident that the tendency of many of the best men of today is in this direction. But I am positive that it is a grand error to go so far as they have gone. I fully believe they have belittled our art by so doing and they have narrowed themselves by denouncing and sneering at the presentation of noble thoughts. . . . Is not he the greatest artist who has great ideas that seek expression by form and color, neither of which can be neglected without making the presentation of his cherished ideas less beautiful and so less effective[?]

Despite believing that “the presentation of noble thoughts” made the greatest art, Hovenden admitted that the actual painting of a picture in

itself—even of a still-life study—could give an artist “the greatest delight.”8 During the last year and a half of his life, Hovenden faced personal crises in both his art and his health. His productivity slackened after 1893, and his last major painting, Jerusalem the Golden (see fig. 127), is his most sentimental and least successfully realized painting.9 The picture suffers from an extremely dark and limited palette, lacking Hovenden’s usual subtle and discriminating color harmonies. Helen Corson Hovenden gave the painting to the Metropolitan Museum after Hovenden’s death, but she and the art dealer Samuel P. Avery had reservations about the painting, as her handwritten letter to Avery reveals: “I thank you most sincerely for your kind favor. . . . I too wish a more important and characteristic canvas could represent Mr. Hovenden in the Metropolitan but this canvas was the most important finished one left.”10 Several reports after Hovenden’s death stated that Hovenden did not finish The Founders of a State (1895) because the artist suffered from failing eyesight and other health problems. Hovenden had complained occasionally over a period of years about difficulties of vision, and his late self-portrait (fig. 130), painted about a year before his death, shows that by the time he had reached his fifties Hovenden wore eyeglasses with spherical lenses and was overweight. Because his complaints about his eyes were sporadic, probably his problems of vision were symptomatic of a more general condition; inadequately controlled diabetes is one of a number of conjectures.11 Hovenden was “prostrated by a severe illness” at his home in the spring of 1895 and, in the company of his family, he continued his recuperation in Richfield

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130. Self-Portrait, ca. 1893–95. Oil on panel, 10 ⳯ 8 in. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, 1979.7.58.

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Springs, in the Catskills of New York, joining his old friend H. Bolton Jones. By early August, Hovenden had returned from Richfield Springs in improved health and he looked forward to finishing his large frontier picture.12 On 14 August 1895, Thomas Hovenden was returning to Plymouth Meeting from Norristown. He alighted along with other passengers from the trolley car near his home to walk over a railroad grade crossing with tracks for both eastbound and westbound trains. After a freight train passed, another trolley car passenger, a nine-year-old girl named Bessie Pifer, started across the tracks. Hovenden followed her. Both were killed by an eastbound locomotive that could not be seen or heard because of the passing westbound freight. One eyewitness, J.W. Dager, a beef butcher, said that Hovenden saw Bessie’s danger and tried to save her, but that he had hardly reached her before the engine was upon him.Another eyewitness, a businessman who was nearest to Hovenden and Bessie Pifer while they waited for the freight train to pass, stated that he saw nothing to indicate that Hovenden tried to save the child. Generally, newspapers reported and people believed that Hovenden died in a heroic attempt to rescue a child, and the pathos of the story kindled innumerable accounts in newspapers across the country. A coroner’s inquest held in Norristown a few days after Hovenden’s death determined that it was accidental—not the result of an attempt to save Bessie Pifer. Yet the few reports on the inquest that appeared as small newspaper items never caught up with the headlines and front-page coverage about the heroic artist who sacrificed his life to save the life of a little girl.13 Most Americans of Hovenden’s time, those who knew his

kindly nature and those who knew his paintings and saw them as reflections of his moral character, felt that the act was characteristic of Hovenden. To many, a certain “poetic consistency” seemed to exist between the artist’s work and the way he died, as one quatrain inspired by his death expresses: His latest deed illustrious will shine In memory like a star in summer skies; He risked his life to keep a home complete And died to save the “breaking of home ties.” 14 Helen Corson Hovenden photographed the “large unfinished canvas” Hovenden was working on, as she had his other works, but this time in Hovenden’s empty studio familiar chairs stand vacant and a working palette and brushes sit unused on a desk shelf (fig. 131). Hovenden’s widow decided that the painting would not be touched, and she had it framed as it was. In the spring of 1896, The Founders of a State was exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the following winter it was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.15 Within a few years of Hovenden’s death, Helen Corson Hovenden added a gallery to the house. The “big picture” dominated the long room and visitors enjoyed seeing Hovenden’s paintings there.16 After Hovenden’s death in 1895, Helen Corson Hovenden occasionally exhibited paintings, especially portraits and pictures of horses, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and in some local area exhibitions. She made trips to New York to see exhibitions and maintained an active curiosity about art throughout

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131. Helen Corson Hovenden, photograph of Hovenden’s studio with unfinished canvas The Founders of a State, 1895.

her life (fig. 132). Thomas Hovenden, Jr., graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1903 with a bachelor of science degree (fig. 133). He worked as a civil engineer until he caught typhoid fever and died at the age of thirty-three.17 Martha Maulsby Hovenden became a sculptor. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1901 to 1907 and studied under

two talented sculptors, Charles Grafly and Herman Atkins MacNeil, both of whom had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.18 Martha Hovenden exhibited regularly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1905 into the 1920s and was a member of several art organizations and a close friend of the Pennsylvania artists Paula Balano and Violet Oakley. Martha Hovenden’s

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132. Photograph of Helen Corson Hovenden.

best-known sculptures are two limestone relief panels for the Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge. The tablets, The Declaration of Independence (1926) and Constitution (1936), show allegorical figures of America and Wisdom with names of the signers. Besides private memorial stone reliefs, Martha Hovenden concentrated on portraits and garden sculpture—sundials, fountains, and reliefs featuring children and vegetation—that were popular in the 1920s and

1930s. Martha Hovenden lived in the CorsonHovenden homestead her entire life and worked in the studio her mother and father had used.19 Critical views of Hovenden’s work have changed in the years since 1895. A few days after Hovenden’s death, the elderly Philadelphia printmaker John Sartain said that Hovenden “worked from life with photographic fidelity to detail.” While Sartain wrote approvingly of Hovenden’s style, a half-century later critics saw things differ-

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133. Photograph of Martha and Thomas Hovenden, Jr.

ently. The American artist and art critic Walter Pach offered this assessment in 1961: “He is typical of the sincere toilers of a school based on nineteenth-century photographic realism. The sentiment which he offered as a substitute for the craft of the painter was genuine and could well be appreciated by a public unaware of the slender artistic basis of the work.”20 Pach deplored the

photographic realism that Sartain admired. The camera, however, records indiscriminately everything in its range, framing an image arbitrarily so that it appears to be a momentary view from a larger world, and capturing a specific instant and a specific light. Hovenden’s picture-making was driven by much more than an indiscriminate “photographic realism”: he selected significant themes

CONCLUSION

for his art; arranged figures, settings, and narrative details to convey his thoughtful messages; and crafted his paintings carefully, building up forms and using light and color to create convincing portraits, historical works, and domestic genre scenes. The sentiments and ideas expressed in his compositions were compelling to late nineteenthcentury audiences, who viewed them as refuge and solace from the stresses of modern life. At the beginning of the 1960s, the art critic John Canaday dissented from the then generally low estimation of Hovenden and other nineteenth-century painters of narrative and realistic pictures. In reviewing an exhibition of “Thomas Hovenden and the American Genre Painters,” at the Kennedy Galleries, New York, Canaday wrote of Breaking Home Ties: “Let us say immediately that this picture, which sounds so desperately maudlin and which depends to such a great degree on standard anecdotal associations for its effect, is nevertheless a legitimate work of art, superbly painted, expertly assembled in all its parts, and remarkable for the luminosity of some of its ports and the warm, shadowy depths of others.”21 Canaday was able to appreciate Hovenden’s artistic mastery even though Hovenden’s subject was steeped in Victorian sentiment. Since the 1970s and the emergence of postmodernism, a greater tolerance for realistic art, a growing interest in American art and in the Victorian period, and an expectation of a broader contextual understanding of the visual arts, allow Hovenden’s work to be seen with less bias than earlier in the twentieth century when formalist art criticism prevailed. Hovenden, however, is of interest as an artist not only because he was concerned with aspects of the social fabric and ethos

of his day, but also because he was, as Canaday recognized, a sophisticated craftsman and a gifted painter who created pictures in which the aesthetic or formal elements of color, light, form, and composition were handled with skill and subtlety. Harrison S. Morris, a friend of Hovenden’s and a former director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, wrote an appreciation of Hovenden in his memoir published in 1930 that was as rare in the 1930s as Canaday’s was in the 1960s: “Hovenden’s own work dealt with the homely themes of the farmlands or the pioneers of the frontier as they founded a new state—art that was sincerely beautiful in its technical qualities and touching in its fancy—art that is now scornfully called by callow painters—‘old hat,’ but which has deep within the seeds of endurance.”22 In terms of technical qualities, it was Hovenden’s skill at adapting his Parisian figural training to his American genre scenes that earned the artist much critical praise during his career. One art critic hailed Hovenden soon after his return to America in September 1880 as perhaps the “greatest figure-painter that has yet appeared in American art.”23 Compared with the pictures of midcentury genre painters such as William Sidney Mount, Francis William Edmonds, and Richard Caton Woodville, Hovenden’s American genre pictures manifested a “clearly applicable difference”: a greater artistic sophistication in the treatment of light, space, composition, and, most conspicuously, the human figure.24 In a discussion of figure painting in 1881, a New York World critic noted that “the effect of three such men as Hovenden, [Frederick Arthur] Bridgman and [William Merritt] Chase upon the future of American Art

189

190

CONCLUSION

cannot be overestimated”; in the 1960s, the dean of American art historians E. P. Richardson confirmed this assessment, claiming that Hovenden was the innovator who introduced life-sized Salon figure painting to America.25 Hovenden was committed to elevating the education and skills of American art students; in the late 1880s at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he transmitted his own European training to aspiring artists. In the late 1870s, Daniel Huntington, painter and two-time president of the National Academy of Design, spoke of the need in the United States for a more demanding art education, more “training in drawing, painting, and modeling,” as well as “practical lectures on anatomy and perspective, especially.”26 Hovenden responded to the need for more rigorous art education by serving as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy for several years, replacing Thomas Eakins as professor of painting and drawing in May 1886. Along with two other instructors, Thomas Anshutz and James P. Kelly, Hovenden taught drawing from the antique, sketching, portraiture, and life class.27 The study of anatomy and anatomical dissection that distinguished the academy’s curriculum from midcentury continued to be offered. Hovenden, however, and even “more firmly,” Thomas Anshutz who followed him, restored a more traditionally balanced art education than Eakins’s concentration on anatomy, dissection, perspective, portraiture, study of the nude model, and almost immediate use of color and brush. Hovenden and Anshutz, for instance, renewed the importance of the antique and of drawing.28 In particular, Hovenden had an enduring influence as a mentor to Henry Ossawa Tanner

(1859–1937) and Robert Henri (1865–1929). Hovenden probably encouraged Tanner to paint African American genre subjects, and he may also have influenced Tanner’s later artistic direction, according to two separate late nineteenthcentury reports written at the time that Tanner’s The Resurrection of Lazarus (1896) was sold to the French government in 1897. One account states: Tanner’s “evolution from genre to the Biblical is a progress that may perhaps be partially ascribed to the influence upon young Tanner in his student days . . . of the late Thomas Hovenden.” The other account credited Hovenden with “infusing” Tanner with “a comprehension of and sympathy with the broader and deeper things of life and art.” Tanner seems to have been thinking of Hovenden when he painted The Resurrection of Lazarus; the picture recalls some of the compositional and figural features in Hovenden’s Last Moments of John Brown (see fig. 88) and John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, 1859 (see fig. 100).29 Hovenden’s best-known student was the painter Robert Henri, who studied at the academy art school from 1886 to 1888. From the time Henri entered Hovenden’s life class in December 1886 until the spring of 1887, Henri’s theorizing about art led to frequent disagreements between student and teacher, with Hovenden advising: “Don’t think, just paint.” As Henri scholar William Innes Homer points out, Hovenden’s remark was “a clear echo of the popular academic adage, ‘Copy nature stupidly.’”30 Hovenden recognized Henri’s exceptional talent for portraiture in that class, as Henri noted in his diary: “Wasn’t I as happy as a clam at high tide when I opened the door and saw Hovey lecturing over my study to all the other students! . . . To me this boom [sic] was

CONCLUSION

stimulating!”31 While seldom specific about Hovenden’s method of teaching, Henri’s diary entries reveal Hovenden’s emphasis on the importance of drawing before painting and on values over color, as well as the instructor’s role in helping Henri develop his paint handling.32 Despite obvious differences between Henri’s mature subject matter and Hovenden’s, the two painters shared an affinity for commonplace subjects. Like Hovenden, Henri and his followers painted subjects “in their own time and in their own land” and believed what Henri asserted: “Art cannot be separated from life.”33 Both Hovenden and Henri believed in the academic notion that mastery of drawing must precede painting, emphasized the human figure, and typically used a dark palette. In terms of subjects, both teacher and pupil were inspired by unpretentious people and scenes rooted in the experiences of everyday life, firmly believing that art should be about “real life” rather than for “art’s sake.” While Hovenden’s subjects clung to an American way of life that was slipping away—farms, villages, and small towns— at the beginning of a new century Henri and his group of “New York Realists” (The Eight) were fascinated by the vitality and flux of modern American city life, its streets, and its people.34 Just after Hovenden’s death, Thomas Eakins said of Hovenden’s subjects and his appeal as an artist: “He was always very successful with his paintings. They were always in demand for exhibitions. He always picked out subjects that told simple stories of events that happen in every household. They appealed to everybody and were treated with a master hand.”35 Hovenden’s pictures “appealed to everybody” because his contemporaries thought they “faithfully portray American life.”36 Painting at

the “threshold” of a new century “across which the old life” would be “severed from the new,” Hovenden’s leitmotif throughout his oeuvre is the quiet drama of change entering the lives of ordinary people.37 Eakins summed up his comments on Hovenden to the Philadelphia journalist who interviewed him after Hovenden’s death by saying, “An artist . . . is known entirely by what he leaves behind him. His life begins at his death.”38 What Hovenden left behind is a substantial number of seriously meditated and skillfuly crafted genre paintings of peasant life in Brittany and of the life of ordinary Americans and African Americans in a time of critical change. Hovenden responded to the jarring transformations of his age, to its anxieties and tensions, with reassuring pictures that emphasized time-honored values and the enduring bonds of family ties, and, less often, with landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of people he knew. As an orphan he sought solace and hope in family life, as an immigrant looking for home he became an ardent American. He found in the commonplace reality of American homelife, black and white, subjects worth investing with dignity. In a time of materialism and ostentation, he portrayed simple humanity in plain clothes and surroundings. In a time of opportunistic competition, he offered images of moral and emotional strengths. In a time of growing complexity and tensions, he reminded his audience to endure by keeping faith in traditional values and passing them on to maintain the continuity of family, community, and nation. Hovenden tried to make sense of his time and place and to address the troubled conscience of the Gilded Age.

191

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NOTES

CHAPTER 1. BECOMING AN ARTIST

Cork Charities” (Cork Historical and Archaeologi-

1. Cork’s Marriage License Bonds Indexes

cal Society, 1943), 86; also “Register of the Boys of

record Robert Hovenden and Ellen Bryan as parties

St. Stephen’s Hospital” from 1780–85, 47, copies

to a bond in 1834. Only in 1864 did civil registra-

courtesy Cadogan to author, 4 November 1988.

tion of births, deaths, and marriages in Ireland be-

Hovenden’s parents probably died because of the

gin. For this information I am indebted to Timothy

famine of 1845–48 when thousands upon thousands

Cadogan, Executive Librarian, Reference Depart-

in County Cork either died of starvation or emi-

ment, Cork County Library, Cork, Ireland, Cado-

grated. See Gibson, History of the County, 2: 528.

gan to author, 4 November 1988. Most specific

No information is available about their deaths.

biographical sources for Hovenden’s earliest years are Dictionary of American Biography and Dictionary

3. John Windele, Notices of the City of Cork and Its Vicinity (Cork: Messrs. Bolster, 1840), [1], 2.

of Irish Artists. Hovenden’s widow approved the

4. For “carver and gilder,” Walter G. Strickland,

Rev. Ernest Pfatteicher’s manuscript “Thomas

Dictionary of Irish Artists, vol. 1 (Dublin and London:

Hovenden,” Book News Monthly 25 (January 1907):

Maunsel & Company, 1913), 528. “Tolerton” was

300–305, referred to as the “first authentic biogra-

probably George Tolerton who had a cabinetmaking

phy.” Information about Hovenden’s two siblings is

and upholstery business at Morrison’s Quay, Cork,

pieced together from unpublished letters, private

in the 1860s and died in 1881, according to Cado-

collections. No reference found to other siblings.

gan, based on Cork directories of 1863 and 1867

On Dunmanway, the Rev. Charles Bernard Gibson,

(Cadogan to author, 4 November 1988). Gibson,

The History of the County and City of Cork, 2 vols.

History of the County, 2: 319, writing in 1861, stated

(London: Thos. C. Newby, 1861), 2: 508–10.

that the cost at the Cork School was only ten

2. Sometimes boys under eight years or a year

shillings a quarter for three days a week instruction

or two older were admitted to the Blue-Coat School

because the government paid part of the teacher’s

(the “Register of the Boys of St. Stephen’s Hospital,

salary, awarded prizes, and made other contribu-

Cork” for 1780–85); 1780 lists boys from age six

tions. For Hovenden’s going to the school at age

to ten. Cadogan thought that Hovenden perhaps

seventeen, see “Advent of a Great American Painter:

was sent to the Blue-Coat School, letter to author,

Thomas Hovenden,” Studio and Musical Review 1 (19

4 November 1988; however, the registers of St.

February 1881), 51. Hovenden turned seventeen on

Stephen’s Hospital from 1750–1990 show no

28 December 1857, so he was seventeen for almost

Hovenden (Charles H. Jermyn of Cork to author,

all of 1858; therefore, I figure his age as of the next

1 February 1990). Michael V. Conlon, “Some Old

year when referring to a span of time.

194

NOTES TO PAGES 2–3

5. For concern for improved design and

8. Pope Pius VII had the collection of casts

reform, see Doreen Bolger Burke, Jonathan Freed-

made under the supervision of the celebrated Neo-

man, et al., In pursuit of Beauty:Americans and the Aes-

classical sculptor Antonio Canova and gave the col-

thetic Movement (New York: Metropolitan Museum

lection to the future King George IV of England

of Art, 1986), preface, 19–20; chapter 1, 25–27;

who, in 1819 as Prince Regent, gave it to the Cork

chapter 5, 143–44. Particularly helpful on Britain’s

Society for Promoting the Fine Arts. A few years

schools of design, John Ruskin’s ideas that decora-

later, the society sold the casts to the Royal Cork

tors should study at art school and from nature,

Institution. That institution was originally a literary

repercussions of the reform of Normal Training

society that grew to include a library, museum, and

schools for art education in Europe and the United

gallery; in 1832, the institution moved, with the

States, and how the American Aesthetic movement

collection of casts, to the early eighteenth-century

derived from British reform ideas: chapter 1,

Customs House building where subsequently the

25–27; chapter 2, 45, 54–59, 60–62, 65; chapter

School of Design located. Today the old building

9, 326–27.

forms the north wing of the Crawford Municipal

6. On James Brenan, “Heritage 5 [p. 5] 4th,”

Art Gallery. Windele, Notices of the City of Cork, [1],

from unsigned, typed manuscript pages about Craw-

2, 112–14; Gibson, History of the County, 2: 318–19.

ford Municipal Art Gallery and Cork School of

I am grateful to Peter Murray, Curator, Crawford

Design. Copy, courtesy of Peter Murray, Curator,

Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, for photocopies of

Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland.

material on the casts and the old Customs House

For one branch of British Aestheticism, that of John

building, especially, Considerations on the Utility of

Ruskin and later William Morris, who saw the

the Casts (Cork: John Bolster, 1819), 10–11, and

machine as a threat to the beauty of craftsmanship,

an 1819 catalog of an “Exhibition of Casts.” Some

and another branch of reformers, the “so-called

of the cast collection still in the present Crawford

South Kensington group” wanting to redesign the

Municipal Art Gallery is being restored and brought

machine-made into a more artful product, see Sylvia

out of storage, Peter Murray, Lecture, “Art in Nine-

L.Yount, “‘Give the People What They Want’: The

teenth-Century Cork,” 5 October 1989, Yale Cen-

American Aesthetic Movement,Art Worlds, and

ter for British Art, New Haven, Conn.

Consumer Culture, 1876–1890” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1995), 7. 7. For the Cork School’s purpose and student

9. These Neoclassical notions took root in Cork at least from early in the nineteenth century with the arrival of the collection of casts. Hugh

aspirations, see South Kensington Museum, Art

Honour’s essay on “Neo-Classicism,” in The Age of

directory, containing regulation for promoting instruction

Neo-Classicism (London: Arts Council of Great

in art with appendix (London: George E. Eyre and

Britain, 1972), xxi–xxix, clarifies the subject.

W. Spottiswoode, 1876), 39–43. On students and

Daniel Maclise (1811–70), a native of Cork and a

courses offered, see ibid., 39–40 and Francis Guy’s

history painter of some renown in London, recalled

Illustrated Handbook: City of Cork (Cork: Francis Guy,

how Cork’s collection of casts had inspired him.

[1887]), 25.

Maclise’s testimony recalled “their perfect forms”

NOTES TO PAGES 3–4

and the stunning “effect of that mass of excellence,

(1843–1917), who by then had become a member

beautiful and active moulds from the originals,

of the family furniture firm of Jordan & Moriarty

that were worshipped by generations, on his young

in New York City; they lived at East 58th Street

fancy,” in Maclise, “Manuscript Autobiography of

(New York City directories for the years 1867

Daniel Maclise,” Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington

through 1874–75); New York City directories:

House, London, quoted in Cork Historical and

William Jordan, mid-1860s to 1871, and afterward

Archaeological Society, “Daniel Maclise and Cork

the firm of Jordan & Moriarty. By early 1873, John

Society,” vol. 62, copy, courtesy of Peter Murray.

Hovenden, his wife Margaret, and their growing

10. For John Hovenden, County Clerk and

family lived in a house at 363 Kosciusko Street in

Clerk of the Supreme Court, New York County

Brooklyn; by 1879, Margaret was listed as a widow,

Court House, 7 August 1985: John Hovenden was

The Brooklyn City and Business Directory: For the Year

naturalized 29 October 1864, in Common Pleas

Ending May 1st 1873, compiled by George T. Lain

Court, New York County, bundle no. 291, record

(Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lane & Company, 1872), and

no. 393; five years’ residence was required before

subsequent years. Among John and Margaret Hov-

naturalization. On emigrants from the County and

enden’s children were Thomas and Elizabeth.

City of Cork, see Gibson, History of the County, 2:

Thomas died in 1934 (Obituary, New York Times,

528–30. John Hovenden’s naturalization papers list

2 December 1934, p. 39, col. 1). Elizabeth, or

his occupation as clerk in 1864 and his address that

“Lizzie,” married Lucius L. Earl (1871–1942?) and

year. New York City directories from 1865 to May

lived in Dobbs Ferry and then in Newburgh, New

1868 list his occupation as clerk, as do Brooklyn

York. One of Elizabeth Hovenden Earl’s letters (to

City directories from 1873 to May 1875. Trow’s

Martha Maulsby Hovenden, 1 December 1934) is

New York City Directory for the Year Ending May 1,

in the Hovenden Papers, private collection.

1865, compiled by H. Wilson, vol. 78 (New York:

12. Gibson, History of the County, 2:530, gave a

John F. Trow, 1864), and subsequent years. John

figure of 146,422 emigrants from County and City

Hovenden lived at several addresses in the Lower

of Cork from May 1851 to 31 December 1860. John

East Side from 1864 to 1867, from naturalization

Grafton, ed., New York in the Nineteenth Century (New

paper and New York City directories; the map in

York: Dover, 1980), 220; Lewis Evens Jackson, Walks

Trow’s New York City Directory for 1868 [1867–68]

About New York: Facts and Figures Gathered from Various

is quite helpful. The description of Thomas Hoven-

Sources by the Secretary of the City Mission (New York:

den is based on self-portraits; an 1891 passport in

Published for the Society, 1865); James Miller, New

Hovenden Papers, private collection; “Advent of a

York As It Is, or, Stranger’s Guide-Book to the Cities of New

Great American Painter,” 51; Harrison S. Morris,

York Brooklyn, and Adjacent Places (New York: James

Confessions in Art (New York: Sears Publishing Com-

Miller, 1864 and 1865); Gunther Barth, City People:

pany, 1930), 3–7.

The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century

11. For Elizabeth Hovenden, Trow’s New York

America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982),

City Directory, 1868 [1867–68]. In 1872 or early

123–27; Margot Gayle and Edmund V. Gillon, Jr.,

1873, Elizabeth Hovenden married James Jordan

Cast-Iron Architecture in New York:A Photographic Survey

195

196

NOTES TO PAGES 4–5

(New York: Dover, 1974), 160–61 on A. T. Stewart’s. 13. Miller’s New York As It Is, 1864, 20, 23, 24;

17. A number of artists had studios in the Studio Building at 15 West Tenth Street, built in 1857 and the first building especially designed for artists’

Barth, City People, 93, whole chapter on metropoli-

studios. Bierstadt, John W. Casilear, Frederic Edwin

tan press; preface in Trow’s New York City Directory

Church, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Martin

for 1861–2, 1862–3, 1863–4, and 1864–5 (issued

Johnson Heade, all landscape painters, had studios

for the later year ending in May) for population sta-

there in 1859–60. Figure painter Eastman Johnson

tistics (over seven hundred thousand).

had a studio in the University Building on Washing-

14. Hovenden’s statement to interviewer, early

ton Square 1858–72. For Jones, see “Hugh Bolton

1881, Hovenden Papers, “Advent of a Great Ameri-

Jones, Artist, Dies at 78,” obituary, New York Times,

can Painter,” 51. Preface, Trow’s New York City Direc-

25 September 1927, sec. 2, p. 9, col.1. Obituary

tory, 1866: dire predictions but optimistic. I have

from an unidentified New York newspaper, 24 Sep-

found no record of month or day of Hovenden’s ar-

tember 1927, in Hovenden’s daughter’s diary entry

rival in 1863. Draft riots and burning of the Orphan

for 26 September 1927, Hovenden Papers, private

Asylum took place in July. For Harper’s Weekly illus-

collection. For Robbins, see George C. Groce and

trations depicting the New York Draft Riots, see

David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s

Grafton, New York in the Nineteenth Century, 19, 20.

Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564–1860 (New

15. Both Church’s painting, Heart of the Andes,

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), s.v.

and Bierstadt’s, The Rocky Mountains, are now in the

“Robbins, Horace Wolcott, Jr.” and New York City

Metropolitan Museum of Art. On Lincoln’s funeral

Directory for 1867–68 for his studio address at

procession, see Grafton, New York in the Nineteenth

51 West Tenth Street. Robbins was elected an asso-

Century, 19, 20, 22, 25.

ciate of the National Academy of Design in 1864,

16. On Irish immigrants, see United States

the year Hovenden began classes there.

Works Progress Administration, New York City Guide

18. The National Academy of Design already

(New York: Random House, 1939), 12. On hous-

planned a new building farther uptown. See New

ing accommodations, Barth, City People, 52 and

York City directories for 1862–63, 1863–64, and

chapter 2. On the frequent changes of residence

1864–65, for 58 East Thirteenth Street address

and place of business, city directories. Amity Street

until 1865. Cornerstone of the academy’s new

address given in National Academy of Design’s

building laid October 1863, Eliot Candee Clark,

“Register of Students in the Antique School,”

History of the National Academy of Design, 1825–1953

1864–65 session. In 1864, a city rail line (horse-

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 80.

or mule-drawn cars along rails laid down on the

On night classes, see Strickland, Dictionary of Irish

streets) operated on Sixth Avenue, Miller, New York

Artists, s.v. “Hovenden, Thomas.” For enrollment,

As It Is, 89–90. Addresses for the shop-studio and

see National Academy of Design, “Register of Stu-

where Hovenden lived, Trow’s New York City Direc-

dents of the Antique School,” 1864–65, 1865–66,

tory for 1866–67; none of these original buildings

1866–67, and 1867–68 sessions; first admitted

from Hovenden’s day remains.

1 January 1864–65 session.

NOTES TO PAGES 6–7

19. Quotations from Hovenden Papers, “Advent

can Art Journal 8 (May 1976): 38–55. National

of a Great American Painter,” 51. National Academy

Academy of Design registers for the Antique

of Design records indicate Hovenden was registered

classes and for the Life classes are in reversed posi-

in the Antique School from 1864 to 1868. I am

tion in one volume; Hovenden registered in the

grateful to James L. Yarnell for the information on

Life School only for the 1866–67 session. Hoven-

the Artist Fund Society Exhibition in National Mu-

den’s first recorded oil painting was a Madonna

seum of American Art Pre-1877 Art Exhibition Catalogue

and Child, presently unlocated, painted about

Index, 2357.

1863 from live models, according to an account in

20. Hovenden Papers, “Advent of a Great

a loose clipping from The Villager, 13 December

American Painter,” 51; for Parsons, see Groce and

1945, about a Mrs. Mary Hornby Barrell, who as a

Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America, s.v. “Parsons,

baby had posed with her mother for the painting.

Charles.”

Clipping in Artist’s File on Thomas Hovenden,

21. Lois Marie Fink and Joshua C. Taylor, Academy:The Academic Tradition in American Art (Washing-

New York Public Library, Room 313. 24. For description of an opening in 1866, see

ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the

“Opening of the National Academy of Design,” New

National Collection of Fine Arts, 1975), 37–47,

York Times, 17 April 1866, p. 4, col. 6; Miller, New

51, 67, 70.

York As It Is, 59–60; and Grafton, New York in the

22. See Doreen Bolger’s excellent summary of “The Education of the American Artist,” in In This

Nineteenth Century, 143–44. 25. For exhibited paintings, National Academy

Academy:The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

of Design Exhibition Record 1861–1900, ed. Maria

1805–1976 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of

Naylor (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1973),

the Fine Arts, 1976), 60, 64, 66–67; in 1873 the

vol. 1, 457.

National Academy of Design had a painting class, in

26. Regarding Hovenden’s giving “more than

1878 a sketching class, and in the 1880s a composi-

his leisure hours to art,” see Thomas Hovenden

tion class; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Scrapbook, Archives of American Art thereafter

was more progressive. For Eastman Johnson, being

AAA-Reel P-13:56, “Drawing Room. Hovenden,”

among the assigned Academy members in 1867 and

Art Interchange (17 February 1881): 34. For the quo-

1868–69, see Fink and Taylor, Academy, 34–37. See

tations, Hovenden Papers, “Advent of a Great Amer-

“The Academy of Design,” New York Times, 11 January

ican Painter,” 51. Trow’s New York City Directory for

1874, p. 3, col. 3, for inadequacy of the schools

1863‒64,1864‒65, 1865‒66, 1866‒67, 1867‒68

prior to Professor Lemuel Wilmarth’s appointment

under “Commercial Register,” s.v. “Gilders,” “Gilt

as the first full-time instructor in 1870.

Mouldings,” and “Painters.” Hovenden is listed as a

23. For the library and other holdings, see Fink

framer, 724 Broadway, and home, 127 Charles,

and Taylor, Academy, 36. For school procedure, see

Trow’s New York City Directory for 1866–67 and

Clark, History of the National Academy, 90, and Don-

1867–68, s.v. “Hovenden, Thomas.” Listing of

ald R. Thayer, “Early Anatomy Instruction at the

framers as a separate specialty first in 1866–67

National Academy: The Tradition Behind it,” Ameri-

(May 1867) City Directory; all three frame dealers

197

198

NOTES TO PAGES 7–10

had Greenwich Village addresses. Hovenden’s busi-

existing firm in 1996 has no record of Hovenden,

ness and his closing shop, Hovenden Papers,

although he probably would not have signed his

“Advent of a Great American Painter,” 51.

name for coloring photographs and might still have

27. On Hovenden’s leaving New York City and

done work there, by telephone 22 March 1996. For

setting up a studio in Baltimore, see Hovenden

Virginia trip, see AAA, P-13:333, “The Wrong Kind

Papers, “Advent of a Great American Painter,” 51.

of Ham.An experience of the Late Thomas Hoven-

Hugh Bolton Jones was the son of Hugh Burgess

den with a Society of Colored Men,” New York Sun,

Jones and Laura Eliza Bolton, who was a descendant

25 August 1895. Research in Richmond city directo-

of a family who had come to Pennsylvania with

ries from 1861 to 1881 (no directories published for

William Penn and later moved to Baltimore. H.

several years after the Civil War) and at various his-

Bolton Jones and his younger brother Francis Coates

torical societies and museums in Richmond yielded

Jones (known as Frank), also to become an artist, at-

no information on Hovenden.

tended the Quaker School. Invaluable biographical

30. Because Eastman Johnson’s Life in the South,

material in “Francis Coates Jones, DeWitt McClellan

exhibited at the National Academy of Design in

Lockman Papers,” manuscript folder, containing both

1859 as Negro Life at the South, and later known as

typescript pages 1–13 and penciled notes, Library,

Old Kentucky Home, established Johnson’s reputation,

New-York Historical Society, New York.Also, Balti-

Hovenden probably knew about the picture. John-

more city directories, 1867–1882, at Maryland His-

son’s painting Negro Boy belonged to the National

torical Society and New York Public Library; Naylor,

Academy from 1860 at Johnson’s election as an aca-

Exhibition Record, 1861‒1900, which lists exhibiting

demician; Hovenden probably knew it also. AAA, P-

artists’ addresses;William Howe Downes, Dictionary

13:2, wood engraving and article titled “The Old

of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s

Nurse’s Visit,” American Agriculturist (January 1873),

Sons, 1937), s.v. “Jones, Hugh Bolton,” National

p. 28. The “mammy’s” imagined words begin with:

Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1939 ed., s.v.

“Well, honey, I nebber spected to a’ seed nuff in like

“Jones, H(ugh) Bolton”; and Joan Hanson Zeizel,

dis,” and continue in that vein. Even Northern liber-

“Hugh Bolton Jones,American Landscape Painter”

als thought of newly freed African Americans as

(M.A. thesis, George Washington University, 1972).

childlike, Peter H.Wood and Karen C. C. Dalton,

28. For the 1871 exhibition at the Maryland

Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks:The Civil War and Re-

Academy of Art, see Baltimore American, 15 Decem-

construction Years (Austin: University of Texas Press,

ber 1871, and Baltimore Dispatch, 19 October 1872,

1988), 68, 72.

in “Andrew John Henry Way: Scrapbook of

31. For wood engravings in other magazines

Clippings,” Museum and Library of Maryland His-

depicting African Americans and referring to the

tory, Maryland Historical Society.

Old South myth, see Wood and Dalton, Winslow

29. For quotation and for coloring photographs,

Homer’s Images of Blacks, figs. 30 (1869), 31 (1870),

see Hovenden Papers, “Advent of a Great American

48 (1871); for a caricatured “mammy” image, ibid.,

Painter,” 51. The Bendann Gallery of Baltimore

54 and fig. 25. On the Old South myth, see Paul M.

hired painters to do work for them, but the still-

Gaston’s penetrating study, The New South Creed:

NOTES TO PAGES 10–12

A Study in Southern Mythmaking (Baton Rouge:

Baltimore Sun, 14 October 1893. From 1873 to

Louisiana State University Press, 1983). “A Home

1894 the institute was similar to an art school

Missionary (Drawn by T. Hovenden),” Harper’s Weekly

where students could draw from casts and copy

18 (2 May 1874): cover; Wood and Dalton, Winslow

paintings; its gallery received a large number of

Homer’s Images of Blacks, 88–92; figs. 31 (1870) and

visitors. By 1924, many works were lent to other

48 (1871) depict the “visiting theme” (p. 92) of

institutions or stored because of space needs by the

plantation owners and former slaves.

Conservatory of Music, now, along with a prepara-

32. For Walters urging Hovenden to go to

tory school, subsumed under the Peabody Institute

Europe, see Hovenden Papers, “Advent of a Great

of Johns Hopkins University. Six Hovenden paint-

American Painter,” 51–52. Walters had begun to

ings were sold by Peabody to Kennedy Galleries,

collect paintings by local artists in the 1850s. While

New York City, in 1964. Rutledge, List of Works,

he was in Paris, with the help of another expatriate

3–6, 12; Richard Franko Goldman, Revised

George A. Lucas, Walters formed a remarkable col-

Catalogue of Works of Art Owned by the Peabody Institute

lection of nineteenth-century French painting and

of the City of Baltimore (Baltimore, 1971–73).

sculpture. That collection, which today comprises

34. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 15

the core of the Walters Art Gallery, exemplifies the

March 1878 [1–2], Hovenden Papers, private col-

late nineteenth-century trend in American art col-

lection; Walters Art Gallery, Taste of Maryland, 18.

lecting; rather than old masters and American

On the Peabody Institute, see Walters Art Gallery,

works, collectors were drawn to contemporary

Taste of Maryland, 18; Rutledge, List of Works, 3, 33;

European art. On Walters and Lucas, The George A.

Schaaf, “Baltimore’s Peabody Art Gallery,” 10–11.

Lucas Collection of the Maryland Institute: October 12

35. For these two pictures in the McCoy Col-

through November 21, 1965 (Baltimore: Baltimore

lection, see Rutledge, List of Works, 12. The Lovers is

Museum of Art, 1965) and Walters Art Gallery,

the original title, illustrated and so titled in “Note-

The Taste of Maryland:Art Collecting in Maryland

book F-L” that I examined at the Peabody Institute

1800–1934 (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1984),

16 January 1979; titled Couple in a Landscape when

vii, 50–60.

seen at Kennedy Galleries on 21 August 1979.

33. When he died, McCoy left the Peabody In-

36. For the Homer, see Lucretia H. Giese,

stitute his collection of more than fifty paintings by

“Winslow Homer’s Civil War Painting The Initials:

American artists, including seven works by Hoven-

A Little-Known Drawing and Related Works,” Amer-

den, seven by H. Bolton Jones, and five by another

ican Art Journal 18, no. 3 (1986): [4] and 5. Another

Baltimore artist, Arthur Quartley. The McCoy

example of the same theme is George Cochran

collection and other holdings of the Peabody

Lambdin’s The Beech Wood (1864) in which Lambdin,

Institute, now the Peabody Institute of Johns Hop-

like Homer, uses the romantic motif of a pledge of

kins University, are on loan to the Baltimore

troth. Lambdin presents a couple in the foreground

Museum or have been dispersed. On McCoy’s col-

with the young woman seated on a fallen trunk

lection, AAA, P-13:284, “Peabody Art Gallery: It is

watching the young man carving initials in the bark

Now Open to All Visitors from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.,”

of a beech tree; in the background, trees form an

199

200

NOTES TO PAGES 12–18

arched natural cathedral. On Lambdin’s picture,

but I have found no description of it. Hovenden

see illustration in David M. Sokol, Life in 19th Cen-

wrote “A Reverie, 1873” and his address in New

tury America:An Exhibition of American Genre Painting

York on the back of the canvas after he returned

(Evanston: Terra Museum of American Art, 1981),

from Europe in September 1880. Apparently, the

fig. 45.

picture had not been sold by then. I am indebted to

37. Hovenden’s Evening in the Woods is presently unlocated, at least by that title.

Dean Levy of Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., New York City, for allowing me to thoroughly examine

38. “Painted by Hovenden for Mr. John W.

the picture, including the canvas back, and for his

McCoy June 1873” appears on the back of Hoven-

comments on the material furnishings in the paint-

den’s canvas.

ing. In Christian art, the lily now known as the

39. For other American artists’ interest in bright

“Easter” lily is the attribute of the Virgin Mary and

sunlight and on Eastman Johnson, see Patricia Hills,

several saints and is uniformly associated with pu-

Eastman Johnson (New York: Whitney Museum of

rity. Actually the flower-like herb known as the

American Art, 1972), 62, 79 n. 32, 119–20. One

calla lily is not a true lily but Calla Ethiopica, asso-

example of J. G. Brown’s pictures in outdoor light

ciated with great beauty or perfection in compila-

is his Children at the Gate (1872) in the Jo Ann and

tions of flower symbolism. The second lily in the

Julian Ganz, Jr., Collection. On Homer, see David

painting was just dimly visible when I studied it

Park Curry, Winslow Homer:The Croquet Game (New

with Dean Levy on 11 June 1985. Perhaps the sec-

Haven, Conn.:Yale University Art Gallery, 1984).

ond lily was too hard to decipher in 1880 and that

40. Women’s organizations grew in the 1860s; women’s colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith—

was why Hovenden retitled the painting. 43. See William H. Gerdts, Revealed Masters

opened in the late 1860s to mid-1870s; the suffrage

(New York: American Federation of Arts, 1974),

movement gained momentum; women became in-

31–32; and Linda Ayres, “The American Figure:

creasingly important as consumers and influential

Genre Paintings and Sculpture,” in An American

in fostering a sentimental society. See Ann Douglas,

Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Art from the Collection of

The Feminization of American Culture (New York:

Jo Ann & Julian Ganz, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: National

Knopf, 1977). Also see Terra Museum of American

Gallery of Art, 1981), esp. 43. By contrast, details

Art, Life in Nineteenth Century America, 39.

and anecdote take precedence over mood and at-

41. Edgar de N. Mayhew and Minor Myers, Jr.,

mosphere in the works of Edward Lamson Henry,

A Documentary History of American Interiors: From the

see Ayres, “The American Figure,” 53–54 and figs.

Colonial Era to 1915 (New York: Charles Scribner’s

40–42.

Sons, 1980), 186: Victorian classical period

44. Hovenden might have known some Pre-

1830–1850, rococo revival style 1850–1870 (the

Raphaelite paintings from his days in Cork. The

side chair in the painting); floral wall-to-wall rugs

American Pre-Raphaelite group and the influence

were general in the 1850s.

of Ruskin was strongest in the late 1850s through

42. The Two Lilies is frequently referred to by title as one of Hovenden’s significant early works,

the 1860s, and had a noticeable effect on American still-life painting.

NOTES TO PAGES 19–20

45. The extant letters run from four to eight small but closely written pages, indicating McCoy’s

de l’Industrie, destroyed at the end of the 1890s, see Fink, American Art, xxii and 2.

interest, advice, and support. Six letters dating

49. Will H. Low, A Chronicle of Friendships

from 15 March 1878 to 11 April 1879 sent to

1873–1900 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,

France; one letter dated 26 October 1880 sent to

1908), 26 and 218; Low comparing Paris with “in-

Hovenden in New York, Hovenden Papers, private

tensely provincial” New York and referring to “su-

collection.

perior civilization” of Paris on his return to New

46. George William Sheldon, Recent Ideals of

York [City] in 1877. Low also recalled that in the

American Art (New York: D.Appleton and Company,

early 1870s it was unusual to see even a single pho-

1890), [1].A number of these artists (“he,” “himself,”

tograph of a picture exhibited in the Paris Salon in

and “his”) who studied in Paris were women, includ-

New York, A Painter’s Progress (New York: Charles

ing Helen Corson, Hovenden’s future wife.

Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 19. American painter Ben-

47. See H. Barbara Weinberg’s The Lure of Paris:

jamin West Clinedinst, arriving in Paris in 1881,

Nineteenth-Century American Painters and Their French

was astounded by the painting galleries of the Lou-

Teachers (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991) and Lois

vre Museum, Benjamin West Clinedinst, “Benjamin

Marie Fink’s American Art at the Nineteenth-Century

West Clinedinst, DeWitt McClellan Lockman Pa-

Salons (New York: Cambridge University Press,

pers,” New-York Historical Society, Manuscript

1990). American scholar Michael Quick’s early

Folder, Typescript [of an interview], 14–15. Study

study of late nineteenth-century American artists

in the Louvre Museum was expected in academic

in Europe provides an excellent synopsis of the

artistic education. References to the Louvre and to

phenomenon: American Expatriate Painters of the Late

the yearly Salons peppered all accounts of Ameri-

Nineteenth Century (Dayton, Ohio: Dayton Art Insti-

can artists about their student days in Paris. A num-

tute, 1979), 13–20. Another early study, Fink’s

ber of reproductions and publications featuring

“American Artists in France, 1850–1870,” American

contemporary French artists, even an 1888 Salon

Art Journal 5, no. 2 (November 1973): 32–49.

catalog, remain among the Hovenden Papers and

48. From 1855 into the 1890s Salons were held in the Palais de l’Industrie. Thousands of

memorablilia, private collection. 50. The Art Treasures of America, ed. Edward Stra-

paintings by living painters of any nationality hung

han (pseud. of Earl Shinn), 3 vols. (Philadelphia:

there, selected from many thousands submitted to

George Barrie, 1880; reprint ed., New York: Gar-

a jury controlled by the Academy of Fine Arts. On

land, 1976); G(eorge) W(illiam) Sheldon, Hours

some two thousand paintings being chosen out of

with Art and Artists (New York: D. Appleton and

four or five thousand for the 1881 Salon and the

Company, [1880]; reprint ed., New York: Garland,

important place of fine arts in France, see Edward

1978). S(ylvester) R(osa) Koehler, American Art

Simmons, From Seven to Seventy: Memoirs of a Painter

(New York: Cassell and Company, 1886; reprint

and a Yankee (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922;

ed., New York: Garland, 1978), 12. Koehler edited

reprint ed., New York: Garland, 1976), 125–26.

the American Art Review, published 1879–81. On

For the Grand Salon of the Louvre and the Palais

changed attitudes toward French painting after the

201

202

NOTES TO PAGES 20–22

Civil War, and on American exhibitions of contem-

ican Painters,” 67–70 for a succinct explanation of

porary French painting in major cities from the

the system.

1850s, Fink, American Art, 94, 93. Also Fink, “French

54. Boime, “Teaching Reforms of 1863,” 11–12,

Art in the United States, 1850–1870: Three Deal-

33 n. 90;Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, 15–18. For

ers and Collectors,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, 92

transcriptions of registers of des Beaux-Arts and

(September 1978): 87–100.

School painting ateliers, see Weinberg, “Nineteenth-

51. Paul Tucker, “The First Impressionist Exhi-

Century American Painters,” 66–84. On Cabanel’s

bition in Context,” The New Painting: Impressionism,

American pupils, 1863–84, see Anne Gregory

1874–1886 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of

Terhune, “Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895) and

Art, 1986): 93–117, a fine essay on Paris in the

Late-Nineteenth-Century Genre Painting” (Ph.D.

early 1870s.

diss., City University of New York, 1983), 54–72.

52. Fink, “American Artists in France,” 35.

55. George LaFenestre, “Alexandre Cabanel,”

Albert Boime, “The Teaching Reforms of 1863 and

Gazette des Beaux-Arts 31, 1 (April 1889): 267.

the Origins of Modernism in France,” Art Quarterly,

Cabanel as mediator, Henry de Chennevières,

n.s., 1 (1977): 6, 17, 31. Julian Alden Weir com-

“Alexandre Cabanel,” in François G[uillaume]

mented on the stringent entrance examinations in

Dumas, ed., Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists,

a letter to his father, 19 February 1874: Dorothy

trans. C. Bell (Paris: L. Baschet, [1882–88]),

Weir Young, The Life & Letters of J.Alden Weir (New

243–44. Alice Meynell, “Alexandre Cabanel,” The

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960),

Magazine of Art (London) 9 (1886): 271. For Ingres

29–30; Sheldon in Hours with Art and Artists, 129,

and Delacroix, Charles Baudelaire, “The Exposition

wrote about J. Carroll Beckwith’s experience in

Universelle, 1855,” Art in Paris 1845–1862: Salons

the 1870s; also, Will H. Low, “The Field of Art:

and Other Exhibitions, trans. and ed. Jonathan Mayne

The American Art Student in Paris,” Scribner’s Mag-

(Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society,

azine 31 (October 1903): 510. For a succinct

1965), 129–43.

explanation of the system of study in the ateliers,

56. Meynell, “Alexandre Cabanel,” 272; bio-

see Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the

graphical material on Cabanel: de Chennevières,

Nineteenth Century (New York: Phaidon, 1971), 23,

“Alexandre Cabanel,” 243–64; Martin L. H.

and H. Barbara Weinberg, “Nineteenth-Century

Reymert, Jon Hutton, et al., Ingres & Delacroix

American Painters at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,”

through Degas and Puvis de Chavannes:The Figure in

American Art Journal 13 (Autumn 1981): 67–70.

French Art 1800–1870 (New York: Shepherd Gallery,

53. The ultimate achievement for aspiring

1975), 243–47. Quotations and Cabanel’s pupils’

artists, but limited to French citizens, was to win

debt, de Chennevières, “Alexandre Cabanel,” 260,

the five-year traveling fellowship of the Prix de

263–64. The 1863 Salon’s jury rejected Edouard

Rome in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts’ annual compe-

Manet’s famous Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, which Manet

titions. See Boime, “Teaching Reforms of 1863,”

showed at the Salon des Refusés.

12, 37 n. 161; Boime, The Academy and French Painting, 23, and Weinberg, “Nineteenth-Century Amer-

57. The watercolor and gouache of Triumph of Flora (1869) was exhibited in 1873 and is illustrated

NOTES TO PAGES 22–23

in Victor Beyer, Kathryn B. Hiesinger, et al., The

“Alexandre Cabanel,” Art Amateur 20 (March 1889):

Second Empire, 1852–1870 Art in France under

79. Echo’s pose also is less mannered than that of

Napoleon III (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of

Venus in Cabanel’s Birth of Venus. On the greater

Art, 1978), 24, 369. For Triumph of Flora, de Chen-

semblance of naturalism in the work of other

nevières, “Alexandre Cabanel,” 258; Meynell,

French artists, such as Jules Breton (1827–1906),

“Alexandre Cabanel,” 274; and LaFenestre, “Alexan-

widely admired painter of French peasants who

dre Cabanel,” 279. Meynell and LaFenestre give, re-

turned away from a classically influenced figure

spectively, 1873 and 1874 as the completion date of

style to a more naturalistic one after midcentury,

the mural. Clarence C. Cook, Art and Artists of Our

see Hollister Sturges, Jules Breton and the French

Time, 6 vols. (New York: Selmar Hess, 1888; reprint

Rural Tradition (Omaha, Neb.: Joslyn Art Museum,

ed., New York: Garland, 1977), vol. 1, 72. For ac-

1982), 71, 89 and passim. Hovenden never stud-

ademic method of drawing and modeling tracing

ied under Breton, although such a claim was made

back to the sixteenth century, see Annibale

in 1955 (Helen Corson Livesey [Livezey], The Life

Carracci’s Drawing for Ceiling Farnese Palace, Rome,

and Works of Thomas Hovenden, N.A., 1955, AAA

illustrated, Thomas B. Hess and John Ashbery,

P52:561) and repeated in Lee M. Edwards, “No-

eds., The Academy, Art News Annual 33 (New York:

ble Domesticity: The Paintings of Thomas Hoven-

Macmillan, 1967), 25.

den,” American Art Journal 19, no.1 (1987): 11.

58. Cabanel’s style changed by the 1870s. His

Hovenden, himself, mentioned only Cabanel; Bre-

Echo, finished about the time Hovenden entered

ton’s only pupil was his daughter (Sturges, Jules

Cabanel’s atelier, demonstrates a more lively and

Breton, 9.

painterly brushwork, even some Courbet-like use

59. On Cabanel’s American commissions, see

of the palette knife, and deeper color than in his

de Chennevieres, “Alexandre Cabanel,” 257–60. On

work of the 1860s. See Boime, The Academy and

American patrons of Cabanel, see my dissertation,

French Painting, 104, fig. 60, on Cabanel’s sketches,

“Thomas Hovenden,” 41–42. For Americans who

which possibly influenced his pupil, Jules Bastien-

commissioned portraits from Cabanel and prices at

Lepage (1848–84). American art dealer George A.

New York auctions for seven other Cabanel pictures,

Lucas records buying Echo from Cabanel in

see Riordan, “Alexandre Cabanel,” 78. By 1882,

November 1874, a month after Hovenden entered

twenty-five paintings by Cabanel were in American

the master’s atelier, The Diary of George A. Lucas, ed.

collections compared with fifty-three by Gérôme;

Lilian Randall (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-

there was little American appreciative critical atten-

sity Press, 1979), 402–3. Boime also mentions two

tion paid Cabanel, see Weinberg, The Lure of Paris,

periods in Cabanel’s syle, the first in the 1840s to

131–37 on Cabanel.

1860s and the second in the 1870s, Boime, Diary of

60. Entries in school ateliers included student’s

George A. Lucas, 211, n.n. 63 and 64. On French

address, date of inscription, place and date of birth

poet Théophile Gautier mentioning Cabanel’s “clear,

(Hovenden’s birth year is given as 1844 instead of

bright key” and “luminous and positive” color in his

1840), Weinberg, “Nineteenth-Century American

1869 Triumph of Flora, quoted in Roger Riordan,

Painters,” 78.

203

204

NOTES TO PAGES 23–25

61. For Cabanel’s being impressed by Hoven-

back the loan. Lucas recorded seeing Hovenden

den’s talent, Hovenden Papers, “Advent of a Great

nine times from October 1874 to June 1875; see

American Painter,” 52; this February 1881 essay is

Randall, Diary of George A. Lucas, 401, 403, 405, 410,

based on a personal interview with the artist. On

411, 412, 414, 415. No known letters between

Walters contacting Lucas about Hovenden, see

McCoy and Hovenden are extant from this period.

Randall, Diary of George A. Lucas, 401. Friday, 23

McCoy’s later letters to Hovenden (Hovenden

October 1874, Lucas noted in his diary that he had

Papers, “Advent of a Great American Painter”) indi-

written to Walters and to Hovenden about the time

cate McCoy’s financial support, and the intercon-

to call. On going to Cabanel’s with Hovenden,

nections with Lucas,Walters, and McCoy make

401, 26 October 1874, and 414, 16 June 1875;

probable McCoy’s generosity and encouragement in

on visiting Cabanel to pay for Echo and two other

this period also.

paintings, 402. For Lucas, also see “Exhibition

65. The painting is identified on the panel’s back

Checklist,” A Baltimorean in Paris: George A. Lucas Art

in Lucas’s handwriting: “Head painted by Thomas

Agent, 1860‒1909 (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery,

Hovenden given me by him at the time he was pur-

1979) and The George A. Lucas Collection of the Mary-

suing his studies at Paris in Cabanel’s studio. G.A.

land Institute (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art,

Lucas.”—an appropriate gift of gratitude to the art

1965), fig. 50 and frontispiece.

dealer. The painting, originally owned by Lucas, is

62. For Cabanel’s insistence on drawing prac-

now in the Baltimore Museum on loan from the

tice, “Drawing Room,” Art Interchange, 5, no.

Maryland Institute. The Lucas collection was willed

10 (10 November 1880): 100, col. 2. Quotation

to Henry Walters but “released” to the second heir,

from Cabanel, Modern French Masters, ed. John C.

the Maryland Institute. See George A. Lucas Collection,

Van Dyke (New York: Century Company, 1896),

40, number 137, and 7.

100, in Harry W. Watrous’s essay on the artist Ernest Meissonier. 63. “Drawing Room,” 100, col. 3. Hovenden

66. On Julian Alden Weir’s “restricted palette,” see Young, Letters of J.Alden Weir, xix. A grayed palette is one associated with the French painter

talked with an interviewer, November 1880, com-

Jules Breton (1827–1906). On diffuse gray light

paring art training in France and America and com-

allowing painters to discover harmonious value

menting on the need for “development” of American

relationships, see Frederick C. Moffatt, Arthur Wesley

art education.

Dow (1857–1922) (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

64. For usual school atelier regimen, see

Institution Press, 1977), 26–27. Another factor in

Barbara Weinberg, The American Pupils of Jean-Léon

the choice of a limited palette was the emphasis on

Gérôme (Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum of

drawing over color in academic training.

Western Art, 1984), 6. Between October 1874 and

67. For a perceptive short essay on Self-Portrait

the end of June 1875, Lucas noted dinner meetings

of the Artist in His Studio, Ann C. Van Devanter

with Hovenden and Hovenden paying evening calls

and Alfred V. Frankenstein, American Self-Portraits

on him, one time to borrow one hundred and forty

1670–1973 (Washington, D.C.: International Ex-

francs and another time, a few weeks later, to pay

hibitions Foundation, 1974), 96–97.

NOTES TO PAGES 27–31

68. The American painter Keriyon Cox who entered Cabanel’s atelier four years after Hovenden

Cleopatra, see Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, plate 151.

did wrote home, “I am extremely glad I entered

74. Sheldon, Recent Ideals of American Art, [1].

Cabanel’s. The severe training of drawing from the

Hovenden spoke of study in Paris where the student

antiques among the fellows there is extremely

was “encouraged, criticised carefully but kindly and

bracing,” Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, 19. Also on

strengthened,” “Drawing Room,” Art Interchange,

academic training in drawing, see Young, Letters of

100, col. 3.

J.Alden Weir, 27, letter to John Ferguson Weir, 11

75. “Drawing Room.”

January 1874, and 20. 69. Weir, in his second year at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1875, wrote his brother about draw-

CHAPTER 2. FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS

1. “Drawing Room,” Art Interchange (10 Novem-

ing practice at the school, Young, Letters of J.Alden Weir, 71, J. Alden Weir to John Ferguson Weir, [21]

ber 1880): 100, col. 2. Interview soon after Hoven-

March 1875.

den’s return to the United States. 2. Young, Letters of J. Alden Weir, 77, also 41–42;

70. More than one hundred of Hovenden’s drawings are or have been in the collection of Kennedy Galleries, New York. 71. De Chennevières, “Alexandre Cabanel,” 260. 72. Cabanel’s treatment of historical subjects in

44. 3. The special quality of the light was still apparent on my visit in October 1994. On Pont-Aven, see Mary Denver Hoffman, “The Perfect Village of Finistère [the western-most district of Brittany],” Out-

familiar terms accords with a general tendency in

look 94 (23 April 1910): 951. David Sellin, Americans

French painting after midcentury for nonheroic in-

in Brittany and Normandy, 1860–1910 (Phoenix:

terpretations of antiquity in the paintings of artists

Phoenix Art Museum, 1982),Appendices, 83–86;

such as Charles Gleyre, Thomas Couture, and Jean-

essay by Charles Guy LePaul, “Pont-Aven at the End

Léon Gérôme, referred to as the French Neo-Grec

of the Nineteenth Century,” in Sellin, Americans in

style. Examples of informal treatment of historical

Brittany, 91–96. On accommodations and popular-

figures or events include Gérôme’s Molière Break-

ity, see Henry Bacon, A Parisian Year (Boston: J. R.

fasting with Louis XIV (1862) and Cabanel’s mural

Osgood and Company, 1883), 99. On Pont-Aven

series on the life of Louis IX for the Pantheon, Paris

residents finding modeling “pleasant and lucrative,”

(1875–78). See Weinberg, The Lure of Paris, 43, 58,

see Henry Blackburn, “Pont-Aven and Douarnenez,”

85, 87, 93, 99, 113.

Magazine of Art 2 (London, 1879), 8. Reproductions

73. Reproductions from nineteenth-century

of on-the-spot sketches by Randolph Caldecott

publications, including Cabanel’s Desdemona and

(1846–86), an English painter and illustrator in

Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners

Pont-Aven, summer 1878, enhance Blackburn’s arti-

(1887), remain among Hovenden Memorabilia,

cle. Horace Vachell described the oaks of Finistère

private collection. The Desdemona illustration was

(westernmost district of Brittany in which Pont-

from Strahan, Art Treasures. For illustration of

Aven lay), “deeply rooted in the soil, twisted by a

205

206

NOTES TO PAGE 32

thousand storms, yet surviving them honoured in

but 33 and 145: 1875. Verso of photograph of

legend and song,” The Face of Clay (New York: Dodd,

sheep: “C. Famin: Helen Corson Paris September

Mead and Company, 1906), 53. One of Hovenden’s

1874.” Photographs, Corson Memorabilia, private

landscapes, of Pont-Aven’s Bois d’Amour, dated

collection. Edward Waldo Emerson wrote that

1879 on tree trunk, might have been the landscape

Picknell knew Wylie “little more than a year” when

he exhibited in the 1879 Salon.

Wylie died and that Picknell was twenty-one when

4. Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 30–31, and

he went to Pont-Aven, Emerson, “An American

William H. Gerdts, “Milne Ramsey” in The Art of

Landscape-Painter,” Century Magazine 62 (Septem-

Milne Ramsey (New York: Chapellier Galleries,

ber 1901): 710–11. For artists at Pont-Aven, see

1974), [8, 10]. Hovenden may well have read about

my dissertation, “Thomas Hovenden,” 116–42; and

Brittany before he went abroad. Harper’s New

Julia Rowland Myers, “The American Expatriate

Monthly Magazine published George M. Towle’s two

Painters of the French Peasantry, 1863–1893”

articles on “Life in Brittany” in 1870: 41 (November

(Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1989),

1870): 853–59 and 42 (December 1870): 30–40.

48–183. I was mistaken to state in my dissertation,

Ward had gone to Pont-Aven with Weir the prior

125, that Corson studied under Eakins. The “List

summer; Ramsey had first gone to Pont-Aven dur-

of Students 1877–80” with signatures, which I saw

ing the Franco-Prussian War and returned for the

in the Archives, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine

summer months in the later 1870s with his family

Arts, was not a student register but an “address

and friends, including Helen Corson (1846–1935).

book—nothing more,” Cheryl Leibold, archivist,

5. An 1882 guidebook noted that Pont-Aven’s

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to author,

two inns were “overrun by American and English

3 March 1987; also Eakins was not teaching in

artists.” John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in

1877–78. Corson’s name on a February 1876 list

France (London: John Murray, 1882), Part 1, 166.

when the new Furness building was still not open

6. For an artist whose last name was Francia

to the public might have meant only that students

perhaps being the first to discover Pont-Aven and

were allowed to use classrooms, ibid. Apparently,

for “two friends of Corot” who went there in 1860,

however, Corson was in Pennsylvania, at least

see Denise Delouche, Peintres de la Bretagne: Décou-

briefly, in 1876 and 1877.

verte d’une province ([Rennes], Université de Haute

7. Hovenden, Bolton Jones, and Picknell stayed

Bretagne, 1977), 324, [349]. Listing of artists at

in Pont-Aven through the winter of 1877–78, while

Pont-Aven, ibid., 314–61. Clement Nye Swift

Frank Jones went to Paris to enter an atelier.

(1846–1918) of Massachusetts and the

8. “Francis Coates Jones, DeWitt McClellan

Philadelphian William Lippincott (1849–1920)

Lockman Papers,” Manuscript Folder, typescript

were also there when Hovenden arrived. For Pick-

p. 3, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society,

nell and Swift, see Delouche, Peintres de la Bretagne,

New York City. Jones’s recollections were noted by

335, 338; also Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 11–42,

his interviewer. Hovenden and the Jones brothers

esp. 30–33, 147. For Corson, see Sellin, Americans

stayed at the Gloanec Pension, called the “true Bo-

in Brittany, 31: 1874 for Corson’s going to France,

hemian home at Pont-Aven” by Blackburn, “Pont-

NOTES TO PAGES 33–34

Aven and Douarnenez,” 6, 7; its accommodations

and Picknell, see Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 148.

were still cheap when Gauguin stayed there in the

William L. Picknell to Thomas Hovenden, 16

late 1880s. Wylie and Picknell stayed at the main

February 1881, from Hôtel des Voyageurs, Pont-

inn, the Hôtel des Voyageurs.

Aven, to Sherwood Studio Building, 58 W. Fifty-

9. Murray, Handbook for Travellers, 157: “Pontaven [sic] is another very primitive Breton village on the [coast] road,” repeated [with “a” instead of

seventh Street, New York, Hovenden Papers, private collection. 13. On the discovery of Brittany by artists and

“another”]. In Murray’s Handbook for Travellers,

writers and their attitudes toward Brittany, see

published in 1873, 158; in 1877, Part 1, 164; in

Delouche, Peintres de la Bretagne, Romantic inter-

1879, 164. Entry introduced as “a pretty little vil-

pretations, 224–26, 276; varying interpretations

lage” in 1873, 1877, and 1879, ibid.

in Honoré de Balzac’s The Chouans, trans. Marion

10. Theodore Zeldin, A History of French Passions,

Ayton Crawford (Harmondsworth, England: Pen-

1848–1945:Ambition, Love and Politics, vol. 1 (New

guin, 1972) and Auguste Brizeux’s Marie, first

York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 173. For in-

published in 1831, 14, 17. Also Zeldin, History of

stance, about 840,000 French peasants left the land

French Passions, 131–33. Exceptional for fairly

for small towns from 1875 through 1881 because

objective drawings of peasant life in Brittany was

artisanal and laborer jobs were disappearing “under

the Brittany-born artist Olivier Perrin, whose

pressure from industry” and “crisis in agriculture,”

work was engraved and published posthumously

172.

in 1835, providing subject types for later artists.

11. Concarneau’s fishery engaged some 13,000

On Perrin’s La Galérie bretonne ou vie des Bretons de

employees in 1877. On Concarneau, where the pop-

l’Armorique, see Delouche, Peintres de la Bretagne,

ulation almost doubled between 1867 and 1877, see

118–31, 278. On engravings providing subject

Murray, Handbook for Travellers, 1867, 157, and 1877,

types, see Madeleine Fidell Beaufort, “Peasants,

164. On Pont-Aven’s commerce since the eve of the

Painters and Purchasers,” The Peasant in French Nine-

Revolution and the quoted saying about the village,

teenth Century Art (Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery,

see Bertrand Queinec, Pont-Aven, cité des peintres

Trinity College, 1980), 54–59.

(Rennes: Editions Quest-France, 1988), 3, 13. 12. For examination of myths of a static

14. Courbet painted the provincials in his native province of Franche-Comté; Millet painted

Brittany and a uniform peasantry, see Zeldin, A His-

the peasants in the area around Barbizon. The Em-

tory of French Passions, 1, chapter 9, esp. 147, 172–73,

peror Napoleon III bought Breton’s Recall of the

176–79. Also see Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock,

Gleaners at the 1859 Salon; in 1862, the painting

“Les données Bretonnantes,” in Francis Frascina and

was given to the Luxembourg Museum, transferred

Charles Harrison, eds., Modern Art and Modernism:A

to the Louvre in 1920, then to the Musée des

Critical Anthology (New York: Harper & Row, 1987),

Beaux-Arts in Arras. Three major articles on “Jean-

285–304. Orton and Pollock’s primary concern is

François Millet—Peasant and Painter” appeared in

the period after Hovenden’s departure in the sum-

the widely circulated Scribner’s Monthly in Novem-

mer of 1880. On the modern road to Concarneau

ber and December 1880 and January 1881 by

207

208

NOTES TO PAGE 34

Alfred Sensier, and, in January, Sensier and Paul

February 1955, AAA P-52:561. Hovenden, him-

Mantz. The 1860s and 1870s saw a growing market

self, never so indicated and Sturges affirms that

for Courbet’s work. As mentioned in Chapter 1,

Breton’s only pupil was his daughter, Jules Breton,

Courbet’s coloration and method of applying paint

9. A framed engraving of Breton’s Recall of the

seem to have influenced Cabanel in the mid-1870s,

Gleaners hung in the Hovendens’ house at

judging by Cabanel’s Echo (1874, Metropolitan

Plymouth Meeting.

Museum of Art). For Breton, see Hollister

15. The two painters shared closeness in age,

Sturges, ed., The Rural Vision: France and America in

British descent, and Protestant faith. Like Hoven-

the Late Nineteenth Century (Omaha: Joslyn Art

den, Wylie was orphaned and then emigrated to

Museum, 1987), and Robert J. Bezucha, “The Ur-

the United States, going as a boy to live with an un-

ban Vision of the Countryside in Late Nineteenth-

cle in Philadelphia, where he later became curator at

Century French Painting,” 18–19. See Sturges,

the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before

“Jules Breton,” 29–30, on Breton’s family being

moving to Paris in 1863 and Pont-Aven in 1865.

bourgeois and Breton’s own condemnation of

Uprooted Irish-born and British-born artists, they

social progress, 30–31, on Breton’s Wine Shop-

were captivated by the Breton’s rootedness in fam-

Monday (1858), a surprisingly realistic-looking

ily and continued identification with an ancient

painting, which Wylie’s style resembles, and 39

land. Hovenden was of English ancestry from

and 41 for comparison with Millet and for Breton’s

Kent, England. See Strickland, Dictionary of Irish

creation of a national symbol. On Breton’s popular-

Artists, 1913 ed., s.v. “Hovenden, Thomas.” On

ity in the United States, see Madeleine Fidell Beau-

Wylie, see Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 11–15. The

fort, “Jules Breton in America: Collecting in the

idea that the purity of the first man could be found

Nineteenth Century,” in Sturges, Jules Breton, 51–61.

in Brittany persisted from the early nineteenth

Breton seems to have influenced Eastman Johnson in

century until 1870–80; see Delouche, Peintres de la

his Cornhusking Bee, Island of Nantucket (1876), and

Bretagne, 278–79.

The Cranberry Harvest (1880) and Winslow Homer’s

16. Other American artists at Pont-Aven in the

conception of heroic fisherwomen in Cullercoats,

later 1860s were the Bostonian Charles Way and the

England, in 1881–82. See Beaufort, “Jules Breton,”

Philadelphians Earl Shinn [Edward Strahan, pseud.]

59, for Breton’s appeal and his influence on Johnson

and Howard Roberts. On artists there in 1866,

and Homer.Also,William H. Gerdts, “Winslow

Wylie, and common studio, see Benjamin Champ-

Homer in Cullercoats,” Yale University Art Gallery

ney, Sixty-Years’ Memories of Art and Artists (Woburn,

Bulletin (Spring 1977): 18–35; and Patricia Hills,

Mass.:Wallace and Andrews, 1900), 113–15, 121,

“Images of Rural America in the Works of Eastman

123–25; on the studio called Château de Lezaven,

Johnson, Winslow Homer, and Their Contempo-

see Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 11, 16–17. For

raries,” in Sturges, The Rural Vision, 74–79. Hov-

Wylie at the Salon, see Ministère de l’instruction

enden was not a student of Breton’s as Lee M.

publique, Salon de 1870 (Paris: Charles de

Edwards stated in “Noble Domesticity, 11, and as

Mourgues, 1870); Salon de 1872, Salon de 1873, and

Helen Corson Livezey stated in Life and Works, 22

Salon de 1875 (Paris: Imprimerie National, 1872,

NOTES TO PAGES 34–35

1873, 1875). The titles of most of the works indicate they were Breton subjects. 17. An American critic wrote that Cabanel

20. Neither artist is known for evidencing lively interest in the contemporary social or political situation of the Pont-Aven peasant; even Wylie’s A For-

was not “a colorist” although he “often arrived at

tune Teller is more a dramatic presentation of peasant

a considerable purity and beauty of tone,” Roger

superstition than a critical one. References to Wylie

Riordan, “Alexandre Cabanel,” Art Amateur 20

mention his sympathetic approach to peasants. Both

(March 1889): 78.

men impressed those who knew them as quiet and

18. For Wylie’s death, see Hovenden’s letter to

gentlemanly but, nonetheless, strongly principled.

Goupil and Company, Wylie’s dealer in Paris, in

Harrison S. Morris, who knew Hovenden when

Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 86. After Wylie’s death

Morris was managing director of the Pennsylvania

Hovenden wrote Julius Oehme, a New York art

Academy of the Fine Arts, recollected: “Such

dealer with M. Knoedler & Co., of his debt to

endearing naiveté made Hovenden the beloved of

Wylie. Oehme quoted Hovenden in a letter on

everybody. This was mixed with not a little assertive

25 October 1884 to George H. Corlis, Secretary of

opinion,” in Confessions in Art, 6 and passim.

the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. See Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadel-

21. Towle, “Life in Brittany. I,” 853–59, and Towle, “Life in Brittany. II,” 30–40.

phia: Microsurance, 1955), AAA P-83:273–75,

22. Corwin Knapp Linson, “Pont-Aven Vi-

Julius Oehne [sic] to George H. Corlis, 25 Octo-

gnettes,” Scribner’s Magazine 47 (April 1910): 421,

ber 1884.

illustrated by the author; second quotation from

19. Wylie’s painting A Breton Audience (ca.

Mary Denver Hoffman, “The Perfect Village of

1870) once belonged to John W. McCoy (List of

Finistère,” Outlook 94 (23 April 1910): 949, also

Works of Art in the Collection of the Peabody Institute,

illustrated.

Baltimore, Maryland (Baltimore: Peabody Institute,

23. A British guidebook author in the mid-

1949). Probably Hovenden encouraged McCoy to

1870s assumed that tourists to Finistère, the district

buy it. See Dictionary of American Biography for list-

in which Pont-Aven lay, sought the picturesque,

ing of other works. Julia Rowland Myers in her

advising visitors that the district “is to be seen

1989 doctoral dissertation on American painters

properly only in its villages and its churches and

of French peasantry proposes that the title of

country towns on a Sunday or Fête-day. Then alone

Wylie’s 1870 Salon painting, Baz-Walen demandeur

are the population abroad in their quaint and showy

en mariage dans la basse-Bretagne, is the proper title

garb . . . ; at other times the natives are lost in their

of the painting known as The Postman or as Reading

fields and workshops.” Murray, Handbook for Trav-

the Letter from the Bridegroom. She argues persuasively

ellers in France, vol. 1, 20. On misconceptions that

that a tailor (“baz-walen”) serves as matchmaker

the Breton costume was traditional or archaic and

and reads aloud a letter from a prospective bride-

on Celtic origins of Bretons, see Orton and Pollock,

groom to the father of the bride-to-be who stands

“Les données Bretonnantes,” 293, 299. “Breton

on the left. See Myers, “American Expatriate

costume” was a class costume until the French

Painters,” 70.

Revolution; then it became a modern form of dress

209

210

NOTES TO PAGES 36–39

marked by regional variations and significations,

Harper & Row, 1989), 33–59, esp. 51. Zeldin,

especially in women’s coiffes. To visiting urban

History of French Passions, 133: “While some saw the

tourists, the Breton costume mainly signified oth-

peasant either as the raw clay from which civilisa-

erness. Orton and Pollock, “Les données

tion had to be fashioned, or as an obstacle to the

Bretonnantes,” 293.

spread of enlightenment, others who wished to

24. For preferred subjects among French

change society as it had developed, saw in him the

painters, see James Thompson, Madeleine Fidell

repository of unsullied virtues. The romantics, the

Beaufort, and John Home, The Peasant in French Nine-

Catholic revivalists, the believers in a conservative

teenth Century Art (Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery,

and hierarchic order, all held him up as a model of a

Trinity College, 1980), 192, “Index of Peasant Sub-

human unspoilt by progress. George Sand wrote

ject Groupings.”

books about him or rather books about how she

25. “Francis Coates Jones, DeWitt McClellan Lockman Papers,” typescript, 3. Picknell quotation, Emerson, “An American Landscape-Painter,” 711.

would have liked him to be, inaugurating a whole genre of rustic novels.” 28. The Image Seller, Ministère de l’instruction

Accounts differ about when Picknell went abroad

publique, Salon de 1876, 130, no. 1049 Un marchand

and how long he studied with the American land-

des bonne vierges. Hovenden was listed as a pupil of

scapist George Inness in Rome and in Gérôme’s

Cabanel, living at Pont-Aven. I am grateful to Eliza-

atelier. He was registered with Gérôme in Decem-

beth Schaaf,Archivist, Peabody Institute, Baltimore,

ber 1874 (Weinberg, American Pupils, 103).

for a photograph of The Image Seller once owned by

26. “Drawing Room,” Art Interchange 5, no. 10

John W. McCoy and then by the Peabody Institute;

(10 November 1880): 100. Dated 1876; inscribed

see Schaaf’s “Baltimore’s Peabody Art Gallery,”

on the stretcher are the title and “Artist. T. Hov-

9–14, and 12, illustration of “The North Hall of the

enden. Pont Aven, Finisterre, France,” Records,

Peabody Institute around the turn of the century,”

Schweitzer Gallery, New York. I am indebted to

shows two Hovendens: The Image Seller, top row,

M. R. Schweitzer for the interview, 16 July 1987.

third from the right; One Who Can Read, bottom row,

27. A Gauguin pastel, Breton Girl, Head in Profile,

fourth from the right, probably 1893 exhibition of

Facing Left, from his first trip to Pont-Aven in 1886,

McCoy collection,AAA P-13:284 “Peabody Art

shows a similar costume. Richard Brettell et al.,

Gallery” 14 October 1893. Molding above the door-

The Art of Paul Gauguin (Washington, D.C.: National

way in photograph of The Image Seller matches the

Gallery of Art, 1988), 66, cat. 21. For costume sig-

molding above the old chapel’s side-door entrance.

nification: “In the discourses of non-Bretons,

The chapel was at Nizon until 1956 when moved,

visitors from the town, the signs of dress were ap-

stone by stone, to Le Pouldu and renamed. Seen by

propriated to signify difference, strangeness, other-

author, 22 October 1994; referred to and pictured,

ness,” Orton and Pollock, Les données Bretonnantes,

Ghislaine Huon, Les Quêteurs de rêve (Maison Marie

293. For the concept of “Other,” see Linda Nochlin,

Henry, 1994), 111–12. On statuettes, see Honoré

“The Imaginary Orient,” The Politics of Vision: Essays

de Balzac, The Chouans, trans. Marion Ayton Craw-

on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York:

ford (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1972),

NOTES TO PAGES 39–4 2

262, description of a statuette of the Virgin on the

32. These features are the same as those in

mantle of a Breton house inscribed on its base: “I am

Carwin Knapp Linson’s early twentieth-century

the Mother of God, / Protectress of this place.” One

drawing, Interior of the Church of St. Maude near Pont-

of these faience statuettes is among the Hovenden

Aven. Linson saw the church as “gray and stern,”

Memorabilia, private collection.

with a “dank earthen floor” and “grotesque

29. Wylie’s two presently unlocated pictures,

carvings” that “seemed caricatured memories of

Ministère de l’instruction publique, Salon de 1875,

some barbarous mythology.” Linson, “Pont-Aven

292, no. 2004 Colporteur [peddler] and no. 2005

Vignettes,” 425–26, reproduction, 426. A similar

Chiffonier et marchand de faience dans le Finistère [rag-

wooden crucifix in the small Chapel of Tremalo

picker and peddler of faience in Finistère]. For

near Pont-Aven later inspired Paul Gauguin to

Hovenden’s apparently “come upon” image demon-

paint The Yellow Christ (1889). Gauguin was fasci-

strating what Nochlin calls an apparent absence of

nated by “primitive” art styles, piety, and the

art, see Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” 35–41;

theme of reconciliation, see Mathew Herban III,

as one of the “signifiers of the category of the

“The Origin of Paul Gauguin’s Vision After the

real . . . that give credibility to the ‘realness’ of an

Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1888),”

image,” 38.

Art Bulletin 59 (September 1977): 420.

30. Description of A Brittany Image Seller in Cat-

33. Earl Shinn wrote of Wylie’s rich use of the

alogue of American Paintings Belonging to William T.

palette knife and commented that his technique was

Evans (New York: American Art Galleries, 1900),

“what the artists call fatty,” Earl Shinn [Edward Stra-

no. 3 for sale 31 January 1900. In Sheldon, Recent

han, pseud.], Art Treasures of America, vol. 2, 66.Anne

Ideals of American Art, 100, 152, the two image sell-

Coffin Hanson, “Edward Hopper,American Meaning

ers are confused; Hovenden did send the picture

and French Craft,” Art Journal (Summer 1981): 144,

“now owned” by William T. Evans to the Salon. A

146, for thin underpainting, “cool-over-warm,” and

Brittany Image Seller derives directly from a quick

for the established technical practice and “traditional

pencil sketch Hovenden made of the peddler in a

admonition: to paint thick over thin.”

small sketchbook containing fifty-seven sketches,

34. Naylor, Exhibition Record, 1861–1900,

Hovenden Sketchbook, private collection. Some

vol. 1, 457; it was listed for sale for $800. The

three dozen other remaining drawings of Breton

work is the same as A Brittany Peasant Girl: McCoy

subjects (particularly now or formerly in Kennedy

mentioned the title with a description of the paint-

Galleries’ Collection) show the artist’s aptitude for

ing, John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 24 May

setting down what interested him; no doubt many

1878, 5, 7. McCoy also gives the key to the title’s

of these drawings inspired unlocated paintings of

meaning: “Your little girl blowing the [“dandelion”

women weaving or spinning.

is crossed out] field-flowers is a charming theme,” 7.

31. The artist wrote the identifying title above

The dandelion is playfully associated with telling

his signature on the lower left of the painting.

time; see Mary Durant, Who Named the Daisy? Who

Sketchbook (1878), Hovenden Memorabilia, pri-

Named the Rose?: A Roving Dictionary of North American

vate collection, dated by its contents.

Wild Flowers (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company,

211

212

NOTES TO PAGES 43–5 0

1976), 58–59, for the following: “And as all

study it with him. The work was then titled Young

children know, dandelion clocks will tell you the

Girl Playing with a Toy.

time. Blow on the seed head twice and however

39. A similarity exists between the portrait on

many seeds remain give you the hour of the day.”

the wall in Hovenden’s picture and an illustration of

Dennis Miller Bunker titled a watercolor depicting

Wylie’s Self-Portrait in David Sellin’s essay on Wylie

a woman holding a dandelion A Dandelion Clock,

in Denis Delouche, “Pont-Aven et ses peintres à

shown in the American Water Color Society Exhibi-

propos d’un centenaire,” in Arts de l’Ouest (Univer-

tion of 1881.

sity of Rennes, 1986) 12, a photocopy of which was

35. The paint is thick and somewhat dry or matte-like as in the church interior. The threedimensional realization of the figure and of the birch

graciously sent me by Catherine Puget, Curator of Musée de Pont-Aven. 40. See “Wylie, Robert,” Clarke Collection Sale

trunks is not achieved as successfully as in later

Catalogue (New York: 1899), 121:Wylie’s “color

pictures, but form is quite solid compared with

was virile . . . though somewhat dark now, [but] it

French Impressionist painters who flatten forms

must be remembered that he worked at a time

and merge them with the surroundings. “Prepar-

when the artistic world painted in a low key.” On

ing the Pictures,” New York Times, 30 March 1879,

his “sober” color, see Dictionary of American Biography,

6, col. 7.

1936 ed., s.v. “Wylie, Robert,” by William Howe

36. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 24

Downes. McCoy saw the picture at the National

May 1878, 6. Later McCoy requested a photograph

Academy of Design’s 1878 exhibition where it was

of the painting, John W. McCoy to Thomas Hoven-

shown as Pride of the Old Folks, John W. McCoy to

den, 22 November 1878, 2.

Thomas Hovenden, 31 May 1878, [2, 3], Hovenden

37. An obviously posed photograph of Hovenden in Pont-Aven’s Le Bois d’Amour, sitting on a

Papers, private collection. 41. The painting was shown at the National

painter’s stool in front of an easel on which rests his

Academy of Design in 1878 as Pride of the Old Folks

painting, The Call to Rest of 1880 (painted from an-

and McCoy saw it there, Naylor, Exhibition Record,

other location in Pont-Aven) indicates the by-then

1861–1900, vol. 1, 457, and John W. McCoy to

prevalent idea that an artist paints out-of-doors

Thomas Hovenden, 31 May 1878, 2, 3. McCoy re-

when painting a landscape. Photograph, probably by

ferred to “The One Who Can Read” and to the al-

Helen Corson, private collection, reproduced in

ternative title “Pet of the Family,” John W. McCoy

Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 34, fig. 9; see also my

to Thomas Hovenden, 15 March 1878, 2, Hovenden

dissertation, “Thomas Hovenden,” 194–98, figs.

Papers, private collection.

70–74. Painted just before Hovenden returned

42. La Vendée, Brittany, and part of Normandy

home to America, the subject is the evening call to

were in the Department of the West. Beginning in

animals to return home.

the Vendée, the war spread to Brittany and Nor-

38. I saw the painting at the Daniel Grossman

mandy. Chouans, or Vendéans, were known for

Gallery Collection, New York, 16 July 1987, and am

their fierce guerrilla warfare and were the subject

grateful to Eric Baumgartner for the opportunity to

of Honoré de Balzac’s 1829 historical novel, Les

NOTES TO PAGES 50–52

Chouans, which might have inspired Wylie. During

Peabody Institute, third painting from the right on

the French Revolution, Pont-Aven’s neighboring

the upper tier, Schaaf, “Baltimore’s Peabody Art

farming countryside was devoted to the Chouan

Gallery,” 4, 12.

cause and its alliance with the princes of land and

46. On change from Balzac’s early image and

Church, although much of the village population

new archetypes, see Delouche, Peintres de la Bretagne,

adhered to new republican ideas.

138–42. On the peasant as an image in French paint-

43. For Wylie’s intended exhibition, Julius

ing in the latter half of the nineteenth century em-

Oehme quoted what Hovenden wrote him, AAA,

bodying attitudes toward the Industrial Revolution,

P-83:275. Lucy H. Hooper, “American Art in Paris,”

see Robert L. Herbert, “City vs. Country: The

Art Journal (New York), n.s. 4 (March 1878): 91.

Rural Image in French Painting from Millet to

44. Max J. Friedlander’s definition is still apt: “Historical painting concerns itself with that which

Gauguin,” Artforum 8 (February 1970): 44–56. 47. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden,

has happened once and at a given place; genre paint-

15 March 1878, 3–4, Hovenden Papers, private

ing with that which happens every day.” Quoted in

collection.

Gordon Bailey Washburn, “Definition of the Con-

48. AAA, P-13:10, untitled article, Baltimore

cept of ‘Genre Art,’” Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 6

Evening Bulletin, undated. John W. McCoy to

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 82–83. Unlike

Thomas Hovenden, 15 March 1878, about exhibit-

history or portrait painting, genre painting presents

ing in Baltimore.

anonymous, ordinary people in familiar scenes of

49. On labor unrest in the Gilded Age, see Alan

common, everyday life, including those from a time

Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and

prior to the painter’s lifetime. Nonheroic or familiar

Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang,

interpretations of history and mythology by French

1982), chapter 3; and Mark Summers, The Gilded Age

midcentury painting (for instance by Cabanel and

or, the Hazard of New Functions (Upper Saddle River,

Gérôme) prepared the way for Hovenden’s

N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1997), chapter 10.

approach.

50. In 1880, Earl Shinn [Edward Strahan,

45. In letters to Hovenden, McCoy called the

pseud.] remarked on Hovenden’s faithful rendering

work Vendéan Guardsman. Titled Loyalist Peasant Soldier

of the “cave-like light” typical of the “one-windowed

of La Vendée, 1793, the oil painting hung in the 1878

Breton interior” and that even the habit of sitting on

exhibition, National Academy of Design, loaned by

tables, as well as dress and material furnishings in

John W. McCoy who willed it to the Peabody Insti-

Hovenden’s painting were based on what Shinn and

tute. Information and small photograph, Peabody

Hovenden saw in Pont-Aven, [Strahan], Art Treasures,

Institute’s Notebook “F-L”; also List of Works of Art in

vol. 2, 64. Description of Breton interiors just four

the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Maryland (Baltimore:

years after Hovenden was there, Blanche Willis

Peabody Institute, 1949), 12 (available at Baltimore

Howard’s novel, Guenn: A Wave on the Breton Coast

Museum of Art), and AAA, P-13:10, untitled and

(Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1884), 35,

undated article, Baltimore Evening Bulletin. See repro-

and, in 1910, Hoffman, “The Perfect Village,” 955.

duction of photograph ca. 1893 of the gallery,

The painting was titled A Brittany Interior in 1793 by

213

214

NOTES TO PAGES 53–56

Earl Shinn who wrote about the work in [Strahan],

news of Hovenden’s death, the painter Theodore

Art Treasures, vol. 2, 63. Sheldon titled the picture The

Robinson wrote in his diary: “I have always thought

Vendéan Volunteer and gave a detailed description of

better of him after hearing him say,‘Why I lie awake

the painting in American Painters, 1881, 190. In the

nights thinking what a d——d bad painter I am,’”

twentieth century it has been referred to as The

28 August 1895, Diaries 1892–1896, photocopy,

Sword Sharpener.

Frick Art Reference Library.

51. Shinn, Art Treasures, vol. 2, 64. George W.

55. Ministère de l’instruction publique, Salon

Sheldon, American Painters (New York: D. Appleton

de 1880 (reprint ed., Garland, 1977), 186, no.

and Company, 1881), 190.

1877. The dimensions given were 1m, 50 ⳯ 1m,

52. AAA, P-13:3, “La peinture à l’exposition universelle de 1878,” L’Art. 53. Of Wylie’s pictures known to me, at least

80 while the painting in the Detroit Institute of Arts is 99.1 ⳯ 137.2 cm, or 39 ⳯ 54 in. The Detroit painting was given to the Peabody Institute

by photograph, The Postman (1869) appears closest

by Elizabeth Hall in 1923, and the dimensions in

to Hovenden’s genre approach.Wylie’s figures, how-

their records are 39 ⳯ 54 (“sight”) and with frame

ever, are not as successfully united as Hovenden’s

48 ⳯ 62 in. (“sight”). Peabody Institute, Notebook

Breton Interior but seem, rather, to be positioned in

“F-L” made available to me at the Peabody Institute,

isolated poses across the picture plane.

Baltimore. The dimensions with frame approximate

54. Both Earl Shinn and George W. Sheldon

the dimensions given in Salon records. Also stated

gave detailed descriptions of the work, Shinn, Art

in (AAA, Helen Corson Livesey [Livezey], The

Treasures, 64–65; Sheldon, American Painters, 190.

Life and Works of Thomas Hovenden, N.A., 22

Drummond became Sir George Alexander Drum-

February 1955, P-52:564 that the Salon picture

mond. His collection was dispersed at his death in

was 4 feet by 6 feet (48 ⳯ 72 in.) and shipped to

1910. Hovenden’s painting listed, Christie, Manson

the United States; in Hovenden’s New York stu-

& Woods, London, catalog for a sale on 26 June

dio in 1881, “Advent of a Great American

1919. I am grateful to Debra Paquin, assistant to the

Painter,” Studio and Musical Review 1 (February 19,

registrar, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and

1881): 52. Charles M. Kurtz in American Academy

to Charles C. Hill, curator of Canadian art, the Na-

Notes (New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin and

tional Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, for information

Company, 1881), 30, lists 48 ⳯ 72 in. in the cap-

on Drummond. On the engraving of the painting,

tion of a reproduction of the picture. There is

see Sylvia Yount, “A Pennsylvania Artist: Thomas

only one painting; the measurements in the

Hovenden and the Philadelphia Art World,” in

Salon catalog were with the frame. See also

Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895): American Painter of

Carol Troyen’s entry on Hovenden for it being

Hearth and Homeland (Philadelphia, Pa.:Woodmere

customary at the time to take measurements of

Art Museum, 1995), 36. On Hovenden’s anxiety

framed pictures, in Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr.,

and self-doubt: reassuring letters from McCoy to the

Carol Troyen, and Trevor J. Fairbrother, A New

artist refer to Hovenden’s expressed concern about

World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760–1910

expenses, reception, and sales of his paintings.At the

(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1983), 298.

NOTES TO PAGES 56–5 7

56. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v.

apparent to non-Breton eyes. “Bretonness in

“Constantine,” by Henry Stuart Jones for the

general” was apparent and to urban nineteenth-

account given in Eusebius’s Life of Constantine.

century visitors Breton dress seemed “archaic,

Also, The Reader’s Encyclopedia, ed. William Rose

medieval.” Orton and Pollock, “Les données Bre-

Benet (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,

tonnantes,” 293, 299. For instance, when Earl

1948), 238, s.v. “Constantine the Great.” In

Shinn was in Pont-Aven, he saw the modern,

Balzac’s The Chouans, when a Breton Chouan’s

nineteenth-century evolution of peasant dress and

body was stripped, a tattoo of a heart surrounded

wrote that it was the same as it had been in 1793

by flames, signifying religious fervor, was revealed

and “long before,” Shinn, ed., Art Treasures, vol. 2,

on his chest; Balzac, The Chouans, 77, 237. For the

65. Perhaps Hovenden thought so as well. The mid-

emblem, see also Hugh Honour, Romanticism (New

nineteenth-century furniture of peasants in the

York: Harper & Row, 1979), 199, and George Fer-

Dauphine, however, was “hardly any different” from

guson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York:

that of the eighteenth century, Zeldin, History of

Oxford University Press, A Galaxy Book, 1966),

French Passions, vol. 1, 180. Probably the substantial

48. Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s portrait, Henri de La

peasant furniture in Pont-Aven were also heirlooms.

Rochejaquelein (1817), illustrated in Detroit Insti-

Hovenden admired and bought some furnishings

tute of Arts and Metropolitan Museum of Art,

from Breton peasants and took them back to Amer-

French Painting, 1774–1830: The Age of Revolution

ica, Terhune, “Thomas Hovenden,” 184, n. 1. Hoven-

(Detroit, Mich: Wayne State University Press,

den kept the now moth-eaten emblem and had it

1975), no. 95, shows a Romantic interpretation of

framed, Hovenden Memorabilia, private collection.

the heroic Vendéan leader silhouetted against the

59. Many Breton peasants were in favor of the

white Bourbon flag and wearing over his heart the

Rightist faction. Anticlericalists felt that the new

Royalist insignia of the Sacred Heart surmounted

church would symbolize too close an alliance be-

by a cross. Hovenden might have seen this portrait

tween Church and State. The building of Sacré-

in the Louvre, but his treatment of the

Coeur began in the summer of 1875 and continued

insurrection theme is quite different.

into the twentieth century.

57. Salon of 1880, 186: the subtitle given by

60. For the painting’s unpopularity in Paris, see

Hovenden to his Le dernier préparatif was “Au saint

Kurtz, American Academy Notes, 30. See also Carol

nom de Dieu, de par le Roy . . . la paroisse de . . . se

Troyen, “Thomas Hovenden,” in Stebbins, Troyen,

rendre le . . . 1793, avec ses armes et du pain.” [In

and Fairbrother, A New World, 298.

the holy name of God, by the King . . . the parish of

61. The painting was exhibited as In Hoc Signo

. . . to give . . . 1793, with its arms and bread.]

Vinces (La Vendée, 1793) with a listed sale price of

58. Before the French Revolution, Breton

$3,000; see Naylor, Exhibition Record, 1861–1900,

peasant dress was a “class costume.” After the Revo-

vol. 1, 457. On election to the Academy see AAA,

lution, it became locally “distinctive and varied,”

P-13:8, T. Addison Richards to Thomas Hovenden,

especially the female coiffe, but the social significa-

12 May 1881. For quotation, see AAA, P-13:4, un-

tions of the Breton costume were not immediately

titled, unidentified, undated newspaper clipping,

215

216

NOTES TO PAGES 58–59

which discussed the painting when it was exhibited

AAA, P-13:4, “Our Young Artists,” New York World, 3

at the National Academy of Design in 1881.

March 1881.

62. For quotation, see AAA, P-13:4, untitled, unidentified, undated newspaper clipping, which discussed the painting when it was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1881. 63. AAA, P-13:4, small untitled article, Art Journal (New York), 2 April 1881. On the critic who

66. Kurtz, American Academy Notes, 30. 67. Art Journal (New York), AAA, P-13:4, untitled article, Art Journal, 2 April 1881. 68. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 15 March 1878, 4, private collection. 69. Randall, Diary of George A. Lucas, 462, 465,

admired Hovenden’s firm drawing, AAA, P-13:4,

468, 469, 473; Madeleine Fidell Beaufort, Her-

untitled clipping, New York Evening Post, 4 April

bert L. Kleinfield, and Jeanne K. Welcher, eds.,

1881. On “the best figure piece ever painted by an

The Diaries 1871–1882 of Samuel P.Avery,Art Dealer,

American artist,” Peabody Institute, Notebook “F-

vol. 4 (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 107. “Francis

L,” a typescript of an undated clipping regarding its

Coates Jones, DeWitt McClellan Lockman Papers,”

exhibition at the 1881 Art Loan Exhibition at the

6–7. Gail E. Husch, “David Maitland Armstrong,”

Academy of Music for the Benefit of the Nursery

Antiques 126, no. 5 (November 1984): 1175–85;

and Child’s Hospital, Baltimore, from A. J. H.Way,

Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 143.William H. Gerdts,

Scrapbook, p. 77 (in Museum and Library of Mary-

The Art of Milne Ramsey (New York: Chapellier

land History, Maryland Historical Society); In Hoc

Galleries, 1974), [6]. Like Ramsey, Pearce and Blash-

Signo Vinces was No. 43 in that Art Loan Exhibition.

field studied under the French master Léon Bonnat;

64. Quotation from AAA, P-13:4, “Our Young Artists,” New York World, 3 March 1881. Edgar P.

in the 1870s, Blashfield shared a studio with Ramsey. 70. Gerdts, The Art of Milne Ramsey, [6], [8],

Richardson stated that Hovenden introduced “the

[10], plates 6, 18. For Americans learning proper-

life-sized Salon figure picture” to America, Painting

ties, H. Barbara Weinberg, “Late-Nineteenth

in America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,

Century American Painting: Cosmopolitan Con-

1965), 277.

cerns and Critical Controversies,” Archives of

65. Kenneth Bendiner discusses how awakening

American Art Journal, 23, no. 4 (1983): 23–24.

emotion served a religious function, An Introduction

Hovenden owned a folio-sized History of Costume

to Victorian Painting (New Haven, Conn., and Lon-

published in Munich, Hovenden Memorabilia, pri-

don:Yale University Press, 1985), 22. In the hymn

vate collection. At Pont-Aven, Hovenden began

“There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” by Frederick

his practice of arranging models and furniture as

W. Faber, 1834, appear the lines: “There is no place

he wanted them to appear prior to painting a pic-

where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in

ture, Sellin, Americans in Brittany, 34. He also

heaven; / There is no place where earth’s failings

bought old Breton furniture, which he took back

have such kindly judgment given.” Sentimentality

to America, Walter A. Knerr, “Thomas Hovenden,

characterizes a number of nineteenth-century

Montgomery County Artist,” Bulletin of the Histor-

hymns. Quoted comments, AAA, P-13:4, untitled

ical Society of Montgomery County Pennsylvania 3

clipping, New York Evening Post, 9 April 1881, and

(October 1941–April 1943): 203–13.

NOTES TO PAGES 59–64

71. Sheldon, Hours with Art and Artists, 58, 107,

76. The painting was titled Ring of Betrothal

stated that Meissonier’s paintings commanded prices

when exhibited in 1881 at the Chicago Inter-State

of up to $60,000.

Industrial Exposition (Catalogue, 67); it still

72. See AAA, P-13:10, for letter on Goupil and Co. stationery referring to “Faint Heart Never Won Fair

remains in the family collection. 77. For Hovenden’s earlier awareness, see dis-

Lady” as “L’anneau des fiançailles.” The quotation of the

cussion of What O’Clock Is It? (1878). For wide press

title traces back to 1569, according to W. Elderton’s

coverage of the fourth Impressionist exhibition, see

Ballad, Brittain’s Ida, in A New English Dictionary (Ox-

Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt: A Life (New

ford: Clarendon Press, 1901), s.v. “Faint,” and was

York: Villard Books, 1994), 106: “The press cover-

generally known in the 1880s: in 1881, Harper’s Mag-

age was so complete that no artist, regardless of his

azine carried a romantic story with that title, vol. 63,

or her stylistic orientation, could remain ignorant of

no. 378 (October 1881): 763–68.

the Impressionist group.” For the Independent Exhi-

73. Hovenden’s and Corson’s drawings

bition of 1879, or the fourth exhibition of the Im-

(Kennedy Galleries Collection) of the same model

pressionists, see Ronald Pickvance, “The Fourth

in identical musketeer costume except for the boots,

Exhibition, 1879,” The New Painting, Impressionism,

make a revealing comparison. Hovenden is the more

1874–1886 (Geneva: R. Burton; Seattle: University

accomplished and subtler draftsman. The wall tap-

of Washington Press, 1986), 241–89.

estry in The Challenge painted in Hovenden’s Paris

78. For Tennyson’s belief in the “creed of Chris-

studio is identical to one he used years later in his

tian chivalry,” see George Wesley Whiting, The Artist

Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, studio, judging

and Tennyson: Rice University Studies 50 (Houston:

by a photograph Corson took around 1893; photo-

William Marsh Rice University, Summer 1964).

graph in private collection.

Also James L.Yarnall, “Death and the Maiden:

74. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden,

Tennyson’s Elaine and Nineteenth-Century Art,”

4 April 1879, [2]–[3] and 11 April 1879, [2], Hov-

unpublished manuscript graciously loaned to me by

enden Papers, private collection.

the author.

75. Ramsey’s and Hovenden’s interest in mus-

79.Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Lancelot and

keteers and falconry were not unusual. Alexandre

Elaine,” The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Alfred Lord

Dumas the Elder had evoked the same period in

Tennyson, ed. W. J. Rolfe (Boston: Houghton Mif-

his extremely popular novel The Three Musketeers,

flin and Company, 1898), 398. Among Hovenden’s

published at midcentury and Alfred Lord Tenny-

books are The Poetical Works of Tennyson published in

son’s one act play The Falcon was performed in

English in Leipzig by Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1872, and

London in December 1879. The French independ-

Collection of British Authors published by Tauchnitz in

ent teacher Thomas Couture painted The Falconer

1877, identified as “sold at Nilsson’s Library, 212 rue

at midcentury and the Paris-trained American

de Rivoli, Paris,” private collection.

painter James Carroll Beckwith painted The

80. The partial quotation from Tennyson was

Falconer, shown at the 1878 International Exposi-

quoted more fully in Illustrated Catalogue of the Art

tion in Paris.

Hall of the Inter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago,

217

218

NOTES TO PAGES 65–68

September 6 to October 21, 1882 (Chicago: Rand, McNally and Company, 1882), appearing below the listing for Elaine, 72, no. 582. 81. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 4 April 1879, [2]; 11 April 1879, [2–3]. 82. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 26 October 1880, 2, Hovenden Papers. “Advent of a

88. “The Fine Arts,” Philadelphia Press, 8 January 1883, 7, cols. 3 and 4. 89. Hovenden’s reservations posthumously recalled by a fellow artist, AAA, P-13:325, “Thomas Hovenden Buried,” New York Daily Tribune, 18 August 1895. 90. New York Evening Post, 9 April 1881.

Great American Painter,” Studio and Musical Review 1 (19 February 1881), 51–52. 83. McCoy mentioned Hovenden’s concerns

CHAPTER 3. “WHAT SHALL AMERICAN ARTISTS PAINT?”

about “proper material,” John W. McCoy to Thomas

1. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 26

Hovenden 26 October 1880, 2, Hovenden Papers,

October 1880, [1]–2, Hovenden Papers, private col-

private collection.

lection. Jones’s father and McCoy knew each other

84. For St. Thomas and La Farge, Helene Bar-

(John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 15 March

bara Kallman Weinberg, “The Decorative Work of

1878, Hovenden Papers, private collection) and

John La Farge” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University,

probably the elder Jones, a successful businessman,

1972), 147, 162, fig. 112; Terhune, “Thomas Hov-

helped his son get started in New York. For Sher-

enden,” 228–31; Hovenden and Episcopal Church,

wood Studio Building, torn down in the 1950s,

AAA, P-1:317, “Hovenden at Rest,” Philadelphia

see Jennifer A. Bienenstock, “The Formation and

Telegram, 17 August 1895. Hovenden’s studio

Early Years of the Society of American Artists:

address: 58 West Fifty-seventh Street. An Episco-

1877–1884” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New

palian, Hovenden may have attended services at St.

York, 1983), 145, n. 22. Also, AAA, P-13:27,

Thomas, which was near his New York studio.

“Jennie June, and Her Weekly Review of Life in

85. On place of honor in exhibition, see “Acad-

New York,” Baltimore American, 27 February 1881,

emy Exhibition,” New York Evening Post, 24 March

and AAA P-13:86, “Fine Arts,” Brooklyn Daily

1882, Martha Maulsby Hovenden’s Scrapbook, pri-

Times, 25 February 1881. Others in the building

vate collection.

in early 1881: J. Carroll Beckwith, Robert Fred-

86. “Fine Arts: Notes on the Academy Exhibi-

erick Blum, Jasper F. Cropsey, Edgar M. Ward.

tion,” New York Mail and Express, 24 April 1882,

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was there by spring

quoted in David B. Dearinger, ed. Rave Reviews:

of 1881, Homer Saint-Gaudens, ed., The Reminis-

American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925 (New York:

cences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, vol. 1 (New York:

National Academy of Design, 2000), 232–33; “Art

Century Company, 1913), 268.

in Philadelphia,” New York Tribune, undated but with dateline 25 January 1883. 87. “The National Academy Exhibition,” Art

2. Two years earlier, McCoy had written to Hovenden in France that H. Bolton and Frank Jones would be home for a visit and would “review the

Amateur 6 (April 1882): 117, quoted in Dearinger,

ground” to decide whether to return to Baltimore,

Rave Reviews, 233.

John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 22 Novem-

NOTES TO PAGE 69

ber 1878, [3], Hovenden Papers, private collection.

on the differences between the academy and the

On New York as the most “prestigious” art center in

Society of American Artists in attitudes to past art,

the United States, see Fink, American Art, 273.

contemporary European art, women artists,Ameri-

3. Susan Elizabeth Lyman, The Story of New York (New York: Crown, 1964, revised ed. 1975), 192. 4. Samuel Isham, The History of American Paint-

can artists trained or living abroad, and the tolerance of individuality in art; in each instance, the newer organization was more open and progressive,

ing, originally published in 1905, new ed. (New

81–83. For a discussion of critical responses to the

York: Macmillan, 1936), 401.

rivalry between the academy and the society, see

5. “The Academy Exhibition,” New York Times,

Trudie A. Grace, “The National Academy of Design

14 April 1878, 7, col. 1. For enthusiasm, see Low,

and the Society of American Artists: Rivals Viewed

A Chronicle of Friendships, 118; Low added that his

by Critics, 1878–1906,” in David B. Dearinger, ed.,

generation “continued what the ‘Hudson River

Rave Reviews:American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925

School’ [the older generation] had begun”; 232. For

(New York: National Academy of Design, 2000).

the press and academy members dubbing the home-

Saul Zalesch redresses the dichotomy between the

coming artists “younger men,” see Fink, American Art,

“conservative” academy and the more “progressive”

278–79, for self-confidence of homecoming artists,

society in “Competition and Conflict in the New

271. The definitive study of French training of

York Art World, 1874–1879,” Winterthur Portfolio 29,

American artists is Weinberg, The Lure of Paris.

nos. 2–3 (summer–autumn 1994): 103–20. Zalesch

6. On the generational conflicts and differing

argues that these characterizations (conservative ver-

viewpoints between the older group of Hudson

sus progressive) and this dichotomy were less rigid

River School artists and genre painters and the

than historians have argued: the leadership of the

younger, European-trained artists, see Doreen Bol-

academy was more sympathetic to new art; many of

ger Burke and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, “The

the younger artists were eager to show their work at

Hudson River School in Eclipse,” American Paradise

the academy; and, ultimately, the academy’s shows

(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987),

were broader stylistically than the society’s. Quote

72–73, 95 nn. 7, 8, 9, and on figure painting, 84.

from Zalesch, “Competition and Conflict,” 104.

Also see Fink, American Art, 273, 288–89.

8. Mrs. Van Rensselaer was quoted in Koehler,

7. The authoritative source on the Society of

American Art, 3. She was writing about the “Munich

American Artists is Bienenstock, “Society of Amer-

Americans.” Hovenden sent his 1876 Salon painting,

ican Artists,” esp. 11–12. For the kernel of the

The Image Seller, listed in the academy exhibition with

ruckus between the academy and the society, 24–27.

“—Brittany” appended to the title, Thinking of Some-

Also see Lois Marie Fink, “American Renaissance:

body, News from the Conscript, and Mother and Child, all

The Society of American Artists and Its Impact on

unlocated. See Naylor, Exhibition Record, 1861–1900,

the Academy,” in Lois Marie Fink and Joshua C.

vol. 1, 457.

Taylor, Academy:The Academic Tradition in American Art

9. For a discussion of the tension between the

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for

cosmopolitan style of foreign-trained artists and

the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1975), 79–85:

the search for a “national” American art, see Linda

219

220

NOTES TO PAGES 70–72

Docherty, “A Search for Identity: American Art

the Art Museum in the United States (Amherst: Univer-

Criticism and the Concept of the ‘Native School,’

sity of Massachusetts Press, 1998); Michael Clapper,

1876–1893” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Car-

“The Chromo and the Art Museum: Popular and

olina, Chapel Hill, 1985).

Elite Art Institutions in Late Nineteenth-Century

10. For National Academy of Design elections,

America,” in Christopher Reed, ed., Not at Home:

see AAA, P-13:8, T. Addison Richards to Thomas

The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Archi-

Hovenden, 12 May 1881, and P-13:9, T. Addison

tecture (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996); and

Richards to Thomas Hovenden, 11 May 1882. For

Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emer-

artist’s requirements, Fink and Taylor, Academy: The

gence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge,

Academic Tradition in American Art (Washington, D.C.:

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 146–60.

Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Col-

14. “Introduction,” American Art Review, 1

lection of Fine Arts, 1975), 7. Hovenden presented

(Boston: Dana Estes and Charles E. Lauriat, 1880).

his genre painting The Revised Version (1881) to the

Articles from this issue remain in Hovenden Mem-

academy as the characteristic work required of a

orabilia, private collection, but the journal was

newly elected academician. Hovenden exhibited

short-lived (1879–81). On the growth and spread

A Study in 1881 and in 1882, 265, 272; see 124 for

of mass-marketed illustrated journals and newspa-

one critic’s complaining that Hovenden’s sketch was

pers and increased interest in news art and art crit-

hung in a “secluded corner” in 1881.

icism, see H. Wayne Morgan, New Muses: Art in

11. “Philadelphia Society of Artists—Second

American Culture, 1865–1920 (Norman: University

Annual Exhibition,” Art Interchange, 5:10 (10 No-

of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 4–5, 10, 17–21, 39,

vember 1880): 97. Illustrated Catalogue of the

42–43; Sarah Burns, “Introduction,” Inventing the

Second Annual Exhibition of the Philadelphia Society of

Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America

Artists (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996);

Fine Arts, 1880), lists Hovenden’s A Brittany Image

Margaret C. Conrads, “‘In the Midst of an Era of

Seller, No. 145, What O’Clock Is It? No. 235, and

Revolution’: The New York Art Press and the An-

The Poacher’s Story, No. 279; none is illustrated.

nual Exhibitions of the National Academy of

12. See Doreen Bolger Burke, American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 111 (New York:

Design in the 1870s,” in Dearinger, Rave Reviews. 15. “Drawing Room,” Art Interchange 5, no. 10

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), xxii; whole in-

(10 November 1880): 100. Hovenden explained his

troduction, xvii to xxxii, is an extremely useful sum-

meaning further by recounting his experience with

mary of changes in the art world from the 1870s to

a study he made in Brittany of a “girl knitting by an

1900.

open casement” (A Sunny Day in Brittany, 1876).

13. For overviews of the rise of major art mu-

16. Ibid. Edward Simmons in his From Seven to

seums in the United States in the last quarter of the

Seventy: Memoirs of a Painter and a Yankee (New York:

nineteenth century, see Lila Sherman, Art Museums of

Harper and Brothers, 1922), 202–3, remembered

America (New York:William Morris, 1980); chapter

that he was surprised by the welling up of patriotic

3 in Alan Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on

feeling on his return to America (about 1891),

NOTES TO PAGES 72–74

after thirteen years abroad. Koehler in his American

California Press, 1997), part 3; and Summers, The

Art, 3, wrote about the hopes of the new men and

Gilded Age.

shared their optimism for the future. 17. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden, 26 October 1880, Hovenden Papers, private collection, 2–3. 18. John W. McCoy to Thomas Hovenden,

25. Morgan, New Muses, chapter 2 is a helpful survey of criticism. 26. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, vol. 1, 13, 25, 29–37. 27. On art at the Centennial Exposition, see

26 October 1880. For pro-American subjects, see

David C. Huntington, Kathleen Pyne, et al., The

“Drawing Room,” Art Interchange 5 (10 November

Quest for Unity: American Art Between World’s Fairs,

1880): 100; “Our Young Artists,” New York World,

1876–1893 (Detroit: Founders Society Detroit In-

8 March 1881. For a discussion of critical debates

stitute of Arts, 1983), 13–18, and cat. nos. 1–25.

in the 1870s over definitions of “American” art,

28. “America in Pictures,” New York Times, 16

see, for example, Margaret C. Conrads, Winslow

April 1879, 6, col. 5. Hovenden sent three

Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the

paintings from France to the academy exhibition,

1870s (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

but none is the Breton interior the critic praised.

in association with The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2001). 19. “Why Americans Should Buy American Pictures,” Studio and Musical Review 1 (19 February 1881): 51. 20. Sheldon, Recent Ideals of American Art, 68, 150. 21. See, for example, Peter Dobkin Hall, The

29. S. G.W. Benjamin, Art in America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1880; reprint ed., New York: Garland, 1976), 124. 30. Editorial, “Introduction,” American Art Review 1 (1880); Essayist,W. Mackay Laffan, “The Material of American Landscape,” American Art Review, 31–32. 31. AAA, P-13:4, “Our Young Artists,” New York World, 3 March 1881. This article was pasted in the

Organization of American Culture, 1700–1900: Private

Hovenden Scrapbook; its writer discussed Hoven-

Institutions, Elites, and the Origins of American National-

den’s In Hoc Signo Vinces and thought it a “prejudice”

ity, part 3 (New York: New York University Press,

to believe that study abroad meant that American

1982).

artists would avoid American subjects.

22. Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists:

32. Henry Cabot Lodge, “Colonialism in the

American Artist Life, 2 vols. (New York: Putnam &

United States,” Studies in History (1884), quoted in

Son, 1867), vol. 1, “Introduction,” esp. 7, 13, 25,

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans:The Democratic

30–37; 39 for quotation.

Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), 504.

23. Ibid., vol. 1, 39, and vol. 2, 470.

“Alexander H. Wyant,” Harper’s Weekly 24 (23 Octo-

24. On transformations of American society and

ber 1880), 677. Wyant had returned to New York

culture in the post–Civil War decades, see Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America; Mary P. Ryan, Civic

in 1866 after a year’s study in Germany. 33. Hovenden’s Scrapbook evidences the artist’s

Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City dur-

attention to reviews and articles on his work. “Why

ing the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of

Americans Should Buy American Pictures,” Studio

221

222

NOTES TO PAGES 74–78

and Musical Review 1, no. 4 (19 February 1881):

40. McCoy had written Hovenden in Novem-

50–51. This essay was adjacent to “Advent of a Great

ber 1878 that he admired a large Picknell painting

American Painter: Thomas Hovenden,” which began

and would have bought it “but for its size when

on page 51 and is pasted in the scrapbook (P-13:65)

framed that made it impracticable for an ordinary

with no volume number and no date.

hall or parlor.” John W. McCoy to Thomas Hoven-

34. “Why Americans Should Buy American Pictures,” 51. 35. Ibid. The writer recognized the work of

den, 22 November 1878, 2, Hovenden Papers, private collection. Samuel Isham also referred to Salon-scaled pictures being too big for private

Eastman Johnson, who was mainly painting portraits

houses in America; see Isham, History of American

after 1880, and the landscapes of Alexander H.

Painting, 403, 463.

Wyant. 36. E. H. Clement, “What Shall American

41. A contemporary observer stated it was the morning of election day, “The Exhibitions: V. Four-

Artists Paint?” Catalogue of the Art Department of the

teenth Annual Exhibition of the American Water

New England Manufacturers’ and Mechanics’ Institute

Color Society,” American Art Review (February 1881):

(Boston: Cupples, Upham and Company, 1883),

200. James Abram Garfield was elected president

unpaginated (at the back of the catalog in a series

but was assassinated a few months after taking

of articles). The catalog is among Hovenden Mem-

office. In an 1881 watercolor version of The Puzzled

orabilia, private collection.

Voter, the legible headline is “VOTERS”; in the oil,

37. Ibid.

only “Vote” (with uncrossed “t” and lowercase “e”) is

38. Data on the townships of Plymouth and

legible.

Whitemarsh in 1880 Federal Population Census,

42. On horseshoes, see David M. Lubin, “Per-

the National Archives of the United States Micro-

manent Objects in a Changing World: Harnett’s

film, Federal Population Census, 10th Census

Still Lifes as a Hold on the Past,” in Doreen Bolger,

1880, Pennsylvania, vol. 55: Montgomery County

Marc Simpson, and John Wilmerding, eds., William

(cont’d), Part 1, 188–439, Plymouth Township, Dis-

M. Harnett (Fort Worth, Tex., and New York: Amon

trict 23, Reel T9-1158, 1–39; vol. 56: Montgomery

Carter Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art,

County (cont’d) Part 2, 134–597. Whitemarsh Town-

1992), esp. 50, 54, 55; and Roxanna Robinson,

ship, District 35, Reel T9-1159, 1–44.

“Common Objects of Everyday Life,” in Bolger,

39. Plymouth Township was eight square miles

Simpson, and Wilmerding, eds., William M. Harnett,

with a population of 1,896; Whitemarsh (or West

163–66. Hovenden seems to have predated Harnett

Whitemarsh) Township was fourteen square miles

in painting the horseshoe; see Harnett’s After the

with a population of 2,169. Far more industrial

Hunt (1884), Colossal Luck (1886), The Golden Horse-

workers resided in Whitemarsh Township. The

shoe (1886), and Still Life—Violin and Music (1888).

National Archives of the United States Microfilm,

43. Sarah Burns advances an interpretation of

Federal Population Census, 10th Census 1880,

Cogitation as a reference to issues surrounding the

Pennsylvania, Vols. 55 & 56. Samuel Maulsby Corson

1872 presidential election. See Burns, Pastoral Inven-

died in the early 1880s.

tions: Rural Life in Nineteenth-Century American Art and

NOTES TO PAGES 78–80

Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,

Chinese immigration was an issue in the 1876 and

1989), 105–7.

1880 presidential campaigns. On Chinese immigra-

44. Laura A. Coyle, “‘The Best Index of Ameri-

tion, Chinese labor, and anti-Chinese movements,

can Life’: Newspapers in the Artist’s Work,” in Bol-

see Betty Lee Sung, Mountain of Gold:The Story of the

ger, Simpson, and Wilmerding, William M. Harnett,

Chinese in America (New York: Macmillan, 1967),

223, 225: in the decade 1870–80 the number of

41–44; Morgan, Unity and Culture, 23; Stephanie

newspapers doubled. Also see Gunther Barth, City

Bernardo, “The Chinese in America,” The Ethnic Al-

People:The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-

manac (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, Dolphin

Century America (New York: Oxford University

Books, 1981), “The Chinese must go,” 89, and peak

Press, 1982), 58–84; Robert H.Wiebe, The Search

decade of immigration, 90; Najia Aarim-Heriot,

for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang,

Chinese Immigrants,African Americans, and Racial Anxi-

1967), 21; and H.Wayne Morgan, Unity and Culture

ety in the United States, 1848–82 (Urbana: University

(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971; reprint 1973),

of Illinois Press, 2003), esp. chapters 6, 8, 9, 10,

34, 46, 77.

and 11; and Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines:The

45. AAA, P-13:56, “Drawing Room: Hovenden,” Art Interchange February 1881: 34. 46. Hovenden’s subtitled pencil drawing reproduced in Art Interchange (17 February 1881): 35. 47. See Summers, The Gilded Age, chapter 8. 48. Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future

Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 87–113. Chinese Exclusion Treaty was signed in Peking (Beijing) on 17 November 1880; the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress in 1882. 51. Hovenden, after all, had been abroad for six

and Its Present Crisis, with an introduction by Profes-

years and had only been in New York a month or

sor Austin Phelps, D.D., of Andover (New York:

two when he painted A Puzzled Voter. Relatively few

Baker and Taylor Company for the American Home

Chinese men were in New York City in 1880, John

Missionary Society, 1885), iii, 44. The book sold

Grafton, New York in the Nineteenth Century (New

over half a million copies; it was revised in 1891

York: Dover, 1980), 68.

and reprinted in the 1880s, 1912, and 1963.

52.Although African American male suffrage

49. On the nativist movement, see John

became national in 1870 with the Fifteenth Amend-

Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American

ment, which prohibited racial discrimination of male

Nativism, 1860–1925 (New York:Atheneum, 1973),

voters, most Americans of African descent lived in

esp. preface to 80 and 97, 136–37; Neil Harris, ed.,

the South, where various tactics of apportionment,

The Land of Contrasts: 1880–1901 (New York: George

property requirements, poll taxes, and literacy

Braziller, 1970), 19–24; and Dale T. Knobel, America

tests disenfranchised black men and some poor

for the Americans: The Nativist Movement in the United

white men.

States (New York: Twayne, 1996). 50. Kearney blamed monopolies and cheap Chinese labor for problems confronting the white working man, especially on the West Coast, and

53. “Why Americans Should Buy American Pictures,” 50. 54. Sunday Afternoon was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1882, Naylor, Exhibi-

223

224

NOTES TO PAGES 80–83

tion Record, 1861–1900, vol. 1, 457; a reviewer de-

this increase as “a great internal migration,” The

scribed the picture, “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 27

Americans:The Democratic Experience (New York: Ran-

March 1882, 5, col. 2. The Old Version was the title

dom House, 1973), 292.

given an engraving of the picture reproduced on

57. On “The Cult of Domesticity” in Victorian

the cover of Harper’s Weekly 26 (1 April 1882). Penn

America, see Koenigsberg, Emblem for an Era, 7;

Monthly reviewed a book by members of the

Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 145–49; Jan

American Revision Committee, explaining the lit-

Seidler Ramirez, “The Victorian Household: Strong-

erary and religious interest of the book’s subject,

hold, Sanctuary, or Straight-jacket?” in Domestic Bliss:

“Anglo American Bible Revision,” Penn Monthly

Family Life in American Painting, 1840–1910 (Yonkers,

131 (November 1880): 900. A favorable review of

N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1986), 7–13. On the

American Version is in “The Library,” Art Interchange

“domestic Sabbath,” see Douglas, Feminization of

(18 August 1881): 32. On usage, Luther Allan

American Culture, 111.

Weigle, American Idealism, vol. 10 of The Pageant of

58. See Elaine Tyler May, Great Expectations: Mar-

America Series (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

riage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America (Chicago:

Press, 1928), 223.

University of Chicago Press, 1980). Divorce was se-

55. Hicks’s picture is reproduced in Terra

rious enough in this period for William Dean How-

Museum of American Art, Life in Nineteenth Century

ells to use it as the theme of his 1882 novel A Modern

America, 41. Currier & Ives published a colored

Instance.

lithograph of an elderly couple comfortably seated

59. AAA, P-13:27, “The Household: The Old

by their glowing hearth, not reading, although the

Version—Marriage 1882,” unidentified and undated

man holds a newspaper, but enjoying a visit with a

clipping.

grandchild. The print was titled The Four Seasons of

60. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Scrap-

Life: Old; for a reproduction, see Lisa Koenigsberg,

book 1877–92, AAA, P-53:294, “Art Matters: Last

Emblem for an Era: Selected Images of American Victo-

days of the Academy Exhibition,” Philadelphia

rian Womanhood from the Yale University Community,

North American, 22 December 1881. The editorial

1837–1911 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

choice of The Old Version as a full-page engraving

Art Gallery, 1982), 8. In the January 1869 Harper’s

for the Harper’s Weekly’s cover, 1 April 1882,

New Monthly Magazine an engraved illustration of

assumed wide popular identification and appeal;

“My Old Woman and I” shows an elderly couple

at the time of that issue, Hovenden’s painting was

reading at their fireside. Probably the large book is

on view at the annual National Academy of Design

the Bible. In this case, the woman is not the passive

exhibition.

listener but the reader. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 38 (January 1869): 191. 56. “Sunday Rest,” The Century 25, n.s. 3 (March 1883): 788. In 1830, less than one American in ten

61. “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 27 March 1882, 5, col. 2.A review of the National Academy of Design exhibition. 62. Probably the man reads the American Version

was a city dweller; in 1870, one in four was; in

of the Revised New Testament, which was reviewed in

1890, one in three was. Daniel J. Boorstin refers to

“The Library,” Art Interchange 7 (18 August 1881):

NOTES TO PAGE 84

32. Hovenden was elected Associate Academician,

in 1884, where it was listed for sale at $800, Naylor,

1881; full academician, 1882.

Exhibition Record, 1861–1900, vol. 1, 458.

63. According to Helen Corson Livesey

67. The title comes from the first letter of

[Livezey], Yetter and Jones were the models for the

Paul to the Corinthians (King James Version, 1

couple: “The Life and Works of Thomas Hovenden, N.A.,”

Corinthians 9:7) in which Paul asks, “Who planteth

typescript, Helen Corson Livesey [sic], Fort Wash-

a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof?”

ington, Pa., paper read before the Plymouth Meet-

Several references to eating the “fruit thereof ”

ing Historical Society, 22 February 1955, AAA,

occur in the Old Testament, including Leviticus

P-52:563.

19:25, Nehemiah 9:36, and Jeremiah 2:7, but the

64. After Hovenden’s death, Thomas Eakins

closest to Hovenden’s title is Proverbs 27:18

mentioned to the press that Hovenden “thought a

“Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit

great deal of her [his wife’s] ability and often spoke

thereof: so he that waiteth on his master shall be

of the big qualities in her paintings,” see AAA,

honored.” The meaning, whosoever tends shall

P-13:317, “Hovenden and Rothermel,” Philadelphia

reap, does not seem to be as close to Hovenden’s

Press, 17 August 1895, 4. Helen Corson was not

meaning as Paul’s question to the Corinthians.

herself a member of Friends’ Meeting. Philip S.

68. Trees were often planted to mark births,

Benjamin, The Philadelphia Quakers in the Industrial

marriages, and deaths. For traditions of planting

Age, 1865–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University

trees, see James Underwood Crockett and the Edi-

Press, 1976) and E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston

tors of Time-Life Books, Trees (New York: Time-

and Quaker Philadelphia (New York: Free Press,

Life Books, 1972), 7. Arbor Day was founded in

Macmillan, 1979).

Nebraska about 1872, but it was not recognized in

65. In addition to the paintings discussed here,

Pennsylvania until 1885. Although the American

Hovenden also painted an elderly couple winding

landscape painter Thomas Cole’s (1801–48) use

woolen thread, an allusion to the Three Fates spin-

of trees to symbolize time’s passage in the first

ning out the thread of life. I have titled this paint-

half of the nineteenth century is well-known, the

ing of the popular late nineteenth-century subject

sentiment here is particularly that of the late

of old age descriptively, Elderly Couple Winding

nineteenth century. The French peasant painter

Wool, because the artist’s title is not presently

Jean-François Millet (1814–75) painted The

known.

Grafter, a picture of a peasant grafting a tree while

66.AAA, P-13:122, “A Collection of Pictures

his wife and baby watch, some years before the

by American Artists,” New York Evening Post, 17 March

painting was reproduced in 1880 in Strahan, Art

1891; for the second quotation, National Academy

Treasures, vol. 3, prior to 113.

of Design, National Academy Notes, ed. Charles M.

69. Quoted descriptions from John V. Sears,

Kurtz (New York: Cassell and Company, 1884),

“Thomas Hovenden’s Pictures: Part of Catalogue

149, no. 117. Hovenden showed Who Shall Eat the

Raisonné,” typescript draft, Hovenden Papers. I am

Fruit Thereof? (also known as Arbor Day) at the annual

grateful to Abigail Booth Gerdts, Special Assistant

spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design

to the Director, National Academy of Design in

225

226

NOTES TO PAGES 84–89

July 1987, who informed me that the painting titled

in order to avoid disagreeable aspects of real life,

The Quiet Hour was exhibited at the autumn exhibi-

see Susan P. Casteras, Victorian Childhood (New

tion of the National Academy of Design in 1885 (no

York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), 6. For a discussion

price was listed). An artist’s proof of the etching,

of the links between childhood and nostalgia in

titled The Chimney Corner, signed “Hovenden Painter

American art and literature in the second half of

& Etcher,” copyright 1886, is in the Collection of

the nineteenth century, see Sarah Burns, “Barefoot

the Division of Graphic Arts, Museum of History

Boys and Other Country Children: Sentiment and

and Technology, Smithsonian Institution. Two other

Ideology in Nineteenth-Century American Art,”

etchings are in private collections. The theme was a

American Art Journal 20, 1 (1988): 24–50.

popular one and Hovenden probably would have

72. Other examples include William Henry

seen Enoch Wood Perry’s large genre picture, The

Burr’s Scissors Grinder (1856), Francis Blackwell

Story Book (1882), of a grandmother with a little

Mayer’s Leisure and Labor (1858), and the slightly

boy holding a book sitting on her lap, when it was

earlier work by fellow Pennsylvania artist George

exhibited at the 1882 National Academy of Design

Bacon Wood, Jr., Interior of Blacksmith’s Shop (1875).

annual exhibition. 70. Martha Maulsby Hovenden at about age

73.According to Helen Corson Livezey, the model was Mark Jones, the same model who posed

nine probably posed for Grandma’s Second Sight,

for the husband in The Old Version (see fig. 54). She

which was exhibited at the Victor G. Fischer Art

wrote that he posed in front of his own forge on

Gallery in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1894.

Germantown Pike, The Life and Works of Thomas Hov-

See AAA, P-13:261, a small pamphlet titled “Exhibi-

enden, N.A., AAA, P-52:563.According to Philip

tion of Oil Paintings by Thomas Hovenden . . . April

Langdon Corson (1898–1981), son of Walter Harris

16 to 23, 1894,” published by the V. G. Fischer Art

and Katherine Langdon Corson, in 24 January 1973

Gallery, 529 Fifteenth Street,Washington, D.C. In-

notations for the present owner of the painting, the

side the pamphlet (not on AAA microfilm) twelve

old blacksmith’s shop was on Butler Pike and had

paintings were listed with prices. The first two listed

been owned by his father, who inherited it from his

were Grandma’s Second Sight and The Traveling Clock-

father, Elias Hicks Corson, a nephew of Helen Cor-

Mender; of the remaining ten, all the known paintings

son’s father, George Corson. In the 1940s, the prop-

are landscapes. The Hovendens lived in Washington

erty was sold to Plymouth Golf Ball Company.

in the winter of 1893–94 while their children attended the Friends School there. 71. See Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger,

74. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Village Blacksmith,” The Library of Entertainment 8 (Chicago: Geo. L. Shuman and Company, 1924), 219.Artist

“Children, Childhood, and Change in America,

Frances Bond Palmer illustrated Longfellow’s poem,

1820–1920,” and Harvey Green, “Scientific

published in 1864. John Lowell Pratt, ed., Currier &

Thought and the Nature of Childhood in America,

Ives: Chroniclers of America (Maplewood, N.H.: Ham-

1820–1920,” in A Century of Childhood (Rochester,

mond, 1981), 246–47, 256.

N.Y.: Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1984), esp. 28–29, 132–33. On middle-class displacement

75. The Corliss steam engine provided all the power for the exposition. On the Colonial Revival,

NOTES TO PAGES 89–96

see Huntington et al., Quest for Unity, 37, 60, 110;

hibited in New York (1883). The Life and Works of

Burke et al., In Pursuit of Beauty, esp. 66, 69, 162–64,

Thomas Hovenden, N.A., AAA, P-52:563.

and 346.Also Rodris Roth, “The Colonial Revival

80. Lears characterizes the triumph of clock

and ‘Centennial Furniture,’” Art Quarterly 27:1

time as one of the key components of an emerging

(1964): 57–78, esp. 57–59 and 64; Alan Axelrod,

modern culture in his discussion of the roots of an-

The Colonial Revival in America (New York: Norton,

timodernism; see Lears, No Place of Grace, part 1.

1985). Reproductions of Colonial furniture were

81. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, vol. 1, 39;

made in the 1880s in Philadelphia and elsewhere,

vol. 2, 470. Benjamin, Art in America, 124. On “Par-

see Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia:Three

nassus,” Clement, “What Shall American Artists

Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia: Philadelphia

Paint?” 1883; “Why Americans Should Buy Ameri-

Museum of Art, 1976), 438.

can Pictures,” Studio and Musical Review (19 Febru-

76. Celia Betsky, “Inside the Past: The Interior

ary 1881): 51.

and the Colonial Revival in American Art and Literature, 1860–1914,” in Axelrod, Colonial Revival in

CHAPTER 4. PAINTING THE

America, 241–42.

“GOOD OLE TIMES”

77. Strong, Our Country, 95–96. 78. On the antimodernism of the Arts and

1. Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., “Home, Hearth, and Humanity: The Triumph over Racial Stereotyp-

Crafts movement at the end of the century, see

ing of African-Americans in the Genre Paintings of

T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace:Antimodernism

Thomas Hovenden and Henry Ossawa Tanner,” in

and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880‒1920

Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895): American Painter of

(New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), chapter 2;

Hearth and Homeland (Philadelphia: Woodmere Art

Boorstin, The Americans, 146–48, 194; Trachten-

Museum, 1995), 66.

berg, Incorporation of America, esp. 43, 69, 131,

2. Gaston, The New South Creed, quoted 118.

150. Quotation from Longfellow, “The Village

Grady believed that the Chinese Exclusion Act of

Blacksmith.” Mechanization Takes Command is the

1882 was enacted because the continuing admission

title of Siegfried Giedion’s book, first published

of Chinese, as an “inferior” race, would weaken the

in 1948.

“‘homogenous’ country of Anglo-Saxons,” quoted in

79. AAA, P-13:9, a seventeen-line clipping ap-

Gaston, The New South Creed, 137–38. For criticism

parently from a magazine. Pasted erroneously into

of the Old South’s economy and hopes for a new in-

the original Hovenden Scrapbook beneath an incor-

dustrial economy, see chapter 2, esp. 46, 56, 65; for

rect cut-out heading for The Studio, “Echoes of the

Grady’s famous speech in 1886 in New York, see

Week,” with the dateline of New York, 19 February

87–88.

1881; that reference made no mention of Hoven-

3. Edward L.Ayers, The Promise of the New South:

den, and the painting was not shown at the acad-

Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University

emy until 1883. Helen Corson Livezey quoted the

Press, 1992), 432. See Hugh Honour, The Image of the

critic about A Village Blacksmith and stated that the

Black in Western Art: IV. From the American Revolution to

comment was made at the time the picture was ex-

World War I (Cambridge, Mass.: Menil Foundation,

227

228

NOTES TO PAGES 96–97

and Harvard University Press, 1989), Part 2, 12,

pectation of black degeneration, see Ayers, Promise

14–16 (esp. p. 15 from Histoire naturelle du genre

of the New South, 432.

humaine by Julien Joseph Virey, 1824); for illus-

5. One example of a journalist’s report on the

trated books on skull types, see 216–19. Also,

South is Edward King’s series of articles carried first

Paul F. Boller, Jr., “The New Science and American

in Scribner’s Monthly and afterward appearing in book

Thought,” in H. Wayne Morgan, ed., The Gilded Age

form as The Great South: A Record of Journeys (Hart-

(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, revised

ford, Conn.: American, 1875). For a significant

and enlarged ed., 1970); Howard Mumford Jones,

study of the postbellum South, see Gaston, The New

The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience,

South Creed, 39–40, 167–77.

1865–1915 (New York: Viking, 1971), 20–30,

6. Alain Locke, The Negro in Art (Washington,

107; Race, Gender, and Supremacy (Bristol, England:

D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1940),

Thoemmes Press, 2001), part I, “Ethnicity and

139. James Henry Beard, Thomas Waterman Wood,

Race.”

and William Aiken Walker were among white

4. On the return to home rule in the South,

American genre painters of black Americans in the

black disenfranchisement, and increasingly nega-

1870s and 1880s. Frances K. Pohl, “Black and White

tive views of African Americans in the 1880s and

in America,” in Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth

1890s, see Rayford W. Logan, The Negro in American

Century Art: A Critical History (New York: Thames &

Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 (New York:

Hudson, 1994), 163–88. Romare Bearden and

Dial Press, 1954), 52, 265: “Most severe attacks”

Harry Henderson, A History of African-American

against blacks made in magazines in 1890s, 76;

Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York: Pantheon

Laura F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion: The

Books, 1993).

Political Culture of Reconstruction (Urbana: University

7. Patricia Hills, Eastman Johnson, (New York:

of Illinois Press, 1997), chapter 6; Alexander Sax-

Clarkson N. Potter and Whitney Museum of Art,

ton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Poli-

1972), 34, and The Painter’s America:Rural and Urban

tics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America

Life,1810–1910 (New York: Praeger, 1974), 69. On

(New York: Verso, 1990), part III; Heather Cox

Johnson’s images of African Americans, see Patricia

Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor,

Hills, “Painting Race: Eastman Johnson’s Pictures of

and Politics in the Post–Civil War North, 1865–1901

Slaves, Ex-Slaves, and Freedmen,” in Hills et al., East-

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

man Johnson:Painting America (New York: Brooklyn

2001), esp. chapter 6, “The Un-American Negro,

Museum of Art, 1999); and John Davis, “Eastman

1880–1900.” Virginian Philip A. Bruce claimed

Johnson’s Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in

impartial examination of Virginia blacks and con-

Washington, D.C.,” Art Bulletin 80, no. 1 (March

cluded that blacks degenerated since freedom in

1998): 67–92. Locke cited the widespread “acclaim”

The Plantation Negro as Freeman (New York: G. P.

for Johnson’s Negro Life at the South and the “limited

Putnam’s Sons, 1889). Northern and Southern edi-

knowledge and appreciation” of his A Ride for Liberty

tors praised Bruce’s objectivity and agreed with his

as evidence of the general acceptance of black

conclusions. Social Darwinism encouraged the ex-

stereotypes at the time, see Locke, The Negro in Art,

NOTES TO PAGES 98–100

139. See also Albert Boime, The Art of Exclusion: Rep-

Hannah Macdowell, who later became Eakins’s wife,

resenting Blacks in the Nineteenth Century (Washington,

and Emily Sartain, daughter of printmaker John Sar-

D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), 107–18,

tain,Archives, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine

and Guy C. McElroy, Facing History:The Black Image in

Arts. The assumption is that the list indicated artists

American Art, 1710–1940 (San Francisco: Bedford

who used the classrooms when the school was still

Arts;Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art,

closed although the building was actually finished. I

1990), 18, 55, 56, and fig. 10.

once mistakenly believed Helen Corson studied un-

8. Homer’s name and entries appeared just

der Eakins because her name was on a list titled

above Hovenden’s name and entry in the official cat-

“Student Register 1860–1884” with Eakins’s name at

alog, Commissariat General, Exposition universelle

the top. The list, however, was an address list, not a

internationale de 1878, à Paris (New York: Garland,

register. I am grateful to Cheryl Leibold, 25 and 30

1981, reprint ed.), 203; see also Conrads, Winslow

March 1987, by telephone, for the correction.

Homer, 125–28. Homer’s other two paintings in the

11. For readings of the African American man

exhibition were The Country School (1871) and Snap

as an individual in Eakins’s Will Schuster and Black

the Whip (1872). Probably Hovenden also knew of a

Man, see Kathleen Foster et al., Thomas Eakins

New York Times review of the National Academy of

Rediscovered: Charles Bregler’s Thomas Eakins Collection

Design’s 1879 exhibition that praised another of

at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (New

Homer’s paintings of black Americans, The Cotton

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 138;

Pickers (1876) and compared Homer’s painting of a

and Frances Pohl, “Black and White in America,”

young woman sitting on a beach with Hovenden’s

201. Martin Berger, however, has recently read

What O’Clock Is It? The Times reviewer concluded that

Eakins’s portrayal of the black man as emphasizing

a cotton millionaire “ought to buy” Homer’s The Cot-

the African American’s physicality or “brute

ton Pickers. “Preparing the Pictures,” New York Times,

strength” versus the construction of the hunter as

20 March 1879, p. 6, col. 7. Hovenden was abroad,

intellect. See Berger, Man Made: Thomas Eakins and

but McCoy or someone else probably informed him.

the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (Berkeley:

9. Sheldon admired the pictures for “their total freedom from conventionalism and mannerism.”

University of California Press, 2000), 29–30. 12. McElroy, Facing History, “Introduction,” xix,

See George William Sheldon, “American Painters—

on Will Schuster and Black Man, and Francis Martin

Winslow Homer and F.A. Bridgman,” Art Journal 40

in McElroy, Facing History, 85. See also Parry, The

(1878): 227;Wood and Dalton, Winslow Homer’s

Image of the Indian and the Black Man in American Art,

Images of Blacks, 87–89, 92–95, 106. Some blacks in

149–52; 149–50 on The Poleman in the Ma’sh and

Virginia complained about Homer’s exclusive

for Eakins using William Robinson (whom Eakins

portrayal of blacks as poor and rural; during Recon-

named in a letter) as his model for A Negro Whistling

struction, a number of blacks held public office and

for Plover (1874).

were middle class, McElroy, Facing History, 80. 10. Corson’s name appears on a 14 February 1876 handwritten list with others, including Susan

13. Other artists found connections between African Americans and French peasants at the time. Scholars have commented on Homer’s “Negro

229

230

NOTES TO PAGES 100–102

peasant types” and his “American adaptation” of the

plementary chapters). Nostalgia for a rural past

French rural peasant theme. William H. Gerdts and

also partly explains the popularity of peasant sub-

Michael Quick have discussed the critical impor-

jects in America.

tance of the French peasant painters Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton for Homer’s monumental interpretation of African Americans in his Virginia paintings. Quick noted Homer’s originality in seeing “the social equivalent of the disadvantaged

15. On the American black as exotic primitive, see Gaston, The New South Creed, 182. 16. AAA, P-13:105, untitled clipping, Philadelphia Times, n.d. [ca. 1893 from context]. 17. Theodore W. Bean, History of Montgomery

French peasant in the condition of the black Amer-

County (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1884), 1036.

ican of the period.” Alain Locke referred to

Also reported in Hiram Corson, M.D., The Corson

Homer’s “Negro peasant types” and Ellwood

Family: A History of the Descendants of Benjamin Corson

Parry wrote of Homer’s “American adaptation” of

(Philadelphia: Henry Lawrence Everett, 1896;

the French rural peasant theme in Locke, The Negro

printed for private distribution), 114.

in Art, 139, and Parry, The Image of the Indian and the

18. Listing six Corsons, Hiram Corson, “Jour-

Black Man in American Art, 1590–1900, 135. An apt

nal of Hiram Corson, M.D.,” Autograph, No. 7,

example of Homer’s Virginia paintings is The Cotton

109; Underground Railroad and quotation, Bean,

Pickers (1876). See Gerdts, “Winslow Homer in

History of Montgomery County, 303, 304. Also,

Cullercoats,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin 26

Charles L. Blockson, Pennsylvania’s Black History,

(Spring 1977), 23, and Michael Quick, “Homer in

Louise D. Stone, ed. (Philadelphia: Portfolio Asso-

Virginia,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art Bulletin

ciates, 1975), 1–2, and Charles L. Blockson and

(1978): 61, 71. Quick also mentioned Thomas An-

Ron Fry, Black Genealogy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

shutz’s (1815–1912) Cabbage Patch, now called The

Prentice-Hall, 1977), 90–93, and John Hope

Way They Live (1879). See also Wood and Dalton,

Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro

Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks, 92, 95–96.

Americans, 4th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1974),

14. W. E. B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (New York: Benjamin Blom, reissued

198–201. 19. Quotations in Bean, History of Montgomery

1967, first published 1899), 386. In 1900, a Uni-

County, 1037, also Corson, Autograph Draft for

versity of Virginia professor, Paul B. Barringer,

The Corson Family, 28–29, 30, Corson Papers, pri-

told the Southern Education Association that “the

vate collection. Hiram Corson states that the

negro race is essentially a race of peasant farmers

George Corson family welcomed fugitives into

and laborers.” See C. Vann Woodward, The Strange

their home as well as at the hall and that “unexpected

Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University

guests” at breakfast was one of the memories of the

Press, 1969), 95. In 1905, the art historian

family,” 32.

Samuel Isham explained that Jean-François Millet

20. On Helen making the hall her studio, see

appealed to the “democratic heart of America”

Hiram Corson, Autograph Draft for The Corson

that had recently freed black slaves, Isham, History

Family, 30; Warwick, “Plymouth, Pa.: A Drowsy

of American Painting, 494 (this was part of the orig-

Pennsylvania Hamlet of the Last Century,” Philadel-

inal edition published in 1905, not the later sup-

phia Press, 24 August 1880, loose clipping, Hoven-

NOTES TO PAGES 102–103

den Papers, private collection; AAA, P-13:285. On

black and mulatto residents in the two townships

converting the hall; AAA, P-13:57, “An American

were married and living with their families. The

Painter,” Philadelphia Times, 1 August 1886. On Cor-

National Archives of the United States Microfilm

son’s photography, for example, a reproduction of

Publication, 1934, Federal Population Census, 10th

a photograph of a model and manikin posing for

Census 1880 Pennsylvania, Vol. 55: Montgomery

Breaking Home Ties (reproduced in Sylvia Yount,

County (cont’d) Part 1, 188–439, Plymouth Township,

“A Pennsylvania. Artist: Thomas Hovenden and

District 23, Reel T9–1158, 1–39, and Vol. 56: Mont-

the Philadelphia Art World,” in Thomas Hovenden

gomery County (cont’d) Part 2, 134–597, Whitemarsh

(1840–1895) (Philadelphia:Woodmere Art Museum,

Township (West), District 35, Reel T9–1159, 1–44.

1995), 45, who suggested Hovenden may have used

23. Samuel Jones the elder was born in the

such photos to re-pose models or review furniture

slave state of Maryland before coming to Pennsylva-

placement. On Helen Corson Hovenden’s reputation

nia, while his wife was Pennsylvania-born, although

as a photographer, untitled clipping, Philadelphia

her parents, like her husband’s parents, were born

Bulletin, 4 December 1895, Hovenden Papers, pri-

in Maryland. Samuel and Hester Jones had roots in

vate collection, and her grandniece’s recollection.

Pennsylvania before the Civil War, at least from

21. On the studio added, see “The Week in the Studios,” New York Daily Tribune, 22 October 1882, 2.

1849 when their elder son was born there. Statistics about Samuel Jones are from page 5, dwelling #49,

22. Samuel Jones and Archie Lane are the only

visitation #49 of the 1880 Federal Population Cen-

African American men listed in the 1880 census of

sus, Pennsylvania, Vol. 55: Montgomery County (cont’d),

Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships near the age

Part 1, 188–439, Plymouth Township, District 23,

of the man whom Hovenden painted. That man was

Reel T9–1158, 1–39.

referred to as “Sam” by an art writer in connection with the painting Chloe and Sam for which Jones

24. “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 27 March 1882, 5, col. 2.

posed, “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 27 March 1882,

25. A descendant discovered Corson’s drawing

5, col. 2. According to the 1880 federal population

in 1992, private collection. On the drawing’s verso

census, which indicated racial facts (“W,” “B,” or

in Corson’s handwriting is “Uncle Ned and His

“M”) along with age and other statistics, some forty

Pupil” and the image matches the description of the

African American adults lived in the two townships.

work at the 1881 Academy exhibition, see AAA,

Blacks comprised about 3 percent of the adults in

P-13:255, “Among the Pictures. Philadelphia at

Plymouth Township; blacks and mulattos made up

New York,” unidentified newspaper clipping, 28

almost 3 percent of the adults of Whitemarsh

March 1881. Corson’s painting is listed in Naylor,

Township. Almost all of the thirty black adults in

Exhibition Record, 1861–1900, vol. 1, 190, for $500.

Plymouth Township were born in Pennsylvania and

Hovenden’s picture is listed, Naylor, Exhibition

most of the men worked as laborers. In Whitemarsh

Record, 1861–1900, 457, collection of Thomas B.

Township almost half of the twenty-four black

Clarke who bought the work before a wood-

adults were born in Pennsylvania—ten adults were

engraved illustration of it appeared in Harper’s Weekly

born in the South—and most men worked as

25 (30 April 1881): 285. See H. Barbara Weinberg,

laborers or in farming. A large majority of the

“Thomas B. Clarke: Foremost Patron of American

231

232

NOTES TO PAGES 103–108

Art from 1872 to 1899,” American Art Journal 8 (May

his stories also appeared in Century and Scribner’s

1976): 53, 76. Hovenden’s picture is mentioned in

Monthly magazines. Foster wrote the melody at mid-

“Advent of a Great American Painter,” Studio and

century for blackface minstrel shows. John Rogers’s

Musical Review 1 (19 February 1881): 52.

1866 statuette titled Uncle Ned’s School is of a black

26. For description, see AAA, P-13:4, uniden-

man learning to read from a young black woman, a

tified, undated article but, from context, a review

grotesquely caricatured portrayal often called

of the National Academy of Design’s 1881 spring

“humorous” in the nineteenth century. In 1875,

exhibition.

Winslow Homer exhibited Uncle Ned at Home, an

27. Quoted in Honour, The Image of the Black: IV, Part 1, 274–75. 28. Karen S. Linn, That Half-Barbaric Twang:The

image that Peter Wood and Karen Dalton persuasively link to the tensions of transition for former slaves during Reconstruction. Wood and Dalton,

Banjo in American Popular Culture (Urbana: University

Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks, 75–78; Boime, The

of Illinois Press, 1991), 19. See also Gavin Roger

Art of Exclusion, 104–5, 197–99.

Jones, Strange Talk:The Politics of Dialect Literature in

32. For the gourd’s symbolism, see Honour,

Gilded Age America (Berkeley: University of Califor-

The Image of the Black: IV, Part 1, 220–22. Honour

nia Press, 1999).

gives the example of Thomas Waterman Wood’s

29. AAA, P-13:27, “Jennie June: And Her

picture Cornfield (1861), in which a drinking gourd

Weekly Review of Life in New York,” Baltimore

signifies that two of the African Americans working

American, 27 February 1881.

in the field were probably planning a flight North to

30. In the period of the 1880s and 1890s, free

freedom.According to Honour, the sign was under-

blacks were usually not portrayed as sympathetically

stood by abolitionists, so it is probable that Corson

as plantation blacks were. Stereotypes in literary

knew the symbolism.

magazines were of the faithful slave and the freed-

33. See Karen M. Adams, “The Black Image in

man finding it hard to adjust to free society. Logan,

the Paintings of William Sidney Mount,” American

The Negro in American Life, 247–56. Comparisons in

Art Journal 7, no. 2 (November 1975): 12–59, esp.

midcentury American art:William Sidney Mount,

48, where part of the Report of the American

Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride (1830), The Power of

Freedman’s Inquiry Commission issued in 1864 at

Music (1847); Richard Caton Woodville, The Card

President Lincoln’s request is quoted. The report

Players (1846), War News from Mexico (1848); James

contrasts the Anglo-Saxon race characterized by in-

Goodwyn Clonney, Politicians in a Country Bar

tellectual power and enterprise with the “African

(1844). On earlier representations of African Amer-

race,” which is in many respects the reverse, being

icans in genre painting, see Elizabeth Johns, American

“genial, lively, docile, emotional.”

Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), chapter 4, “Standing Outside the Door.” 31. Joel Chandler Harris’s first book, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, was published in 1880;

34. Linn, That Half-Barbaric Twang, 8, 41, 44, 55, 63, 65, 75. 35. For positive readings of Eakins’s Negro Boy Dancing, see Foster et. al., Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, 88, and Honour, The Image of the Black, vol. 4, 189.

NOTES TO PAGES 108–111

Martin Berger offers a more nuanced, critical read-

42. Bearden and Henderson, A History of African-

ing of Eakins’s painting: whereas most scholars have

American Artists, 78–109, on Tanner. Ogden was a

labeled the image as “progressive” in terms of race,

partner in the Wanamaker firm, and trustee of

Berger argues that Eakins presented a “subject that

Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia. Hovenden

was overdetermined as black”; in short, it was a

went with a group of educators led by Ogden on a

“reaffirmation of the status quo” for Gilded Age au-

trip to Hampton Institute for the 1891 commence-

diences. Berger, Man Made, 32–39; quotes on 32 and

ment exercises, Terhune, “Thomas Hovenden,”

39, respectively.

291–92.

36. Weinberg, “Thomas B. Clarke,” 76, where spelling is “I’se.” Print on thin tissue paper, engraved by Willy Miller, signed and dated by

43. “An Artist’s Triumph,” Baltimore Herald, 7 June 1897. 44. Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., “The Hidden

artist 1882, pasted into original scrapbook, AAA,

Origins of Henry O. Tanner’s African-American

P-13:121. The painting is presently known from

Genre Paintings,” manuscript, 1991, 16, courtesy

an engraving.

of the author. Also Woods, “The Life and Work of

37. For merged musical styles, see Bluestein,

Henry O. Tanner” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Pacific

“America’s Folk Instrument: Notes on the Five-

University, 1987), 62–63, 87. On Tanner’s interest

String Banjo,” 244–45. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of

in challenging stereotypes of African Americans in

Black Folk (New York: First Vintage Books, Library

his genre paintings, see Albert Boime, “Henry

of America, 1990), 14.

Ossawa Tanner’s Subversion of Genre,” Art Bulletin

38. “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 28 January 1882, 5, col. 4. 39. Originally written in 1881, but published

75, no. 3 (1993): 414–42. 45. I’se So Happy was in the Thomas B. Clarke collection until February 1899, but Hovenden had

in Century, 27, no. 6 (April 1884): 932–42, on 935:

at least one sketch for the picture, which I saw 21

“Dem was good ole times, marster—de bes’ Sam

August 1979, Kennedy Galleries, New York, Col-

ever see!” Also in Thomas Nelson Page, In Ole Vir-

lection from Corson-Hovenden family. Corson’s

ginia: or Marse Chan and Other Stories (New York:

drawing is still in the family collection.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928, copyright 1887). 40. Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., offers another in-

46. “Thomas Hovendon [sic]: His Impressionistic Exhibition at Earle’s,” Philadelphia Item, 3 May

terpretation of the title, suggesting that it might re-

1894, an exhibit of work from “last autumn and this

fer to the “good old times” the musician shared with

spring” (the Hovenden-Tanner joint exhibition).

his banjo, which Hovenden placed so conspicuously

47. Dewey F. Mosby, Darrel Sewell et al.,

in the picture’s foreground. See Woods, “Home,

Henry Ossawa Tanner (Philadelphia: Philadelphia

Hearth, and Humanity,” 71–72.

Museum of Art, 1991), 116, for quotation from

41. For a thoughtful discussion of the painting, H. Nichols B. Clark, “Thomas Hovenden: Dem Was

Tanner’s statement, ca. 1894. 48. On North Carolina banjoists, Bluestein,

Good Ole Times,” American Art Review 6 (Winter 1994):

“America’s Folk Instrument,” 241–48. Sylvia Yount,

98, 173.

“Chronology,” in Mosby et al., Henry Ossawa Tanner,

233

234

NOTES TO PAGES 113–118

34–51; Sewell on Eakins and Hovenden, 116–125;

Genre Paintings,” manuscript, 1991, 15, courtesy

Breton peasants, 119–120.

of the author.

49. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 197, 204–5;

56. John V. Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s

DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, written in 1903, 14;

Pictures: Part of Catalogue Raisonné,” typescript

DuBois considered the major black contributions to

draft, Hovenden Papers, private collection. John

American culture to be music, folklore, and faith.

Van Der Zee Sears (1835–1926) was a well-known

50. James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of

Philadelphia journalist, an art critic, and a friend of

an Ex-Coloured Man (New York: Knopf, 1970; first

Hovenden’s who began this draft in January 1891

published in 1912), 174–75; Anthony Heilbut, au-

[written on the cover page along with the initials

thor of The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times,

J.V.S.] and from the context did not complete it

review of Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black

until after Hovenden’s death. This draft consists of

Church, New York Times, Book Review Section, 21

about fifty variously paginated 7 ⳯ 8-in. pages of

February 1993, 1.

double-spaced typing. An extant 1883 letter from

51. On the picturesque and the “Other,” see

Sears to Hovenden invited the artist to Philadel-

Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” The Politics

phia to see a performance of King Lear, AAA,

of Vision (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 50–51.

P-13:58–59; a 20 January 1885 letter, addressed to

Honour, The Image of the Black, 194–95.

“Friend Hovenden,” referred to enclosed newspa-

52. “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 27 March

per notices and suggested a title for a painting, in

1882, 5, col. 2. This notice referred to the fact that

Original Scrapbook, but not microfilmed. Signa-

the model for Sam “is lately dead,” as “all lovers of

tures on both letters correspond to the initials

Mr. Hovenden’s negro subjects will be sorry to

J.V.S. on the cover of the draft for a catalogue

hear.”

raisonné. Judging from an 1886 signed letter

53. National Academy of Design, A Century and

from Sears to Hovenden requesting information

a Half of American Art (Washington, D.C.: National

for the John Brown painting, and from the draft

Endowment for the Arts, 1975), 78–79. On critic,

being among Hovenden’s papers, Hovenden cer-

see AAA, P-13:26 “Fine Arts,” unidentified news-

tainly assisted and approved Sears’s undertaking

paper clipping, 4 April [1885].

for a catalogue raisonné. Their Pride is the only

54.A critic described the picture fully and fairly, AAA, P-13: 32, “Art Notes,” The American [a weekly Philadelphia magazine], undated. For Hovenden’s

Hovenden African American painting discussed by Sears. 57. I am indebted to Edmund Barry Gaither

valuations, see Naylor, Exhibition Record, 1861–1900,

for suggesting the relevance of education to Their

457–58. The artist valued Their Pride at $2,500, Sun-

Pride. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 10–12; Henry

day Afternoon at $1,000, and A Village Blacksmith (see

Louis Gates, Jr., “The Face and Voice of Blackness,”

fig. 58) at $800. Hovenden judged the value of his

in McElroy, Facing History, xxx. On the literacy rate

works by the number of figures he included; more

jumping from 18.6 percent to 55.5 percent, see

figures meant a larger painting.

Logan, The Negro in American Life, 324–29. On Sab-

55. Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., “The Hidden Origins of Henry O. Tanner’s African-American

bath and Freedmen’s Bureau schools in the former slave states, see James D. Anderson, The Education

NOTES TO PAGES 118–121

of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill:

exhibition. One newspaper reviewer at the gaslit

University of North Carolina Press, 1988), “Intro-

night press opening of the academy exhibition

duction.”

spoke of Hovenden’s “admirable negro genre,”

58. George William Sheldon, Recent Ideals of

AAA, P-13:30, “Fine Arts . . . First Notice,”

American Art (New York: D.Appleton and Company,

unidentified newspaper clipping [20 March

1888), 152. On critics, see AAA, P-13:32, “Art

1881].

Notes,” The American, undated; and AAA, P-13:32,

62.AAA, P-13:32, unidentified, undated news-

“A New Picture by Mr. Hovenden,” unidentified and

paper clipping, but Franklin Riehlman, then of Alli-

undated newspaper notice. Patronizing references to

son Gallery, New York City, discovered the clipping’s

“humor” in African American genre pictures usu-

source: Baltimore Sun, ca. 16 May 1883, about an ex-

ally are code for the racist idea that African Amer-

hibition at Bendann’s Gallery, Exhibition Catalogue

icans were genial, mirthful, and, like children,

No. 64, by telephone 4 May 1993.A reproduction of

spontaneously cheerful. An example of stereotyp-

Dem Was Good Old Times based on an original Hoven-

ing by one reviewer refers to the picture’s “genuine

den drawing was in Illustrated Catalogue of the Art Hall

humor and appreciation of colored sentiment as it

of the Inter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago, Septem-

rushes to ribbons, furbellows and highlights,” imply-

ber 6 to October 21, 1882, 87 and 72, Elaine also was

ing that African Americans lacked discriminating

exhibited. Catalog owned by Hovendens and among

taste,AAA, P-13:105, untitled, unidentified, and un-

Memorabilia, private collection. Double-page of re-

dated newspaper notice.

productions from the Catalogue of the 1882 American

59. For Dem Was Good Old Times, “Fine Arts: Ex-

Water Color Society exhibition, Harper’s Weekly (4 Feb-

hibition News and Notes,” New York Herald, 11 Feb-

ruary 1882): 72–73, no. 37 for Dem Was Good Old

ruary 1883, 17; it sold for $450. Clarke bought Dat

[sic] Times. Oil painting signed on reverse in Hoven-

Possum by March 1881 for $230 and sold it in June

den’s handwriting: Dem Was Good Old Times, Riehlman

1881 for $430; the other two works were sold at the

told me.

1899 Clarke auction: I’se So Happy was bought for $230 and sold for $450; Chloe and Sam was bought for $450 and sold for $410.Weinberg, “Thomas B. Clarke,” 52–83. 60. Koehler, American Art, 55. Koehler was probably thinking of Noble’s The Last Sale of Slaves

63. “Fine Arts,” New York Herald, 28 January 1882, 5, col. 4. 64. Sheldon, Recent Ideals, 153–54, esp. 152. Sheldon had been art editor for the New York Evening Post from 1876 to 1882. 65. On the demise of Reconstruction in the

in St. Louis (1865), which was destroyed and now

South and increased indifference and/or hostility

known through a replica of 1870, see Boime, The

toward African Americans in the North in the 1880s

Art of Exclusion, 132–38.

and 1890s, see Edwards, Gendered Strife, chapter 6;

61. Concluding, the writer stated that the smaller painting was “as perfect in the comic line” as In Hoc Signo Vinces was in the “heroic,” AAA,

Saxton, White Republic, part III; and Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction, esp. chapter 6. 66. For example, J. G. Brown painted numer-

P-13:4, unidentified, undated article, but context

ous works of children; his images of bootblacks in

indicates the time of the academy’s 1881 spring

particular come to mind; see Martha J. Hoppin,

235

236

NOTES TO PAGES 122–128

Country Paths and City Sidewalks:The Art of J. G. Brown

69. See Peter H.Wood and Karen C. C. Dalton,

(Springfield, Mass.: George Walter Vincent Smith

Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks, 83–84, for Homer’s

Art Museum, 1989), 20–23 and passim. Also,

The Watermelon Boys (1876), and an 1878 wood

Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger et al., A Century of

engraving of the painting with the addition of a ges-

Childhood: 1820–1920 (Rochester, N.Y.: Margaret

ticulating farmer on the other side of the fence; also

Woodbury Strong Museum, 1984), 26–27; Ayres,

n. 192, 122, details the appearance of “grotesque

“The American Figure,” 56–57. Although Hoven-

images of . . . cavernous mouths . . . large enough to

den’s representation is different, he may have

accommodate a watermelon slice” beginning in the

been thinking specifically of Thomas Couture’s

1880s and “reaching their peak in the 1890s and

Blowing Bubbles (1859), which, like traditional rep-

early 1900s,” although earlier associations of blacks

resentations such as Chardin in the eighteenth

and watermelons occurred on the minstrel stage.

century, was a vanitas subject, alluding to the

Only two images associating blacks and watermelons

short lifespan, even of youth, see Albert Boime,

have been discovered before 1880. See also Francis

Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision (New Haven,

Martin, “The Watermelon Boys,” in McElroy, Facing

Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), 336–38.

History, 81, and Gates, “The Face and Voice of Black-

Burns, Pastoral Inventions, 297.

ness,” xxx, for an offensive example in 1893: fig. 4,

67. William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) and

Frederick Opper, “Darkies’ Day at the Fair,” World’s

Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) were members of a

Fair Puck no. 16 (21 August 1893): 186–87. The

group of young American artists who trained in

1992 exhibition Facing the Rising Sun: 150Years of the

Munich in the 1870s. Their instructors emphasized

African-American Experience, 1842–1992, Wadsworth

a decreasing concentration on narrative or histori-

Atheneum, curated by Barbara A. Hudson, exhib-

cal subjects, bravura brushstrokes, and dark tonali-

ited several derogatory stereotypes and cartoons of

ties. On Chase’s training in Munich, see Barbara

African Americans, from the middle 1880s and

Dayer Gallati, William Merritt Chase (New York:

later, like the Coon Club Hunt, a Currier & Ives print

Harry N. Abrams in association with the National

of 1885.

Museum of American Art, 1995), 18–22; on the Munich school and American art, see Michael Quick, Munich and American Realism in the Nineteenth

70. Janet Levine, “Thomas Hovenden,” in McElroy, Facing History, 64. 71. On critical reactions to Homer’s painting,

Century (Sacramento, Calif.: Crocker Art Gallery,

see Conrads, Winslow Homer, 132–38, quote on

1978). Hovenden certainly knew Chase’s work.

138.

Chase was president of the Society of American Artists in 1880, and his painting The Apprentice

CHAPTER 5. IMAGES TO “APPEAL TO THE

(1875) was illustrated in S. G. W. Benjamin’s 1880

NATIONAL MIND”

Art in America; Impudence in George W. Sheldon’s

1. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, vol. 1, 39.

1882 Hours with Art and Artists.

2. Koehler quoted from his own earlier

68. On Homer’s images of African Americans

review of the 1880 exhibition; see Koehler, Ameri-

from the mid-1870s, see Conrads, Winslow Homer,

can Art, 8. He complained that there were no

88–101, 132–40.

“great subjects” to be seen at exhibitions of late

NOTES TO PAGES 128–129

nineteenth-century American art, Koehler, Ameri-

two children, a son, was born in March of that

can Art, 16.

year, to be followed by his daughter’s birth in May

3. “The Exhibitions: V. Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of the American Water Color Society,” Ameri-

1884. 5. On Battell, see National Cyclopaedia of Ameri-

can Art Review (February 1881): 200. The essayist

can Biography, 1917 ed., s.v. “Battell, Robbins.” A

regretted that European subjects were in favor

graduate of Yale University in 1839, the Battell

when “noble scenes” were here in the United States.

family gave and enlarged Yale’s Battell Chapel. Rob-

Hovenden’s The Call to Rest,The Poacher’s Story, and

bins Battell served as president of the Connecticut

The Puzzled Voter, were discussed in the essay and his

Historical Society, represented his town in the state

sketch of The Puzzled Voter was reproduced on the

legislature for four terms, and, in 1866, was state

preceding page. On the plea for “the true American

comptroller. In 1861, he was a delegate to the

historical subject” that “should be sought” every-

peace convention in Washington. He supported

where in the drama of America’s civil life, see

the Union in the war. As a major collector of

Great [pseud.], “Art in Boston,” Art Amateur 13

American art, Battell owned about fifty

(November 1885): 111, an article to which Doreen

paintings—all landscapes—before he acquired

Bolger called my attention.

Hovenden’s Last Moments of John Brown. See Scrap-

4. Hovenden told a reporter in 1891 that he

book No. 1 (1882–1901), undated clipping and ar-

was “wedded to art” of the “highest ideal” and pre-

ticle from The Mail and Express, 16 June 1882: 9, in

ferred painting a few large pictures to painting

Norfolk Library, Norfolk, Connecticut. Battell

more but smaller ones. AAA, P-13:117, “The

opened his substantial library and art gallery to the

Hovenden Sold: Breaking Home Ties Purchased by

public and provided free concerts for the townspeo-

Mr. Charles C. Harrison,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 18

ple of Norfolk. The tradition of concerts was con-

February 1891. For critic on patronage, see AAA,

tinued by his daughter and son-in-law, Ellen Battell

P-13:75, “The Encouragement of Art,” unnamed,

Stoeckel and Carl Stoeckel, after Robbins Battell’s

undated clipping, but probably 1884 when The Last

death in 1895; for instance, the Finnish composer

Moments of John Brown was exhibited. The writer

Jean Sibelius made his only trip to America at their

stated that commissions to able painters were

request. Sydney Thompson, The History of the Ellen

needed, not prizes, which could not determine

Battell Stoeckel Trust, privately printed, is useful for

good pictures because beginners could risk paint-

information on the Battells. On the present

ing for a prize, but “capable men” could not afford

collection, see Naomi Rosenblum, Paintings in the

the risk. Thomas B. Clarke, who bought three of

Collection of the Stoeckel Estate,White House, Norfolk,

Hovenden’s African American genre subjects in

Connecticut (N.p.: Trustees of the Ellen Battell

1881, established a prize in 1884 to encourage figure

Stoeckel Trust, n.d.).

painting in American art. See Weinberg, “Thomas B.

6. Erastus Brainerd, a member of the editorial

Clarke,” 58, 76. Hovenden probably was especially

staff of the Philadelphia Press, reported that Thomas

aware of his financial responsibilities when he re-

Worthington Whittredge, the landscape painter, met

ceived Robbins Battell’s commission in 1882 be-

Hovenden after September 1880 and told him that

cause the first of his and Helen Corson Hovenden’s

Battell wanted Whittredge to recommend an artist

237

238

NOTES TO PAGES 130–131

to paint “a historical picture of the last moments of

rison from Rebecca B. Spring of Perth Amboy, N.J.

John Brown.” AAA, P-13:29, Erastus Brainerd, “An

(the copy is identified as such in Hovenden’s hand-

Irish Quaker Artist,” unidentified magazine (April

writing). Spring stated that Brown always wore

1886).Another account claimed that John V. Sears,

brown clothes, and that the slippers were “made of

“the well known art critic of the Evening Telegram

soft-velvet carpet of a dark crimson shading.”

[Philadelphia]” and “an intimate friend of Mr. Hoven-

9. Interest in “actuality” and personal identifica-

den’s,” stated that Battell asked Eastman Johnson

tion with historical events grew from the mid-nine-

to do the painting, but Johnson was too busy with

teenth century, Gerald M. Ackerman, “Gérôme:

portraits and recommended Hovenden. From a

The Academic Realist,” Art News Annual, vol. 33,

loose, unidentified, and undated article [from con-

eds. Hess and Ashbery, 107. The fascination with au-

text, about October 1895], “Thomas Hovenden,

thenticity paralleled the century’s historicism and in-

Artist: His Painting of John Brown on His Way to

creasing semblance of reality in art and literature.

Execution,” vol. IX, no. 17, Hovenden Papers, pri-

For instance, Leutze relied on a replica of Houdon’s

vate collection. For discussion of commission,

death mask of General Washington and a copy of

AAA, P-13:40, Robbins Battell to Thomas Hoven-

Washington’s uniform when he painted his Washing-

den, 21 June 1882. The advance was $1,000.

ton Crossing the Delaware (1851), William H. Truet-

7. The agreed-upon price of $5,000 for The Last

tner, “The Art of History: American Exploration

Moments of John Brown remained the same despite the

and Discovery Scenes, 1840–1860,” American Art

larger size, see AAA, P-13:12, “Fine Arts,” New York

Journal 14 (Winter 1982): 4–31. Among press dis-

Herald, 16 [15] May 1884. Battell was concerned

cussions of Hovenden’s research: “The Week in the

about the size of the work. He wrote Hovenden re-

Studios,” New York Daily Tribune (22 October 1882),

questing the vertical measurement of the frame so

2, AAA, P-13:28; J.V.S. [John V. Sears], “A Historic

“that I may with my daughter be deciding whether a

Picture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 May 1884; L.A.M.,

place can be had for it on the walls of our gallery.”

“Art: Hovenden’s Picture of John Brown,” The Ameri-

Robbins Battell to Thomas Hovenden, 29 July 1885,

can 8 (17 May 1884): 92.

Hovenden Papers, private collection, [1–2]. Even for

10. For frustrations Hovenden encountered in

a house as generous in size as Battell’s, Hovenden’s

ascertaining the proper uniforms and his interview

painting was a large one.

with a Charles Town tailor,AAA, P-13:29, Brainerd,

8. On Brown’s clothing, two original letters

“An Irish Quaker Artist.” John V. Sears described the

are preserved: W. P. Garrison of New York to Mr.

uniforms in Hovenden’s picture: “The soldiers are

Parsons, 2 March 1883, and W. P. Garrison to

clad in the dark blue coast [sic] and light blue

“Dear Sir,” 9 March 1883, AAA, P-13:234–35 and

trousers of the United States artillery but wear

P-13:210–11. Garrison, son of the abolitionist

the insignia of the State of Virginia on belts and

William Lloyd Garrison, wrote on the letterhead

felt hats.” AAA, P-13:29, J. V. S., “A Historic Pic-

of “The Nation, a weekly edition of the Evening

ture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 May 1884. Hoven-

Post,” of which he was literary editor. The second

den painted a red stripe on trousers to signify the

letter mentions enclosing a copy of a letter to Gar-

artillery group and in the published 1859 sketches

NOTES TO PAGE 131

the officer on the dark horse wears trousers with a

13. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Memoirs of John

stripe; hats with a feather plume in the Hovenden pic-

Brown, written for Rev. Samuel Orcutt’s History of

ture are more like those in the newspaper sketches

Torrington, Connecticut (Concord, Mass.: J. Munsell,

than the tricorn in pictures of John Brown’s last mo-

Albany Printers, 1878), 97–99.

ments by Louis Liscolm Ransom or Thomas

14. I have consulted the following sources:

Satterwhite Noble.According to Mary Noble Welleck

for Brown’s soliciting support and attacking the

Garretson, Noble’s painting is “historically correct

Armory, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v.

in showing the Virginia National Guards in their

“Brown, John”; and Sanborn, Memoirs of John Brown,

Continental uniforms,” “Thomas S. Noble and His

47, 52–53; F. B. Sanborn, “Comment by a Radical

Paintings,” New York Historical Society Quarterly Bul-

Abolitionist,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 26,

letin 24 (October 1940): 118. Boime also refers to

n.s. 3 (July 1883): 412. For Lee’s regaining posses-

the Continental uniform of the American Revolu-

sion of the Armory, Colonel William Couper, One

tion in Ransom’s and Noble’s depiction, The Art of

Hundred Years at VMI (Richmond, Va.: Garrett and

Exclusion, 142.

Massie, 1939), 5. Major J. T. L. Preston to his wife,

11. John V. Sears in his “Thomas Hovenden

Charlestown, 2 December 1859, quoted in Couper,

Pictures: Part of Catalogue Raisonné,” draft, 16,

One Hundred Years at VMI, 16–21. The governor of

Hovenden Papers, quoted the artist as saying that

Virginia thought it wise to have some state military

he had little experience with outdoor effects; also a

present at the hanging and he ordered a corps of

report on the “out-door” studio “recently” built, in

VMI cadets to Charlestown, Major General Francis

“The Week in the Studios,” New York Daily Tribune

H. Smith, History of the Virginia Military Institute

(22 October 1882), 2. The posing site was the rear

(Lynchburg, Va.: J. P. Bell Company, 1912), 163,

steps of Charles H. Pletcher’s house near the Cor-

171. The Virginians took elaborate precautions at

son-Hovenden house and studio, Bill Collins, Sr.,

Brown’s execution for fear of some rescue attempt.

“Conshohocken Heard Under . . . the Spreading

Another estimate of the uniformed militia present

Maple Trees,” Norristown Times Herald, 17 May

placed the figure at three thousand, Richard J. Hin-

1968, 20, col. i. Confirmed by William F. Collins

ton, John Brown and His Men (New York: Funk and

(Bill Collins, Sr.) to the author 21 May 1982 and

Wagnalls Company, 1894; reprint ed., New York:

corroborated by Nancy Corson. For Bolton Jones,

Arno Press, 1968), 396. One railroad line was pro-

see Photograph, National Cyclopaedia of American

hibited from carrying passengers; passengers on an-

Biography, 1939 ed., s.v. “Jones, H(ugh) Bolton.”

other line were examined and detained, Major

12. AAA, P-13:66, “Hovenden’s ‘John Brown,’”

J. T. L. Preston to his wife, in Couper, One Hundred

New York Evening Post, 16 May 1884, 3. Hovenden

Years at VMI, 20. In later years, one of the VMI

wrote that, according to Captain John Avis, the

cadets who had witnessed the hanging confirmed

rope was put on in the jail. AAA, P-13:68, “The

that there were no “negroes, young or old, present.”

Last Moments of John Brown: Thomas Hovenden to

34, 20. For source material on VMI, I am grateful

the Editor of the Evening Post, 19 May,” 28 May

to VMI graduate J. Samuel Gillespie, Jr.; Brigadier

1884.

General James M. Morgan, Jr., Dean; and Julia

239

240

NOTES TO PAGE 133

Smith Martin, assistant public information officer,

Radical Abolitionist,” Century Illustrated Monthly Mag-

VMI.

azine 26, n.s. 3 (July 1883): 412–13, plate 39. The

15. For Brown as a champion, see Sanborn,

monographic oil sketch was engraved for an illus-

“Comment by a Radical Abolitionist,” 414–15; for

tration accompanying Sanborn’s 1883 article.

Brown as a murderer, see Major J. T. L. Preston to

More in Terhune, “Thomas Hovenden,” 343–44.

his wife, in Couper, One Hundred Years at VMI, 19.

I am indebted to Lois Dinnerstein for calling my

The song was the most popular of many John Brown

attention to this issue of Century, and to Irene Lit-

songs at the time of the war and Union soldiers asso-

tle of Chapellier Gallery, New York, for allowing

ciated it with John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. It

me to study the canvas, 22 August 1978.

was “actually based on a sarcastic tune which men in

18. Later, Ransom revised his painting,

a Massachusetts outfit made up as ‘a jibe’ against one

moved to Ohio in the mid-1880s, and gave the

Sergeant John Brown of Boston.” See Stephen B.

ten-by-seven-foot painting to Oberlin College

Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of

because of its known antislavery commitment. In

John Brown (New York: Harper & Row, 1970),

1919, the college loaned the painting to the Paul

414–15 n. 10, 361. Oates refers to the Boyd B. Stut-

Lawrence Dunbar High School, Washington,

ler Collection of Brown materials in Charles Town,

D.C.: Robert S. Fletcher, “Ransom’s John Brown

West Virginia, as his source.

Painting,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 9 (November

16. Sanborn, Memoirs of John Brown, “first great

1940): 343–46. In 1940, an Oberlin faculty

martyr” and Lincoln as the “last great victim” of the

member who saw the painting said it was in “mis-

struggle, 44–50, 94. Sanborn’s Memoirs of John Brown

erable condition.” The college, therefore, decided

is in the collection of the Norfolk Library, acquisi-

not to recall its loan of the painting. In 1976, a

tion date unknown. Sanborn, after graduation from

researcher could find no one at the Dunbar High

Harvard, settled in Concord, Massachusetts. A

School who knew anything about the painting.

prolific author, he also wrote The Life and Letters of

W. E. Bigglestone of Oberlin Archives to author,

John Brown, published in New York and Boston in

21 November 1979.

1885. Sanborn first met John Brown in 1857 when

19.An original black-and-white lithographic

Brown was in Boston, and soon thereafter Sanborn

print in the collection of the Library of Congress,

introduced Brown to the Concord circle of anti-

Prints & Photographs Division; an original hand-

slavery sympathizers: Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph

colored lithographic print in the Mabel Brady

Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. James

Garvan Collection,Yale University Art Gallery. The

Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

title, date, and approximate size of the print in

(Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1860;

Frederic Arthur Conningham, Currier & Ives Prints:

reprint ed., New York, Arno Press, 1970).

An Illustrated Check List (New York: Crown, 1970),

17. On reading Brown’s biography:AAA, P-

149. Incident referred to in the subtitle based on

137:117, “The Hovenden Sold,” Philadelphia Inquirer,

what turned out to be a fictional report that

18 February 1891. Quotation, Sanborn’s 1878 Mem-

appeared in the New York Tribune, 5 December 1859,

oirs of John Brown, 95, or Sanborn’s “Comment by a

8, discussed in note 27.

NOTES TO PAGES 134–137

20. Noble was born in Lexington, Kentucky,

Pennsylvania, Norristown, further identified:

and grew up on the family plantation. He believed in

“Uncle Henry stood for a picture of John Brown—

states’ rights but was opposed to slavery (his father

picture of which is in Dad’s bedroom.” One com-

freed his slaves before the war). See Marchal L.

mentator noted that Hovenden had been fortunate

Landgren, American Pupils of Thomas Couture (College

in finding a model who bore a striking resemblance

Park: University of Maryland Department of Art,

to Brown, “Art News and Comments,” New York

1970), 58; and Garretson, “Thomas S. Noble,”

Daily Tribune, 24 February 1884, 4. Boime used the

1

1

113–23. Noble’s painting measures 84 ⁄4 ⳯ 60 ⁄4 in.

phrase “benign father figure” to indicate how Hov-

A lithograph without identification of the artist,

enden “subverted” Noble’s version of John Brown

title, or printmaker is given the title John Brown Meet-

as “a powerful leader and prophet,” The Art of Exclu-

ing the Slave Mother on His Way to Be Executed and is

sion, 143. A newspaper commentator stated

reproduced in “The Civil War in Prints,” Kennedy

approvingly that the artist purposely presented the

Quarterly 2 (part 2), (May 1961): 91–92. On Noble’s

scene in “a homely, natural manner, probably just as

prior history painting of 1865, see Boime, The Art of

it occurred. AAA, P-13:12, “Fine Arts: Thomas

Exclusion, 132–33. Hovenden attended classes at the

Hovenden’s Painting of John Brown on His Way to

National Academy of Design from 1864 to 1868.

Execution,” New York Herald, 16 [15] May 1884.

Noble became an associate of the Academy in 1867. 21. The daguerreotype is attributed to Martin M. Lawrence, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Permanent Collection Illustrated Checklist (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

23. Robbins Battell to Thomas Hovenden, 10 June 1882, AAA, P-13:173–74. 24. Robbins Battell to Thomas Hovenden, 22 June 1882, AAA, P-13:230–31. 25. “The Execution,” New York Tribune, 5 Decem-

Press, 1978), 22, NPG.74.76. Several authors, in-

ber 1859, 8, cols. 1 and 2. Horace Greeley, the anti-

cluding F. B. Sanborn in his 1878 Memoirs of John

slavery leader, was one of the founders of the

Brown, 97, used a reproduction of Black’s 1859

Republican party and the founder of the New York

photograph. For an engraving after an artist’s

Tribune; his editorials rallied antislavery sentiments.

sketch of Brown at the time of his capture, see

26. Redpath, Captain John Brown, 396–97.

Harper’s Weekly (5 November 1859): 712.

27. For Edward House’s confession to Battell’s

22. William Henry Furness (1802–96) of

son-in-law, Carl Stoeckel of Norfolk, Connecticut,

Philadelphia, a longtime adherent of the antislavery

addressed to “Dear Sir,” 25 October 1888, Battell-

cause and pastor emeritus of the First Unitarian

Stoeckel Papers,Yale in Norfolk, Norfolk, Connecti-

Church, Philadelphia, loaned a photograph of

cut. Stoeckel married Robbins Battell’s daughter

Brown to Hovenden, 1885 pamphlet AAA, P-13:12

after her father died (her father had opposed the

“Last Moments of John Brown,” painted by Thomas

marriage). Stoeckel interviewed Edward H. House

Hovenden, 1884 . . . etched by Thomas Hovenden,

when the latter was a paralyzed invalid and Stoeckel

1885” (Philadelphia: George Gebbie, 1885), 7.

reported on the interview in this thirteen-page,

Photograph of the neighbor-model, Henry

1888 handwritten letter, which Stoeckel requested

Schlater, Historical Society of Montgomery County

be returned to him because it contained his record-

241

242

NOTES TO PAGE 137

ing of House’s comments. Stoeckel was Battell’s

letter” to the New York Tribune. According to Hinton,

secretary, so it seems likely that Battell directed

who relied on the eyewitness W.W. B. Gallaher, the

Stoeckel to interview House and that Stoeckel

driver of the wagon in which Brown rode from the

informed Battell about the results. Perhaps Hoven-

jail to the scaffold, House heard the story and told it

den was also informed. House told Stoeckel that he

to Miller McKim and the New York Tribune. Hinton

was not at the execution and that other reporters

also stated: “No colored person was permitted” near

wrote the story attributed to him. House believed

the jail or the scaffold. “Hovenden’s John Brown

that the story originated from an unidentified “gen-

Painting,” New York Age, 16 January 1896, Hovenden

tleman” who went to the Tribune office to see

Papers, private collection.

Charles Dana who then had reporters rewrite the

28. Pamphlet, “The Last Moments of John

original article to include the incident. House was

Brown” (Philadelphia: George Gebbie, 1885), 8.

sure that the incident did not happen. I am indebted

Hovenden Papers, private collection; without Hov-

to Rita Tierney,Yale in Norfolk, The Ellen Battell

enden’s original notations, AAA-P13:12–21. The

Stoeckel Estate, for bringing the Stoeckel letter

pamphlet concludes with selected “Opinions of the

about House to my attention, interview 20 June

Press.” A smaller version of the pamphlet accompa-

1979.

nied Hovenden’s 1885 etching of the painting on

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn stated in a letter in

exhibition that year at the publisher, George Geb-

1892 to the Boston Advertiser that Brown’s jailer, the

bie, Philadelphia. Hovenden inscribed Whittier’s

“most literal and veracious of men,” denied the in-

first two stanzas on his own copper plate for his

cident. Sanborn, an impassioned advocate of

etching of the painting, Pennsylvania Academy of

Brown, thought it an ingenious story but certainly

the Fine Arts, In This Academy (Washington, D.C.:

not true. He traced its origin to an Edward F. Un-

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1976),

derhill who was told the story by J. Miller McKim

291, no. 136. Mary Noble Welleck Garretson

who got it from someone in Harper’s Ferry.

mistakenly claimed her grandfather’s 1867 paint-

Underhill went with Brown’s widow to the Tribune

ing of John Brown blessing the child caused Whit-

office, according to Sanborn. AAA, P-13:78, unti-

tier to change his poem, “Thomas S. Noble,” 118.

tled article, Providence Journal, 3 July 1892.

Instead, Whittier influenced Noble. Whittier’s

Richard J. Hinton, a newspaper correspondent

original 1859 poem included the incident; his re-

who knew and sympathized with Brown and in 1894

vision, published in 1860, was a gentler retelling

wrote John Brown and His Men, stated in 1896 that

with no new incident. Maybelle Mann, “John

House was in Harper’s Ferry on the day of the exe-

Brown Paintings: Look at Them Closely,” Middle-

cution and that “Olcott [Colonel Henry Steel Olcott

town [New York] Times Herald Record, 31 October

(?–1907)], now known as one of the chiefs of mod-

1976, 3; Natalie Spassky with Linda Bantel,

ern Theosophy” was the “boy” who witnessed the

Doreen Bolger Burke, Meg Perlman, and Amy L.

execution as a substitute for a member of the cadet

Walsh, American Paintings in the Metropolitan

corps (stationed behind the scaffold and nearly a

Museum of Art, Vol. 2:A Catalogue of Works by Artists

mile from the jail) and wrote the “chief descriptive

Born Between 1816 and 1845 (New York: Metropol-

NOTES TO PAGES 137–138

itan Museum of Art, 1985), 541; Boime, The Art of

Probably the booklet was prepared to encourage the

Exclusion, 141–42.

sale of the etching. The painting was exhibited in

29. The painting was exhibited at Knoedler &

Philadelphia at Earles’s Galleries in 1885, see AAA,

Company Gallery in New York.A smaller replica of

P-13:76, “John Brown: Thomas Hovenden’s Picture

the painting is owned by the Fine Arts Museums of

of the Old Hero’s Last Moments,” Philadelphia Times,

San Francisco, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum.

25 January 1885, and AAA, P-13:78, “The John

It measures 48 ⳯ 38 in. and was in the Mr. and Mrs.

Brown Picture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 July 1885.

John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection. The Metropoli-

For the Philadelphia critic quoted, see AAA,

tan Museum of Art’s painting is 773⁄8 ⳯ 661⁄4 in. It

P-13:75, X. Y. Z., “An Historical Painting,” Phila-

was the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel in 1897;

delphia Press, 25 May 1884. For the critic who rec-

Mrs. Stoeckel was Ellen Battell Stoeckel, Robbins

ognized a “new element” in Hovenden’s historical

Battell’s daughter. See American Art:An Exhibition from

picture, AAA, P-13:67, “He Died to Make Men

the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd

Free,” New York Morning Journal, 16 May 1884.

(San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,

31. AAA, P-13:68, “Fine Arts: Mr. Hovenden’s

1976), fig. 18; and Spassky, American Paintings, 542,

John Brown,” New York Mail and Express, 20 May

544. For the exhibition at Knoedler’s, see AAA,

1884. The article was not signed, but Clarke

P-13:25, for an invitation issued by the “Goupil

referred to the author, newspaper, and date.

Gallery and Messrs. M. Knoedler & Co.” to a

32. The writer recalled the painting’s exhibition

“private view of Mr. Hovenden’s new picture, Last

in Philadelphia in 1885.AAA, P-13:117, “At the Art

Moments of John Brown.” The painting was not finished

Exhibition,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 6 February 1891.

in time for the National Academy of Design annual

The writer for the “Monthly Record of American

exhibition that year. See AAA, P-13:12, “Fine Arts:

Art,” Magazine of Art 7 (July 1884), xxxiii, echoed

Thomas Hovenden’s Painting of John Brown on His

academic ideas of significance in judging The Last

Way to Execution,” New York Herald, 16 May 1884

Moments of John Brown to be an “American picture of

[the date was a mistake; it was 15 May 1884]. For

real importance” because it embodied “noble

two discussions of the work as a history painting, see

thought, nobly worked out,” and was, in fact, a “veri-

L.A.M., “Art: Hovenden’s Picture of John Brown,”

table oasis” in the “bulk of our present art.”

The American 8 (17 May 1884): 92 (this article was in

33. On scant demand for subjects from ancient

the Hovenden Scrapbook; see AAA, P-13:72); and

history, religion, or classical mythology in America

AAA, P-13:67, “The Fine Arts: Mr. Hovenden’s John

in the late nineteenth century, see Koehler, Ameri-

Brown,” Boston Daily Advertiser, 21 May 1884.

can Art, 38, and Sheldon, Recent Ideals of American

30. The quotation from the New York Times of 18 May 1884, 6, was given on the cover of a sixteen-

Art, 6–7. 34. On Hovenden’s painting “for the first time”

page booklet prepared by the publisher George Geb-

a “distinctly American theme,” see L. A. M., “Art:

bie of Philadelphia in 1885, and the review from the

Hovenden’s Picture of John Brown,” The American 8

New York Times was quoted in the booklet. See AAA,

(17 May 1884): 92. On the commissioning, see

P-13:18–19, “Last Moments of John Brown,” 11–12.

AAA, P-13:46, “Art Notes,” Philadelphia Public

243

244

NOTES TO PAGES 139–141

Ledger, 6 April [1889] and AAA, P-13:78, “Art

Hayward, “Thomas Hovenden (1840–1895),” in

Notes,” The American (Philadelphia), n.d. [ca. 1885].

Annette Blaugrund et al., Paris 1889: American Artists

35. “Art News and Comments,” New York Daily Tribune, 24 February 1884, 4, and L.A.M., “Art: Hovenden’s Picture of John Brown,” The American 8

at the Universal Exposition (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 170–72. 38. AAA, P-13:68, “Fine Arts,” New York Mail

(17 May 1884): 92. AAA, P-13:25, J.V.S., “A His-

and Express, 20 May 1884. According to Thomas B.

toric Picture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 May 1884.

Clarke who sent the article to Hovenden, Koehler

The writer for an issue of Harper’s Weekly, which

was the writer. Similar criticisms—too crowded,

carried a full-page engraving of Hovenden’s picture

distracting foreground soldiers, and not enough fo-

referred to John Brown’s “radiant countenance.”

cus on John Brown—were voiced in a weekly illus-

“John Brown at Charlestown,” Harper’s Weekly 29

trated periodical, AAA, P-13:77, “Pictures at the

(31 January 1885): 74. The engraving, p. 73, was

Union League Club,” The Studio (22 November

by “Fred. K. Juengling, Sc. ’84.”

1884), and, “Art News and Comments,” New York

36. Clarke added that his “pleasure experienced

Daily Tribune, 18 May 1884, 4, where the reviewer

over a year ago in viewing the work half done, has

also commented that the perspective of the

turned into real ecstasy” and that Mrs. Clarke greatly

horizontal beams of the roof was at fault.

admired the painting.AAA, P-13:144–45, Thomas B. Clarke to Thomas Hovenden, 20 May 1884. 37. The picture in the French newspaper had

39. “Artistically, to me, at least, it [the John Brown picture] afforded less opportunity to show what I could do than almost any other incident in his

been redrawn from an engraving in Harper’s Weekly

thrilling and varied career. . . .While I was at work

in late January 1885. Because the painting belonged

on the picture I made an illustration . . . of John

to Battell, Hovenden could not send it to the Salon.

Brown wounded in the guard house of Harper’s

AAA, P-13:24, Earl Shinn to Thomas Hovenden,

Ferry. This was what I would have painted had I been

2 March 1885. Shinn, under the pseudonym of

thinking of myself. Beside[s] the picture [The Last

Edward Strahan, edited The Art Treasures of America

Moments of John Brown] was an out of door effect,

published in three volumes in Philadelphia in 1880.

something of which I had little if any experience

Victor Hugo, who died two months after Shinn’s

worth mentioning, at that time. Nevertheless I did

letter to Hovenden, wrote on behalf of Brown on

the best I knew how and I think there is as good

2 December 1859, the day of his execution, hav-

work in it as any I have ever done.” Sears, “Thomas

ing been informed, incorrectly, that Brown had a

Hovenden’s Pictures,” 8–10. This manuscript draft

reprieve until 16 December. For explanation of

was written after January 1895 [from text’s refer-

and quotations from Hugo’s letter, pamphlet no-

ence, p. 16, to the “late Mr. Robbins Battell” who

tated “Corrected Proof 8/18/85,” 4–5, Hovenden

died in January 1895]. Hovenden died in August

Papers, private collection. Smaller replica of The

1895.

Last Moments of John Brown, Fine Arts Museums of

40. AAA, P-13:68, “Fine Arts,” New York Mail

San Francisco, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum,

and Express, 20 May 1884. A sympathetic Philadel-

in the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, Judith

phia reviewer admitted that the picture lacked

NOTES TO PAGES 141–14 2

drama, AAA, P-13:75, X.Y.Z., “An Historical Paint-

by the mute appeal of this half white slave woman,

ing,” Philadelphia Press, 25 May 1884. The critic for

with a child lighter than herself. The little fellow,

the Magazine of Art, also generally sympathetic, noted

born to life-long servitude, frightened by the soldier,

the “peculiarly remarkable . . . restraint which, at

turns up to her a bright Anglo-Saxon face.” See

first sight, strikes one as coldness,” but added that

Robert S. Fletcher, “John Brown and Oberlin,”

the restraint was, in fact, particularly appropriate

Oberlin Alumni Magazine (February 1932): 141, and

to the seriousness of the subject.AAA, P-13:25,

Fletcher, “Ransom’s John Brown Painting,” 345. For

“Monthly Record of American Art,” Magazine of Art

an interesting article on miscegenation in American

(July 1884): xxxiii.

art, see Judith Wilson, “Optical Illusions: Images of

41. Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s Pictures,” 8–9.

Miscegenation in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-

42. AAA, P-13:68, “Fine Arts,” New York Mail

Century American Art,” American Art 5, no. 3 (Sum-

and Express, 20 May 1884. 43. Green also claimed that Brown’s jailer,

mer 1991): 88–107. 46. The white child was misidentified in the

Captain John Avis of Charlestown, had denied

Northern press as a “poor white” girl rather than

that any such episode occurred. AAA, P-13:68,

as the daughter of a slave owner with her black

“Hovenden’s Picture of Brown: The Historical

nurse. AAA, P-13:75, X.Y.Z., “An Historical

Accuracy Severely Challenged,” Baltimore Sun, 21

Painting,” Philadelphia Press, 25 May 1884, and

May 1884. Green’s letter was dated Baltimore, 19

AAA, P-13:12, “Fine Arts,” New York Herald,

May 1884.

16/15/May 1884. One critic thought she was

44. “Art News and Comments,” New York Daily

perhaps “a covert allusion to the mingling of the

Tribune, 25 May 1884, 4.AAA, P-13:28; J.V.S., “A

races.” AAA, P-13:66, “Hovenden’s John Brown,”

Historic Picture,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 May 1884.

New York Evening Post, 16 May 1884. Several

Even a year later, an article in the Magazine of Art de-

writers referred to mulattos in Hovenden’s paint-

clared the incident to be “too well established to be

ing without explaining the basis for such identifi-

invalidated by the doubts which Southern papers

cation, for instance, “Art News and Comments,”

have lately tried to cast upon it,” AAA, P-13:25,

New York Daily Tribune, 18 May 1884, 4, and AAA,

“Monthly Record of American Art,” Magazine of Art

P-13:75, X.Y.Z., “An Historical Painting,”

(July 1885): xxxiii.

Philadelphia Press, 25 May 1884. Distinctions

45. The change in skin color from painting to

among “Negro” and “Mulatto” and “White” were

print was noted in 1940 by Fletcher, “Ransom’s John

made in the 1880 Federal Census, indicating that

Brown Painting,” 346, and in 1976 by Mann, “John

differentiations were considered important. Hov-

Brown Paintings,” 3.About 1886, Ransom gave his

enden did not represent African Americans with

painting to Oberlin College, which issued a small

stereotyped features.

anonymous broadside, probably with Ransom’s col-

47. I am indebted to Edmund Barry Gaither, di-

laboration, that explained: the artist intended to an-

rector and curator, Museum of the National Center

swer “the oft repeated sneer at the abolitionists,

of Afro-American Artists, Boston, for his insights

‘Would you wish your daughter to marry a nigger?’

about this work, interview 5 August 1992.

245

246

NOTES TO PAGES 14 2–14 4

48. F. B. Sanborn referred to him as an “American Samson,” see Sanborn, Memoirs of John Brown, 95. Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s Pictures,” 15–16. 49. E. L. G., “Hovenden at Home,” Philadelphia

51. On veterans’ benefits, see Morgan, Unity and Culture, 59. 52. For the “farm-stead,” see the twelve-page pamphlet titled “In the Hands of the Enemy,” no au-

Times, 23 February 1891, 6, col. 2: Hovenden said

thor given, published by Fishel, Adler & Schwartz,

he was “infatuated with the subject of the painting,”

New York, no date, 5, Hovenden Papers; also in mi-

but he was hesitant to invest so much time and

crofilm of Scrapbook,AAA, P-13:92–97; for a full

money for models when its sale was uncertain.

description,AAA, P-13:93–95; for some press com-

50. The painting hung in the center of the

ments, P-13:96. Probably the pamphlet accompa-

south wall of the south gallery where Hovenden’s

nied an exhibition of Hovenden’s painting or

Elaine had hung seven years earlier, AAA, P-13:43,

Hamilton Hamilton’s (1847–1928) etching of the

“Selling Academy Pictures,” New York Herald, n.d.

painting, published about late 1889. The colonial tall

[31 March 1889]; and AAA, P-13:43, “National

case clock reads ten minutes of nine, clearly seen in

Academy Pictures,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 March

the first proof etching, private collection.A descrip-

1889; AAA, P-13:46, “Noteworthy Pictures,” The

tion of the “host” as a “composite of Puritan, of

Star [no city indicated], 31 March 1889. On

Quaker, and of Dutchman. . . .A patriot in heart and

Battell’s buying the picture on sight on buyer’s day,

instinct, yet cherishing no animosity toward a fallen

see “Art Notes,” The American, 17 (13 April 1889):

foe,” appears in the pamphlet, see AAA, P-13:95;

413. For the sale price, see AAA, P-13:46, “Art

“the mother of the family” whose “sweet glance of

Notes,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, 6 April [1889];

maternal solicitude” we “all know” appears in the

P-13:41, unidentified clipping, New York Daily

pamphlet P-13:93 and 95. For “a banneret,” see

Tribune, 31 March 1889; and P-13:43, “Selling Acad-

AAA, P-13:42, “National Academy Pictures,”

emy Pictures,” New York Herald, undated. Battell also

Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 March 1889. Hovenden

allowed Hovenden to retain copyright and exhibition

told a Philadelphia reporter in 1891 that he

privileges. For quotations from Hovenden on his

believed Abraham Lincoln was “the greatest man

discussion with Battell over the sale and about the

that ever lived,” AAA, P-13:117, “The Hovenden

artist’s privileges he retained, see E. L. G.’s long arti-

Sold,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 18 February 1891.

cle, “Hovenden at Home,” Philadelphia Times, 23

53. At least one contemporary critic noted

February 1891, p. 6, col. 2 (also AAA, P-13:64).

that Hovenden’s composition was similar, AAA,

Hovenden told E. L. G.: “I retained the copyright

P-13:41, untitled newspaper clipping, Washington

and exhibition privileges, which often amount to as

Evening Star, 12 April 1890. On Walters’s purchase,

much as the price of the picture, but they did not

see Clarence Cook, Art and Artists of Our Time, vol. 2

do so in this instance for some reason.” See “The

(New York: Selmar Hess, 1888, reprint ed., New

Gossip, Talk of the Famous Picture, In the Hands of

York: Garland, 1977), 117. On Dagnan-Bouveret,

the Enemy,” Philadelphia Daily News, 17 January

a pupil of Cabanel and Gérôme, a close friend of

1890, for statement that the sale and the money

Jules Bastien-Lepage, and the American painter Ju-

earned from engravings netted about $10,000.

lian Alden Weir, and, maybe, a visitor to Pont-Aven

NOTES TO PAGES 14 4–145

soon after Wylie was there, see Gabriel P. Weis-

and His Sayings, 1880, and another instance of Har-

berg, “P. A. J. Dagnan-Bouveret, Jules Bastien-

ris’s use of the theme in 1887, see Gaston, The New

Lepage, and the Naturalist Instinct,” Arts Magazine

South Creed, 180–81. On the popularity of this type

(April 1982): 71;William A. Coffin, “Pascal Dagnan-

of play, see Logan, The Negro in American Life, 163.

Bouveret,” Van Dyke, Modern French Masters, 242–43;

On the play, see William Gillette, Held by the Enemy:

Young, Letters of J.Alden Weir, 76; Hoffman, “The Per-

Taking Place in a Southern City Which Has Been Captured

fect Village,” 951, but according to Delouche, Pein-

and Occupied by Northern Forces During the Rebellion

tres de la Bretagne, 320, Dagnan-Bouveret did not go

(New York: Samuel French, ca. 1898), a five-act

to Brittany until 1885. On Hovenden’s admiration

play. On seventy performances at Madison Square

of Dagnan-Bouveret, see AAA, P-13:293, “What Is

Theatre, New York City, see New York Times, 17 Au-

the Purpose of Art?” Norristown Daily Herald, 9 Feb-

gust 1886, 5, col. 1. The play was first published in

ruary 1895.

1886, see James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to

54.AAA, P-13:41, untitled newspaper clipping, Washington Evening Star, 12 April 1890.

American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 314.

55. A writer for the weekly publication The

57. For two writers who compared Hovenden’s

American indicated that In the Hands of the Enemy

picture to Gillette’s play, see AAA, P-13:84, “Gallery

seemed a sequel to The Last Moments of John Brown,

and Studio,” unidentified, undated newspaper clip-

AAA, P-13:37, untitled clipping, The American

ping [spring 1889], and P-13:42, untitled clipping,

(18 January 1890). For public sentiment in 1889,

New York Commercial Advertiser, 5 June 1893. On Hov-

see H. Wayne Morgan, Unity and Culture, 62–63.

enden’s statement, see AAA, P-13:84, “Gallery and

For “semi-historical” and “inconsequential experi-

Studio” unidentified, undated newspaper clipping

ments,” AAA, P-13:41, untitled clipping, New York

[spring 1889].

Daily Tribune, 31 March 1889. For “pathos and dig-

58. On critical consensus, AAA, P-13:37, “The

nity,” AAA, P-13:41, untitled clipping, Washington

Gossip: Talk of the Famous Picture, In the Hands of

Evening Star, 12 April 1890, when the painting was

the Enemy,” Philadelphia Daily News, 17 January 1890,

exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on loan

AAA, P-13:37. On the Pennsylvania weekly, Leslie

from Robbins Battell. Carl Stoeckel, Connecticut

W. Miller, “Art Notes,” The American 17, no. 452 (6

resident and Yale University Professor of Music

April 1889): 395. I am grateful to Professor Ruth

who married Robbins Battell’s daughter in 1895

Weidner of West Chester University, Pennsylvania,

soon after Battell died, linked Hovenden’s painting

for bringing this issue to my attention. Quotations

with the history paintings of John Trumbull, whose

from Hovenden and his ideas on the painting, E. L.

works were willed to Yale University, AAA,

G., “Hovenden at Home,” Philadelphia Times, 23 Feb-

P-13:37, “In the Hands of the Enemy: A Musician’s

ruary 1891, 6, col. 2. Discussing In the Hands of the

Estimate of a Painter’s Work,” New Haven Daily

Enemy, Hovenden said, “I think I do better work on a

Palladium, 17 June 1890.

large than small picture. At any rate I prefer paint-

56. On the theme of reconciliation in New

ing on a pretty good sized canvas,” and he consid-

South writers and on Harris, Uncle Remus: His Songs

ered the painting “a much finer painting than John

247

248

NOTES TO PAGE 146

Brown,” “Hovenden at Home,” 6, col. 2. “The Gossip:

65.An enthusiastic appreciation of Hovenden’s

Talk of the Famous Picture, In the Hands of the Enemy,”

“historical” works published in October 1894 that

Philadelphia Daily News, 17 January 1890,AAA,

might have encouraged the artist in that direction

P-13:37.

was the discussion by “Howe and Torrey” about

59. Descriptive pamphlet In the Hands of the En-

Hovenden’s In Hoc Signo Vinces, Last Moments of John

emy published by Fishel,Adler and Schwartz, New

Brown, and In the Hands of the Enemy in support of the

York, 5–10 [AAA, P-13:93–96]. Class consciousness

contention that Hovenden was an eminent painter.

is noticeable in this publication—for instance, the

See “Some Living American Painters: Critical Con-

comparison of the two young men playing checkers

versations by Howe and Torrey: Thomas Hovenden,

where the “burly” man with his back to us is

N.A.,” Art Interchange 33 (October 1894): 91–92.

imagined as a noncommissioned soldier, who in

66. At the time of Hovenden’s funeral, a news-

peacetime probably was a master mechanic or “a

paper writer stated that he was told that the paint-

trusted employee,” while the other soldier is “a slight

ing would be framed as it was and would not be

stripling, who has left his text-books for the tented

touched again, see AAA, P-13:327, “Funeral of

field,” and “the possibilities of our land in the devel-

Thomas Hovenden,” Philadelphia Ledger, 19 August

opment of the race will readily recognize, how gen-

1895. Helen Corson Hovenden removed the

eration by generation the strain grows finer.” On the

picture from the studio before a fire in 1901 that

description of the Confederate soldier,AAA, P-

destroyed sketches, including the last one for The

13:42, “National Academy Pictures,” Philadelphia In-

Founders of a State, costumes, studio furnishings, and

quirer, 30 March 1889. On the romance,AAA,

the studio attached to the barn. See “A Barn with a

P-13:46, “Noteworthy Pictures,” The Star [no city

History,” unidentified clipping, 31 August 1901,

given], 31 March 1889.

Artist’s File on Thomas Hovenden, New York Pub-

60. Kurtz, National Academy Notes, 104.

lic Library, Room 313, and “Relics of Hovenden

61.AAA, P-13:42, “All for Art and Art’s Sake:

Burned in Fire That Consumed His Studio,” North

Brilliant Showing at the National Academy of Design

American, undated partial clipping, courtesy of Ply-

Exhibition:A Picture of Peace in War,” New York

mouth Meeting Historical Society. Water seriously

Herald, 30 March 1889. This writer declared In the

damaged the painting while it was in the picture

Hands of the Enemy the “most important work so far

gallery. After Martha Maulsby Hovenden’s death in

of an exceptionally gifted American painter,” that did

1941, the painting entered the collection of the

“great honor to American Art,” and was “one of the

Historical Society of Montgomery County, Norris-

finest [pictures] seen at the Academy for years.”

town, which authorized conservation and restora-

62. “The Fine Arts:‘In the Hands of the

tion by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Enemy,’” Boston Evening Transcript,7 March 1890,

in the 1950s. The Historical Society of

AAA, P-13:42.

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, has several

63. “The Fine Arts:‘In the Hands of the Enemy.’”

letters from 1950 and 1954 on the painting’s con-

64. For the “moral,” see pamphlet In the Hands

dition, restoration, and conservation and a “Report

of the Enemy, 10 [AAA, P-13:96]. “The Fine Arts:

on Conservation” by Theodor Siegl, Conservator of

‘In the Hands of the Enemy.’”

the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, dated

NOTES TO PAGES 14 7‒14 9

15 July 1954, that details retouching to be done

backed against the jailhouse entrance so that day-

and stating that there were “no signs of previous re-

light only hits them from the front and sides of the

pairs.” According to Jane Keplinger Burns, acting

picture. Hovenden placed two Conestoga wagons in

librarian of the Historical Society of Montgomery

the field next to his studio and let the grass grow tall

County, Pennsylvania, in the society’s April 1955

to resemble prairie grass, see AAA, P-13:327, “Fu-

Bulletin, 252, “the blistering and peeling of the

neral of Thomas Hovenden,” Philadelphia Ledger, 19

paint-film was confined to the foreground, with the

August 1895.A Hovenden photograph shows one

subject figures of the painting remaining intact.” In

wagon in the cow pasture near the studio, private

view of this information, I doubt a report I heard

collection. The wagon was given to the Bucks

in 1978 that Helen Corson Hovenden repainted the

County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylva-

wife’s face and Lee M. Edwards’s claim that the

nia, Terry A. McNealy, Library Director, to author,

wife’s face was “most likely” altered by Helen Cor-

1 October 1980. The quotation is from AAA,

son Hovenden “to show a more sentimental expres-

P-13:315, “Where Hovenden Lived and Worked,”

sion,” “Noble Domesticity,” American Art Journal 19,

Philadelphia Press, 16 August 1895. The writer

no. 1 (1987): 38, n. 55.

explained Hovenden’s desire to render early evening

67. Frederick J. Turner, “The Significance of

when the “twilight sky is grayish at the zenith, but

the Frontier in American History,” Annual Report of

changes with spectrum tints till the golden horizon

the American Historical Association for the Year 1893

shows where the sun has lately sunk below the

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,

distant hills.” Before 1880, the American painter

1894), 227.

John Singer Sargent had met the French Impression-

68. The following are useful references: Okla-

ist painter Claude Monet who painted a certain

homa: A Guide to the Sooner State, comp. Ken Ruth,

light at a certain time of day. Sargent was well-

rev. ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,

known for working on his Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

1957), 32–33, 148; Edwin C. McReynolds, Okla-

(Tate Gallery, London) at a specific time of day.

homa: A History of the Sooner State (Norman: Univer-

That painting was the talk of the spring 1887 Royal

sity of Oklahoma Press, 1969), 262; Frederic

Academy exhibition and was considered an exam-

Merk, History of the Westward Movement (New York:

ple of Impressionism. See William H. Gerdts, “The

Knopf, 1978), 467–70. Trachtenberg, Incorporation

Arch-Apostle of the Dab-and-Spot School: John

of America, 13 on Roosevelt’s book, 12 on William

Singer Sargent as an Impressionist,” in Patricia

Gilpin’s 1843 statement on the “untransacted des-

Hills, ed., John Singer Sargent (New York: Whitney

tiny” of Americans, which he repeated in 1873.

Museum of American Art, 1986), 111–19.

The basic study identifying the myth of the Ameri-

70. Volk’s painting was reproduced in the Book

can West with the myth of the garden is Henry

of American Figure Painters, published in a folio edition

Nash Smith’s Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol

in Philadelphia in 1886. Hovenden would certainly

and Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

have known this impressive folio because one of his

Press, 1950, 1970, 1971).

paintings, And the Harbor Bar Is Moaning (1885), also

69. The John Brown picture (see fig. 88) is not a completely outdoor setting because the figures are

appeared in the book. Both illustrations accompanied poems. Volk’s, a poem by William Cullen

249

250

NOTES TO PAGES 14 9–153

Bryant, which ended: “Here, with my rifle and my

Men,” in Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts:Transforming

steed, / And her who left the world for me, / I

Visions of the American West (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

plant me where the red deer feed / In the green

University Press, 1992), 135.

desert—and am free.” Mariana Griswold Van Rens-

74. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, vol. 1, 39.

selaer, Book of American Figure Painters (Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott, 1886; reprint ed., New York: Garland, 1977), plate 18. On Eakins’s Cowboys in the Bad

CHAPTER 6. HOME LIFE

1. Andrews Norton (1786–1853), quoted in

Lands, see Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, vol. 2

Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

(New York: Knopf, 1977), 113, 340–41, n. 139:

1982), 23–25, 296–97; and Darrel Sewell et al.,

from Christian Examiner, 3rd series, 1 (1836): 335,

Thomas Eakins (Philadelphia, Pa.: Philadelphia Mu-

341.

seum of Art, 2001), 117. Hovenden had replaced

2. Ruskin’s essay was first published in 1865:

Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

“Of Queens’ Gardens,” in E. T. Cook and Alexan-

in May 1887. They knew and saw each other; Ply-

der Wedderburn, eds., The Works of John Ruskin, 18

mouth Meeting is near Philadelphia. Helen Corson

(London: George Allen; New York: Longmans,

and Eakins would have known each other or of

Greer 1903), 121–22, quoted in Susan P. Casteras,

each other from her days at the academy. In an inter-

The Substance or the Shadow: Images of Victorian Wom-

view with Philadelphia journalists about Hovenden

anhood (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for British

at the time of his death, Eakins indicated familiarity

Art, 1982), 14. On the veneration of domesticity,

with Hovenden’s working methods and with his

see Christopher Wood, Victorian Panorama (London:

home in Plymouth Meeting. Eakins was a pallbearer

Faber and Faber, 1976), 59–62; Koenigsberg, Em-

at Hovenden’s funeral.

blem for an Era, 7–8; Casteras, The Substance or the

71. On Cushing, see William H. Truettner,

Shadow, 9–21, and Casteras, Victorian Childhood, 4;

“Dressing the Part: Thomas Eakins’s Portrait of

Lee M. Edwards, Domestic Bliss: Family Life in Ameri-

Frank Hamilton Cushing,” American Art Journal 17,

can Painting, 1840–1910 (Yonkers, N.Y.: The Hud-

no. 2 (spring 1985): 54; and Sewell et al., Thomas

son River Museum, 1986). Also see Douglas,

Eakins, 261–63, plate 203, quote on 262.

Feminization of American Culture, for an alliance of

72. For a discussion of the widespread represen-

women and Protestant clergy that fostered a senti-

tations—in periodicals and the visual arts—of mas-

mental society in America in the years 1820

culine adventures in the West in the late nineteenth

through 1875.

century, see Judith A. Barter, Window on the West:

3. On Johnson, see Patricia Hills, The Genre

Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890–1940

Painting of Eastman Johnson (New York: Garland,

(Chicago:Art Institute of Chicago, 2003), chapter 3,

1977), and “Afterward/Afterwards: Eastman John-

“A ‘Red-Blooded Collection’: George F. Harding

son’s Transition to Portrait Painting in the Early

and Frederic Remington.”

1880s,” in Marc Simpson, Sally Mills, and Patricia

73. Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, “The Absent Other: Women in the Land and Art of Mountain

Hills, Eastman Johnson:The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket (San Diego: Timken Art Gallery, 1990),

NOTES TO PAGES 153–156

77–91. In “Afterward/Afterwards,” Hills devotes a

Home Ties is “Tel Jan 31/91,” but according to Ms.

thoughtful and convincing essay to the reasons for

Morse, librarian, Free Library of Philadelphia, 12

Johnson’s move away from genre painting in 1880.

October 1993, there was no article referring to

Two of Hovenden’s contemporaries, William

the painting on that date in the Evening Telegraph

Henry Lippincott and Julian Alden Weir, pictured

(there was no Telegraph, only the Evening Telegraph).

upper-class domestic interiors and women with

The clipping in the Scrapbook,AAA, P-13:100,

servants or at leisure in Infantry in Arms (1887,

“Thomas Hovenden,” identified as the Telegraph,

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), and Idle

“Feb. 31, 1891,” then “Feb.” was crossed out and

Hours (1888, Metropolitan Museum of Art).

“Jan.” written in.

4. A surviving letter, Thomas Hovenden to

7. Trachtenberg, Incorporation of America, 129,

Helen Corson Hovenden, 22 March 1895, written

also see 150. For the taste and patronage of the

while his wife was visiting her sister, indicates his

growing middle class, see also Casteras, Victorian

close relationship with the Corson family and Ply-

Childhood, 4.

mouth Meeting and Whitemarsh neighbors. Auto-

8. For an appreciative understanding of the

graph letter to “My dear Helen,” Hovenden Papers,

painting, see Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadel-

private collection.

phia: Three Centuries of American Art (Philadelphia:

5. Koehler, American Art, 54. For genre defini-

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976), 436–37. The

tion, see Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Painting in

models for the figures in Breaking Home Ties have

France (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1895), 57.

been identified in two sources from which the fol-

6. Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s Pictures.” This

lowing compilation has been made: Elizabeth De-

claim for the painting seems to have originated in an

wees (or Mrs. Edwin Dewesse)—mother; Harry

unsigned review in the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph

Foulke, at age eighteen—son; Susan Kulp—grand-

where the wording is identical. Sears probably wrote

mother; Amos Hold—father (or grandfather); Fred

the review himself and then quoted himself, without

Bowman—driver of the stage (or father); Matilda

credit, in writing the “Catalogue Raisonné.” Sears

Deeds—young sister; Olga Williams at age eight-

was on the editorial staff of the Philadelphia Evening

een—older sister, or Edith Wetherill—older

Telegraph for a number of years, National Cyclopedia of

sister, or Edith for the figure and Olga for the face.

American Biography, 1931 ed., s.v. “Sears, John Van

The two sources are Walter A. Knerr, “The Art of

Der Zee.” A letter Sears wrote Hovenden indicates

Thomas Hovenden,” a paper given on 25 April

that Sears sent Hovenden newspaper notices. John V.

1942 to the Montgomery County Historical Soci-

Sears to Thomas Hovenden, 20 January 1885, Hov-

ety, available in William Jeanes Memorial Library

enden Scrapbook, private collection (not on AAA

of Whitemarsh Township, Lafayette Hill, Pa., type-

microfilm). The artist himself apparently informed

script, 6; and loose typed page, “Notes on Thomas

Sears of some reviews he liked.Accompanying the

Hovenden and His Paintings,” from the Historical

“Catalogue Raisonné” is a loose sheet in Hovenden’s

Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

handwriting listing picture titles with newspaper

(Norristown) Scrapbook B7–11, 287, and loose

names and dates alongside them. Beside Breaking

typed page from Scrapbook SB.E 3–1, 143. I am

251

252

NOTES TO PAGES 15 7–158

grateful to the society for making this material

P-13:102, “Modern American Art: Successful

available to me; Mrs. James Young was particularly

Opening of the Annual Exhibition at the Academy,”

helpful.

unidentified and undated newspaper clipping

Bernard B. Perlman, author of The Immortal

[Philadelphia, 1891, from text]; and AAA,

Eight (New York: Exposition Press, 1962), identified

P-13:104, E.E.G.A. [Eunice E. G. Allyn], “Breaking

Robert Henri as the model for the young man leav-

Home Ties,” Dubuque Daily Telegraph, 3 August 1893.

ing home (p. 38), but Henri was in France at the

10. Betsky, “Inside the Past,” in Axelrod, Colo-

time Hovenden painted the picture. Henri was in

nial Revival in America, 243, 248. Betsky specifically

Paris from the fall of 1888 to December 1891, and I

mentions the colonial revival interior in Breaking

have found no record of a trip home during that

Home Ties as an example of the ways in which such

period. It seems unlikely that Hovenden began the

artifacts enabled viewers to graft the past onto the

picture before 1889. On Henri’s sojourn in Paris,

present and to reassure concerns over men becom-

see Alfredo Valente, Robert Henri (New York: New

ing cogs in modern industrial society.

York Cultural Center, 14 October–14 December

11. See AAA, P-13:100, for unsigned news-

1969), 11;William Innes Homer, Robert Henri and

paper review “Thomas Hovenden,” Philadelphia Tele-

His Circle (Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell Univer-

graph, incorrectly dated 31 [February crossed out]

sity Press, 1969), 37, 68, and AAA, Robert Henri

January [written in] 1891; see, herein, prior quota-

Papers (restricted, but with permission), 1. Diaries

tion from the same review, and my footnote. Also

(1881–1906), roll 885, frame 132.

repeated in Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s Pictures,”

In addition to real models, Hovenden appar-

without quotations or citation, Hovenden Papers.

ently also used a manikin, a common artistic prac-

For the exhibition of Breaking Home Ties in Philadel-

tice. On Winslow Homer’s buying a one-foot-

phia from 30 January 1891 to 7 March 1891, see

high female wooden manikin in England, see Mar-

AAA, P-13:122, “The Academy Exhibition,”

vin S. Sadik, “Foreword,” to catalogue by Philip C.

Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, 24 January 1891,

Beam, Winslow Homer at Prout’s Neck (Brunswick,

and AAA, P-13:101, “Academy of the Fine Arts,”

Maine: Bowdoin College of Art, 1966). On

Norristown Herald, 21 February 1891. Charles C.

manikins being used at the Pennsylvania Academy

Harrison, provost of the University of Pennsylva-

of the Fine Arts in anatomical demonstrations

nia, bought the painting at the end of February and

from midcentury into the 1870s, see Bolger,

then loaned it for spring exhibition at the National

In This Academy, 59.

Academy of Design; see AAA, P-13:100, “Breaking

9. The Hovendens’ house was furnished with

Home Ties,” Philadelphia Press, 22 February 1891 and

higher style, pre-Revolutionary rococo (Chippen-

P-13:101, “Academy of Fine Arts,” Norristown Herald,

dale style) side chairs, which were solid, gen-

21 February 1891.Also the Pennsylvania Academy of

erously proportioned, and decorated with shell

the Fine Arts,Archives, Exhibition Records, and

ornament. See Jules David Prown, “Style as

Naylor, Exhibition Record, 1861–1900, vol. 1, 458.

Evidence,” Winterthur Portfolio 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1980): 200, and fig. 4. For critics, see AAA,

12. AAA, P-13:103, “Breaking Home Ties,” Philadelphia Press, 23 February 1891.

NOTES TO PAGES 158–162

13. The “angel of the house” derives from the

Alden Weir, Frank Weston Benson, Edmund C.

English poet and essayist Coventry Patmore

Tarbell, and others; Ayres, “The American Figure,”

(1823–96) in his The Angel of the House: The Betrothal

71–80. Koehler painted the picture in Munich and

(London: J.W. Parker and Son, 1854). For the Vic-

showed it at the National Academy of Design’s an-

torian glorification of domesticity, see Casteras,

nual exhibition when it was completed. Hovenden

The Substance or the Shadow, 19, plates 4, 5, 8 and

no doubt saw it and perhaps the centerfold repro-

passim; Koenigsberg, Emblem for an Era, esp. 7–8.

duction of the work in Harper’s Weekly of 1 May

Also Wood, Victorian Panorama.

1886. See Patricia Hills and Abigail Booth Gerdts,

14. In the incorrectly identified newspaper clipping in AAA, P-13:100, “Thomas Hovenden,”

The Working American (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1979), 9 and 36.

Philadelphia [Evening] Telegraph [where Sears was

17. Forty-three percent of African American

an editor], 31 January 1891, and quoted verbatim

women, however, worked in gainful occupations

without credit in Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s

in Philadelphia in 1890: DuBois, The Philadelphia

Pictures.”

Negro, 110 (table). The National Archives of the

15. This statement appeared in a short letter

United States Microfilm, Federal Population Cen-

Hovenden wrote a few years after painting Breaking

sus, 10th Census 1880, for Plymouth Township

Home Ties in which he responded to an admirer’s

and for Whitemarsh Township. On the American

inquiry about how the painting had originated.

women’s role in the 1820–75 period and the sen-

Thomas Hovenden to Mrs. Loraine Inman, 21 Au-

timentalization of Calvinism by middle-class

gust 1894. His answer was published in the pam-

women and clergymen, see Ann Douglas’s major

phlet Thomas Hovenden: In Memoriam “Breaking

study, The Feminization of American Culture, esp.

Home Ties” (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-

44–46, 60–61, 74. Also see Barbara Welter, Dim-

nia, 1895), 14. This pamphlet was issued in

ity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth

conjunction with a posthumous exhibition of Break-

Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976),

ing Home Ties for the benefit of the Thomas Hoven-

esp. chapter 2, “The Cult of True Womanhood,

den Students’ Aid Fund of the University of

1820–1860.”

Pennsylvania and is in the collection of the Histori-

18. AAA, P-13:102, “Breaking Home Ties,” iden-

cal Society of Montgomery County, Norristown.

tified in Scrapbook as Philadelphia Press, 1893; and

The posthumous exhibition was held in December

AAA, P-13:105, untitled, undated newspaper clip-

1895 in Philadelphia, according to an article titled

ping from Philadelphia Times, from context February

“The Hovenden Memorial: The First Day of Exhi-

1891 when the painting was exhibited at the Penn-

bition Augurs Well for Its Success,” Philadelphia

sylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Times, 12 December 1895, 2, col. 3. 16. For comparison, see Terra Museum, Life

19. For the quotation, see AAA, P-13:100, “Thomas Hovenden”; the article no doubt was writ-

in Nineteenth Century America, plates 66 and 67;

ten by Sears and incorrectly identified as Philadelphia

Edwards, Domestic Bliss, 88–101; Hills, The Painters’

[Evening] Telegraph, 31 January 1891, and quoted ver-

America, 106–13, for illustrations of work by Julian

batim [without credit] in Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s

253

254

NOTES TO PAGES 162‒163

Pictures.” These notes follow the order they appear

middle-class masculinity around the turn of the

in the sentences immediately preceding the long

century.

quotation. For “essentially American,” AAA,

21. “The National Academy,” New York Recorder,

P-13:106, “The Quintet Club,” Philadelphia Inquirer,

5 April 1891, in Martha Maulsby Hovenden’s Scrap-

14 February 1891. It was also called “distinctly

book (private collection). The middle-class social

American” (AAA, P-13:101, “An Exponent of

context of the novel as a literary form has been

American Art,” Baltimore Sun, 19 [?] 1891), and

noted, see Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley:

“American all the way through” (AAA, P-13:111,

University of California Press, 1957). Popular and

“In the Art Palace,” Lowell [Massachusetts] Courier, 22

sentimental fiction flourished in late nineteenth-

June 1893), and “honestly and wholesomely Ameri-

century America, see Robert Falk, “The Writers’

can” (AAA, P-13:102, untitled clipping, Chicago Post,

Search for Reality,” in Morgan, The Gilded Age, 225.

11 November 1893). Numerous articles mention

22. Atypically, one New York newspaper writer

virtues understood as American. One example:

complained that the picture was too anecdotal and

AAA, P-13:105, untitled clipping, Philadelphia

the pathos overdone, ignoring the theme’s broad

Times, written at the time of the Pennsylvania Acad-

implications in late nineteenth-century America

emy of the Fine Arts exhibition in February 1891.

and Hovenden’s restraint. See AAA, P-13:102, un-

For “honest blue eyes,” AAA, P-13:110, untitled

titled article, New York Commercial Advertiser, 2 April

clipping, Philadelphia Times, 22 [25?] January 1893.

1891.

The young man is blue-eyed like Leslie A. Fiedler’s

23. AAA, P-13:141, “The Pictures Exhibited,”

Protestant Virgin in Love and Death in the American

unidentified and undated clipping from a Philadel-

Novel (New York: Stein and Day, rev. ed., 1975), for

phia newspaper. On Peonies, which sold for $400,

instance Alice in James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of

see AAA, P-13:84, “The Academy Sales; Final

the Mohicans, 206.

Report of the Sixty-First Annual Exhibition—

20. Between 1870 and 1910 the proportion

Twenty-Eight Works Disposed of, Aggregating

of self-employed middle-class men dropped from

$20,940,” Philadelphia [Evening] Telegraph, 16

67 percent to 37 percent and many young men

March 1891. In 1923, Mrs. Edward H. Coates

beginning careers as clerks were unlikely to be

gave the painting to the Pennsylvania Academy of

promoted to more responsible management posi-

the Fine Arts in memory of her husband. Both

tions. Severe economic depressions between

Alexander Harrison’s The Wave (1884–85) and

1873 and 1896 led to countless bankruptcies,

Charles H. Davis’s The Brook—Evening (1890)

which further exacerbated the problems of small

were purchased for the Academy, AAA, P-13:84,

businessmen. Gail Bederman, Manliness and

“The Academy Sales.”

Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in

24. On the amount paid for Breaking Home Ties,

the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University

see AAA, P-13:117, “The Hovenden Sold,” Philadel-

of Chicago Press, 1995), 12; chapter 1, “Remak-

phia Inquirer, 18 February 1891. On honor, see AAA,

ing Manhood Through Race and Civilization,” of-

P-13:147, “An Important Sale,” Philadelphia [Evening]

fers an excellent overview of the challenges to

Telegraph, n.d. [The painting was sold in the third

NOTES TO PAGES 163–165

week of February 1891.] One Philadelphia newspa-

Pennsylvania critic who quoted from the New York

per reporter praised Harrison for his “courage” in

Recorder in which the reviewer thought that some

paying such a price for an American work,AAA,

of John Henry Twachtman’s pastel work was

P-13:122, “One of the Most Notable Art Sales,”

“reprehensible for its affectation . . . produced to

Philadelphia Ledger, n.d.

show the artist’s contempt for rules, traditions. . . .

25. The 1891 annual comprised 538 works,

It is not so much ‘art for art’s sake’ as ‘impression-

which critics thought varied in quality. See AAA,

ism for impressionism’s sake, which is even a

P-13:110, “The National Academy: Opening of the

more deplorable error than the other.’ ” AAA, P-

Sixty-Sixth Annual Exhibition in New York Yester-

13:128, untitled clipping, Pittsburgh Dispatch, 5

day,” unidentified newspaper, n.d. [early April

April 1891.

1891]. The reviewer called Breaking Home Ties the

29.AAA, P-13:100, “Thomas Hovenden,”

“most important work” there and noted its place of

Philadelphia [Evening] Telegraph, incorrectly identified

honor, second only to the place reserved for the

as 31 January 1891. For “unfairly hung,” AAA,

work of the academy’s president, Daniel Hunting-

P-13:102, “Modern American Art: Successful

ton. Kurtz was also author of the Academy of

Opening of the Annual Exhibition at the Academy,”

Design’s notices on works in regular academy exhi-

unidentified, undated newspaper clipping [from

bitions; for quotes given, see AAA, P-13:123,

context: winter 1891]. This critic did not find En

Charles M. Kurtz, “At the Spring Academy,” Truth

Arcadie agreeable but liked Harrison’s The Wave,

(9 April 1891). “A Strong Exhibition at the National

which was less high-keyed in color and presented

Academy,” New York Herald, 3 April 1891, 8, col. 3.

no female nudes.

For Harper’s Weekly’s middle-class audience, see Morgan, The Gilded Age, 7. Quotations from “The Academy Exhibition,” Harper’s Weekly 35 (18 April 1891): 287. 26. AAA, P-13:114, “The Academy’s Exhibi-

30. AAA, P-13:123, Kurtz, “At the Spring Academy.” 31. AAA, P-13:102, “The Art Critic: Varnishing Day at the Academy,” Brooklyn Standard [illegible], 4 April 1891; AAA, P-13:102, “Many New

tion,” New York Times, 6 April 1891, and “The Acad-

Artists Represented: Favorable Promises of the

emy Exhibition,” Harper’s Weekly 35 (18 April

Academy of Design’s Annual Exhibition,” New York

1891): 287.

Daily Continent, 3 April 1891; for “influence upon

27. On the critical response to Impressionism in the United States in the mid-1880s and early 1890s,

human life,” AAA, P-13:102, “Art and Artists,” Brooklyn Times, 11 April 1891.

see Kathleen Pyne, Art and the Higher Life: Painting

32. For “woodeny,” AAA, P-13:113, untitled

and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century

clipping, Chicago Inter-Ocean, 13 August 1893; for

America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996),

“heartstrings” and “triteness,” AAA, P-13:100, unti-

226–39; quotes on 234.

tled small clipping, Chicago Tribune, 29 October

28. Durand-Ruel’s recollection of the first

1893. For less charitable, AAA, P-13:106 and 107,

reaction, according to George W. Sheldon in his

untitled clipping, Chicago Times, 22 October 1893,

Recent Ideals of American Art, 102. See also the

and enclosed with a handwritten letter signed “an

255

256

NOTES TO PAGES 165–166

Art Lover” who was indignant about the clipping;

H. Gerdts generously loaned me a photocopy of

AAA, P-13:102, small untitled clipping, Chicago

this twenty-four-page pamphlet originally printed

Post, 11 November 1893.

for the Central Art Association of Chicago. For con-

33. Sarah Burns, “The Country Boy Goes to

sideration of the discussion in the pamphlet, see

the City: Thomas Hovenden’s Breaking Home Ties in

Gerdts, American Impressionism, 104–5. For Sartain,

American Popular Culture,” American Art Journal 20,

AAA, P-13:323, “Sartain Talks of the Dead Artists,”

4 (1988): “cultural battleground,” 60, “democratic

Philadelphia Press, 18 August 1895. This interview

aesthetic” versus “cosmopolitan aestheticism,” 67.

took place immediately after Hovenden’s and Peter

34.William H. Gerdts, American Impressionism

Frederick Rothermel’s deaths; Sartain went to Ply-

(Seattle: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, 1980), 29–30.And see Ripley Hitchcock, ed.,

mouth Meeting for Hovenden’s funeral service. 37. Hovenden was one of sixteen United States

The Art of the World: Illustrated in the Paintings, Statuary,

Judges of Oil Painting selected by Halsey C. Ives,

and Architecture of the World’s Columbian Exposition

Chief of the Department of Fine Arts; Charles M.

(New York: D.Appleton and Company, 1895), vols.

Kurtz was one of Ives’s assistants. Among the other

1 and 2; and Brandon Brame Fortune and Michelle

jury members were J. G. Brown, William Merritt

Mead, “Catalogue of American Paintings, in National

Chase, R. Swain Gifford, John La Farge, George W.

Museum of American Art and National Portrait

Maynard, and F. D. Millet. See National Museum of

Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,” Revisiting the White

American Art, Revisiting the White City, 89, Appen-

City: American Art at the 1893 World’s Fair (Washing-

dix A, 393; for Farny’s comment, see 139.

ton, D.C.: National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, 1993), 202–353. 35. For a discussion of the almost total polariza-

38. For “always jammed,” AAA, P-13:102, thirteen-line unidentified, undated newspaper clipping. AAA, P-13:198, Charles M. Kurtz to Thomas Hov-

tion of taste once Impressionism was accepted, see

enden, 6 July 1893, written on “World’s Columbian

Madeleine Fidell Beaufort, Herbert L. Kleinfield,

Commission” stationery: Breaking Home Ties “the

and Jeanne K.Welcher, The Diaries 1871–1882 of

most popular picture in the Exposition.” Revisiting

Samuel P. Avery,Art Dealer (New York:Arno Press,

the White City, 178: caption to plate 78: “Breaking

1979), lvii.Also,AAA, P-13:105, “American Art

Home Ties was the single most popular picture at the

at Chicago,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 30 August

fair.” On the carpet being worn out, see Eugen [sic]

1893.

Neuhaus, The History and Ideals of American Art (Stan-

36. The sculptor Lorado Taft, the novelist

ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1931), 143.

Hamlin Garland, and the painter Charles F.

The painting was placed in quite a narrow gallery.

Browne discussed the prevalence of Impressionism

Apparently, the hanging committee did not antici-

at an exhibition of American paintings at the Art In-

pate the painting’s appeal. See AAA, P-13:104, un-

stitute of Chicago in the fall of 1894. “A Critical

titled clipping, Chicago Times, 24 September 1893.

Triumvirate,” Impressions on Impressionism: Being a Dis-

On engravings, see AAA, P-13:100, “About the

cussion of the American Art Exhibition at the Art Institute,

Studios,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, 12 November 1893.

Chicago (Autumn 1894): 22–24. Professor William

On the photogravure published by and available

NOTES TO PAGES 166‒167

from C. Klackner’s, a New York publisher of etch-

in the Art Gallery,World’s Fair,” The Art League

ings, engravings, and photographs, see AAA,

Chronicle, Leavenworth, Kans. (September 1893);

P-13:103, untitled article, Pittsburg Bulletin, 9 De-

P-13:103, untitled clipping, Chicago Inter-Ocean, 15

cember 1893, and Archives of American Art,

October 1893; and P-13:109, “Hovenden, the

Washington, D.C., New York Public Library, Prints

Artist,” Philadelphia Times, 22 October 1893.

Division, Catalogues and Clippings Relating to

40. For general nervousness, see Morgan, The

Print Makers, AAA, N-93:97, letter dated 17 April

Gilded Age, 164–65. Also see “a society unhinged”

1935 concerning prints of Breaking Home Ties.

by the end of the 1880s and early 1890s, Robert H.

Cartoon is a small, loose clipping with the caption

Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York:

“Breaking the Home Ties:With apologies to Hoven-

Hill and Wang, 1967), 78 and passim. For “The

den’s famous picture—Chicago Inter-Ocean,”

times are . . . out of joint,” quotation, see Higham,

among Hovenden Papers, private collection. The

Strangers in the Land, chapter 3, beneath the

cartoon was reprinted in another newspaper, but it

chapter’s title.

did not appear in the issue identified (Philadelphia

41.William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New For-

Times, 19 January 1895). For poem: “Brevities,” loose

tunes (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1952;

clipping of a printed poem with no identification,

first published in 1890), 254.

Hovenden Papers, private collection. For other po-

42. Samuel Isham, The History of American Paint-

ems, see AAA, P-13:102, Frances Forrester, “For the

ings, new ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1936), 502;

Sunday Inter-Ocean: The Story of a Picture,” Chicago

the original edition was published in 1905; the new

Inter-Ocean, 29 October 1893, and P-13:329,Ada

edition contained supplementary chapters by Royal

Iddings-Gale, “Picture and Deed,” Chicago Inter-

Cortissoz, 561–92.

Ocean, 21 August 1895 (after Hovenden’s death). 39. For the response of the public, see Neuhaus,

43.Among the Hovenden Papers are a State Department Passport dated 25 September 1891 certi-

American Art, 144. For the general public’s being im-

fying that Hovenden was a U.S. citizen accompanied

pressed by narrative and large-scale pictures, see

by his wife and two children and steamship passen-

AAA, P-13:110, “Paintings that Tell Tales Go Best

ger lists, including the Hovendens, for 29 September

with Masses,” unidentified, undated clipping [ca.

1891 from New York to Southampton and Bremen

1893]; for the impressive framing, a “foot wide

and for 20 July 1892 from Liverpool to New York.

deeply carved, gilt frame” see E.E.G.A. [Eunice E. G.

Possibly it is true, as was reported, that the Hoven-

Allyn], “Breaking Home Ties,” Dubuque Daily Telegraph,

den family expected to stay for a few years but that

3 August 1893. For “I have been right there” quota-

the children grew homesick, so the family returned

tion, see Reverend M.W. Gifford, Ph.D., “The

to the United States. See AAA, P-13:105, “Meg,”

Greatest Thing I Saw at the Fair,” Epworth Herald,

“Appropriate Presents,” Pittsburgh Press, 24 Decem-

Chicago (27 January 1894), loose clipping, Hoven-

ber 1893. I have found nothing to support or refute

den Papers, private collection.Accounts of such per-

this report. On new direction in American art, for

sonal identification were repeated again and again.

instance, see Moffatt, Arthur Wesley Dow, 32 on “an

For example, see AAA, P-13:118, “Popular Pictures

important segment of the press” that was favorable

257

258

NOTES TO PAGES 169‒171

to Impressionism in the winter of 1888, which

National Academy of Design was $1,500, indicat-

Dow, who thought the style meant “shoddy work-

ing that Hovenden considered it a major picture,

manship” and “insincere motivations,” found “inex-

see Naylor, Exhibition Record, 1861–1900, vol. 1,

plicable,” 28.

458. Helen Corson Hovenden posed for the stand-

44. Hall supposedly witnessed a scene in

ing figure and Katherine Langdon Corson for the

Cullercoats that suggested the painting No Tidings

seated one, according to Nancy Corson, 7 January

from the Sea. For the prevalence of interest in the

1979. The pose of the head and the facial expression

subject, the popularity of The Graphic, an English

of Hovenden’s standing figure might have been

weekly that published many representations of

inspired by Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc (1879,

the sea and coastal life, and for Hall, Bramley, and

Metropolitan Museum of Art), which was in the

Homer, see an early and significant article by

Society of American Artists’ fourth exhibition in

Gerdts, “Winslow Homer,” 18–35, and figs. 5 and

1881; see “The Young Artists,” New York World, 27

18. For lost boats and waiting women, see Wood,

March 1881, 5, col. 4.

Victorian Panorama, 56–57. Also see Susan Casteras,

46. I am indebted to Lois Dinnerstein for

“Frank Hall:‘the graver, greyer aspect of life,’” in

sending me in July 1979 a photograph of Langley’s

Julian Treuherz, Hard Times: Social Realism in Victo-

watercolor and informing me of its reproduction

rian Art (London: Lund Humphries, 1987), 73–82.

in The Graphic 28 (29 December 1883), no plate

Homer presented morbidity directly in only a few

number. Also see Lee M. Edwards, “New Styles

of his Bahamas works, such as his 1889 watercolor

in Social Realism,” in Trueherz, Hard Times,

of The Gulf Stream, which he developed into an oil

110–11.

painting ten years later; most of his Bahamas sub-

47. For the exhibition at Earles’ Galleries and

jects were “benign.” See Helen A. Cooper, Winslow

the pamphlet, see AAA, P-13:126, “Thos. Hoven-

Homer Watercolors (Washington, D.C., and New

den’s Latest Picture: When Hope Was Darkest: On Ex-

Haven, Conn.: National Gallery of Art, Yale Uni-

hibition Until the End of October: Earle’s [sic]

versity Press, 1986), 141–45.

Galleries, No. 816 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.”

45. The Library of Entertainment, vol. 7 (Chicago

(Earles’ Galleries was spelled variously, sometimes

and Boston: Geo. L. Shuman and Company, 1924),

“James S. Earle & Sons.”) The text of this pamphlet

427. The painting is presently unlocated but is

is identical to that in Sears, “Thomas Hovenden’s

known by an etching. Van Rensselaer, American Fig-

Pictures,” and in an article in the Philadelphia Daily

ure Painters, plate 18. Charles M. Kurtz, Illustrated

Evening Telegraph (AAA, P-13:125, “The City: Hov-

Catalog of the Art Gallery of the Southern Exposition,

enden’s New Picture,” Philadelphia Daily Evening

Louisville, Ky.:August 28–October 23, 1886 (Louisville,

Telegraph, 14 October 1892). None of the texts

Ky.: John P. Morton and Company, 1886), 19, no.

used quotation marks. Sears was probably the

233, where Hovenden’s And the Harbor Bar Is Moan-

author of the pamphlet and the newspaper account.

ing was exhibited. Kurtz included a quotation of his

For Philadelphia journalist, see AAA, P-13:125,

National Academy Notes in the Louisville Exposition

“Notes About Pictures,” Philadelphia Times, 15 Octo-

catalogue. The price listed for the painting at the

ber 1892.

NOTES TO PAGES 171‒172

48. AAA, P-13:110, untitled clipping, Phila-

November 1892, Bertha Corson Day Archives,

delphia Record, 19 May 1893. When the painting

Delaware Art Museum. Because Hovenden was on

was exhibited in Springfield, Massachusetts, how-

the World’s Fair’s jury, his works did not have to be

ever, one reviewer admired it as a noble and

approved and a place was reserved for the painting.

touching painting, see P-13:124, “Mr. Gill’s Exhi-

For English and American depictions, see chapter

bition,” Springfield Republican, 3 February 1893.

10, “For Better, For Worse,” in Wood, Victorian

49. AAA, P-13:246, “Local Art Notes,”

Panorama, 9–86, and “Courtship and Marriage,” in

Philadelphia Public Ledger, 28 February 1894. For

Casteras, The Substance or the Shadow, 26–30.Ameri-

Wanamaker, see Dictionary of American Biography,

cans apparently preferred the subject of courtship,

1936 ed., s.v. “Wanamaker, John,” by Joseph J. Sen-

from the time of William Sidney Mount’s The Sports-

turia. As with Breaking Home Ties, the public could

man’s Last Visit (1835, Suffolk Museum and Carriage

buy a large photogravure of this painting published

House, Stony Brook, Long Island) and Francis

by the New York publishing firm of C. Klackner’s.

William Edmonds, The City and the Country Beaux

The photogravure was twenty by twenty-eight

(1840, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute;

inches. Klackner’s issued a four-page pamphlet re-

although John Lewis Krimmel painted a Country

producing both Breaking Home Ties and Bringing

Wedding, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,

Home the Bride as available in prints at different

ca. 1819), to later examples such as George

prices for black-and-white prints ($10), colored

Cochran Lambden’s The Consecration, 1861 (1865,

prints ($15), and artist’s proofs ($18). Hovenden

Indianapolis Museum of Art), John George Brown’s

Papers, private collection.

Courtship (ca. 1870, George Walter Smith Museum,

50. AAA, P-13:252, untitled clipping, Philadel-

Springfield, Massachusetts), and George Hand

phia Record, 27 February 1894. For another example

Wright’s An Unpropitious Moment (1896, Kennedy

of the same interpretation, see P-13:246, “The

Galleries). Douglas Volk’s After the Reception (1887,

Pennsylvania Academy,” unidentified newspaper, 16

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts) is exceptional

December 1893. Sears in “Thomas Hovenden’s Pic-

both in subject and mood.

tures” refers to them as companion paintings. Helen

A list in the Hovenden Scrapbook named the

Corson Hovenden said after Hovenden’s death that

models who posed for the picture: Martha Maulsby

the two paintings were not intended as a pair.Wal-

Hovenden seated on the left in the window, Bertha

ter A. Knerr, “The Art of Thomas Hovenden,” 5.

Corson Day as the bride, Mrs.Yetter as the woman

51. Hovenden wrote to Bertha Corson Day, his

taking the bride’s cape (Mrs.Yetter also posed for

wife’s cousin and the model for the bride, whom the

The Old Version and perhaps for the grandmother in

artist called his “leading lady,” in November 1892: “I

Breaking Home Ties),Walter H. Corson as the groom,

have not yet made a sketch of the picture sufficiently

and Katherine Langdon Corson as his sister who is

defined to order the canvas, but it is probable that in

whispering in his ear. Katherine Langdon Corson,

a few days I can be that far advanced.” Thomas

who also posed for the seated woman in And the

Hovenden to Bertha Corson Day, undated letter,

Harbor Bar Is Moaning, studied under H. Bolton

postmarked November, and one letter dated 17

Jones and Francis Coates Jones, and painted land-

259

260

NOTES TO PAGES 172‒175

scapes; she married Walter H. Corson, and was the

there, The Health of the Bride, in 1889. See Dennis

mother of Bolton Langdon Corson and Philip

Farr, English Art, 1870–1940 (Oxford: Clarendon

Langdon Corson. See Mantle Fielding, Dictionary of

Press, 1978), [86] and plate 9B. The Otto Erdmann

American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, 1965 ed.,

painting Bringing Home the Bride was reproduced in

s.v., “Corson, Katherine Langdon,” and National

Cook, Art and Artists, vol. 4 (vol. 2 of reprint), 243.

Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1972 ed., s. v.

For Rosenthal, see Kramer and Stern, San Francisco’s

“Corson, Bolton Langdon,” and “Corson, Philip

Artist Toby E. Rosenthal, 84; reproduced 133.

Langdon.” For the typed list of models who posed

54.AAA, P-13:118, “The Fine Arts,” unidenti-

for Bringing Home the Bride, see AAA, P-13:346, in-

fied and undated newspaper [probably a Philadelphia

formation supplied by Helen Corson Livezey, a

newspaper, ca. May 1893] and Sears, “Thomas Hov-

“relation” of Helen Corson Hovenden’s.

enden’s Pictures.”

52. The Colonial Revival was well underway in

55. Sarah Burns’s review of the 1893 Detroit

the 1880s. Helen Corson Hovenden’s photographs

Institute of Arts’ exhibition and catalog, The Quest

of rooms in their house around 1890 show the same

for Unity: American Art between World’s Fairs, 1876–93,

rattan rocker, some papered walls, and the use of

referred to David C. Huntington’s thesis, “that the

Oriental rugs on bare floors. The wall-to-wall floral-

1880s encompassed a fundamental aesthetic reori-

geometric rug may have been an older one relegated

entation was extensively supported by the actual

to the studio. For contrasting interior furnishings,

pieces, especially in such aspects as the near-univer-

see illustrations of lavish and exotic decoration in the

sal fascination with technique and formal values.”

homes of the wealthy in the late 1890s in Neil Har-

See Art Journal 44, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 77.

ris, ed., The Land of Contrasts: 1880–1901 (New York:

56. AAA, P-13:118, “The Fine Arts,” unidenti-

George Braziller, 1970), 258, 260, 262. The Hoven-

fied and undated newspaper clipping [probably a

den nineteenth-century photograph also indicates

Philadelphia newspaper, ca. May 1893].

that some changes in the paint surface beyond dark-

57. Ibid.

ening have occurred, apparently from overcleaning.

58. On the report about Hovenden’s displeasure

The area behind the head of the bride now shows

with Bringing Home the Bride, see AAA, P-13:303,

traces of a rectangular frame, which Hovenden im-

“Thomas Hovenden Killed,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 15

proved by painting out; in the upper right, the

August 1895.

wallpaper’s flowers and ceiling line are smudged;

59. For exhibition, see Pennsylvania Academy

in the lower right, the rug’s surface paint seems

of the Fine Arts, Archives, Exhibition Records for

thinned. As observed 18 May 1986, in the exhibi-

Thomas Hovenden; for review, see AAA, P-13:246,

tion “Domestic Bliss” at the Hudson River

untitled clipping, Philadelphia (unidentified news-

Museum, Yonkers, New York.

paper), 17 December 1893. The only other picture

53. Among English representations of the mar-

Hovenden exhibited in the 1893 annual was Bring-

riage theme, an example is the English painter Stan-

ing Home the Bride; in 1894, none of the three pic-

hope Alexander Forbes, a member of the Newlyn

tures he showed was Impressionist in style. Coates

artists’ colony, who painted a wedding dinner scene

mentioned in his December 1893 letter to Hoven-

NOTES TO PAGES 176‒178

den that he found Hovenden’s “Maytime” “most

enden’s response to it reveals his own ambivalence:

interesting” and that it hung in one of the feature

“Whistler’s exhibition at Bond St[reet] London

rooms of the exhibition. AAA, P-13:232–33, Ed-

overwhelmed me with his greatness and high poetry

ward H. Coates to Thomas Hovenden, 18 Decem-

too—and yet he is a great apostle of art for art’s

ber 1893.

sake.” Hovenden wrote his impression of Whistler

60. Springtime, also called A Study—Springtime,

in a penciled Autograph Draft of Notations about

was exhibited in March 1894 at the Society of

Art, ca. 1894–95, Hovenden Papers, private collec-

American Artists, see Society of American Artists

tion. The Hovendens lived in Washington from No-

Catalogue of the Sixteenth Exhibition (New York: So-

vember 1893 through May 1894, see AAA,

ciety of American Artists, 1894), 62, no. 254; also

P-13:269, “Mr. Hovenden’s Pictures,” unidentified

Hovenden’s unlocated Young Poplars was exhibited,

newspaper, Norristown, Pennsylvania, 13 October

65, no. 276. For reserving use of the style for out-

1893, and P-13:266, untitled article, Philadelphia

door scenes, see Gerdts, American Impressionism, and

Bulletin, 3 May 1894. A Misty Night can be compared

H. Barbara Weinberg, “John Singer Sargent: Repu-

with Whistler’s Nocturne in Grey and Gold: Chelsea

tation Redivivus,” Arts Magazine 54 (March 1980):

Snow. See Denys Sutton, James McNeill Whistler (Lon-

107. Unlike the French originators of Impression-

don: Phaidon, 1966), plate 80.

ism of the 1870s, the Americans were not rebelling against the academic system. 61. Of the ten landscapes exhibited in New

62.AAA, P-13:212, Samuel P.Avery, Jr., to Thomas Hovenden, 24 March 1894. The titles of the works were A Morning in May; Springtime;The Traveling

York and Washington, only three besides A Morning

Clock-mender (1893); Grandma’s Second Sight; Late

in May and Springtime are presently known: The Or-

Twilight; Moonlight in Washington; A Misty Night;

chard Path (ca. 1893), Snow, Kent, England (exhibited

Snow, Kent, England; The Orchard,Autumn (large); The

only in New York), and A Misty Night. Although

Orchard Path (smaller); Looking Eastward at Sunset;

Hovenden suggested in The Orchard Path and Snow,

and When the Apple Blossoms Fade. See AAA, P-13:261,

Kent, England a sense of climate and specific location

“Notes of the Art Galleries,” New York Sun, 24 March

with sensitivity for sun-dappled trees in full leaf

1894.

and for the silence and subtle color harmonies of

63. AAA, P-13:216, untitled clipping, Brook-

snow-covered, fenced-in properties under blue-gray

lyn Daily Eagle, 25 March 1894, and AAA,

skies, they are not truly Impressionist paintings. A

P-13:261, “The Chronicle of Arts,” New York

Misty Night, furthermore, is an urban night scene,

Tribune, 25 March 1894; this latter is the critic

probably of Washington, that recalls James Abbott

who made the prediction.

McNeill Whistler’s nocturnes in the indistinct defi-

64. AAA, P-13:266, “Art and Artists,” Washing-

nition of forms, close tonal harmonies, and evoca-

ton Post, 22 April 1894. A newspaper article signed

tion of mood. The painting is Hovenden’s tribute to

by Victor G. Fischer and titled “Artists and Art

Whistler. About the same time that Hovenden

Works: Thomas Hovenden” expresses similar opin-

painted A Misty Night, he noted having seen a

ions; see AAA, P-13:269, unidentified newspaper

Whistler exhibition while he lived in England. Hov-

and undated (from its context about 15 April 1894).

261

262

NOTES TO PAGES 178‒182

The pamphlet of the V. G. Fischer Art Gallery, Exhi-

69. Edwards, “Noble Domesticity,” 34–36.

bition of Oil Paintings by Thomas Hovenden . . . from

70. Pfatteicher, “Thomas Hovenden,” 304,

April 16 to 23 1894, is in the original Hovenden

stated, [275]. The melodeon or harmonium was a

Scrapbook, whereas only the cover is on microfilm,

reed organ common in homes and churches in the

see AAA P-13:261. Instead of Snow, Kent, England,

late nineteenth century.

the Fischer Gallery showed the landscape Sunday Evening. 65. First critic, AAA, P-13:262, “Art Notes, Philadelphia Telegram, 28 April 1894. Another reviewer, AAA, P-13:271, “Thomas Hovendon [sic]:

71. Edwards, “Noble Domesticity,” 35–36; quote on 36 from “The Academy of Design,” New York Times, 29 March 1895, 5. 72. AAA, P-13:300, “Thomas Hovenden Instantly Killed,” Philadelphia Times, 15 August 1895.

His Impressionistic Exhibition at Earle’s,” Philadelphia Item, 3 May 1894.

CONCLUSION

66. He asked $600 for The Traveling Clock-mender

1. AAA, P-13:292, “What Is the Purpose of

and only $350 and $150 for, respectively, Springtime

Art?” Philadelphia Times, 9 February 1895 and for

and A Misty Night, both smaller than the Clock-mender.

the quotation about La Farge’s lecture series, see

The titles and prices of the pictures when they were

AAA, P-13:285, “Academy Art Notes,” Philadelphia

exhibited in Washington in April 1894 were listed in

Item, 30 December 1894. The six La Farge lectures

the pamphlet, V. G. Fischer Art Gallery, Exhibition of

were given from 10 January to 1 February 1895.

Oil Paintings by Thomas Hovenden . . . from April 16 to 23

Hovenden’s lecture was followed by one by John

1894, in the original Hovenden Scrapbook. Hoven-

Sartain on “Engravers and Engraving,” on 13 Febru-

den considered size and the time involved in painting

ary 1895. The Academy’s Eighty-Ninth Annual Report,

a picture in arriving at his price, as evidenced by ex-

4 February 1895 to 3 February 1896, 14,

hibition records at the National Academy of Design.

mentioned that Hovenden “delivered a thoughtful

He also seems to have listed higher prices for more

lecture,” but aside from that mention, the invitation

recent pictures, but all of these pictures were proba-

to the Hovenden lecture, and the fifty-cent ticket

bly painted about the same time, around 1893–94.

no further records on the lecture exist in the Acad-

67. AAA, P-13:266, “Art and Artists,” Washington Post, 22 April 1894. According to AAA, P-13:266, “Art Notes,” Philadelphia Inquirer,

emy Archives, Letter, Catherine Stover, Archivist, 18 January 1978. 2. The reporter mentioned Thomas Alexander

15 April 1894, Jerusalem the Golden was painted in

Harrison’s The Bathers, Robert Henri’s Vivien, John

Washington.

Twachtman’s Autumn Gold (1890–94), and J. Alden

68. Quotations from Ernest Pfatteicher,

Weir’s Baby Cora (1894). AAA, P-13:291, “Art for

“Thomas Hovenden: The Painter of Breaking Home

Art’s Sake: Hovenden in Defense of Hovenden’s

Ties and Bringing Home the Bride,” The Book News

Art,” Philadelphia Item, 9 February 1895. As the title

Monthly 25, no. 5 (January 1907): 304, stated,

of the article indicates, this reporter wrote a caus-

[275], to be the “first authentic biography” of

tic review of Hovenden’s talk.

Thomas Hovenden, approved by his widow, Helen Corson Hovenden.

3. For Joseph Hodges Choate, see Calvin Tomkins, Merchants and Masterpieces (New York: E.

NOTES TO PAGES 182‒183

P. Dutton, 1970), 15. For the traditional association

5. AAA, P-13:293, “What Is the Purpose of

(“art as teacher rather than art as experience”) and

Art?,” Norristown Daily Herald, 9 February 1895. This

the nineteenth-century belief that intelligible sub-

is the most complete of several accounts of Hoven-

ject matter was appropriate to a democracy, see

den’s lecture.

Lillian B. Miller, Patrons and Patriotism (Chicago:

6. For the statement about a number present at

University of Chicago Press, 1966), 221. George

the lecture who disagreed with Hovenden, see AAA,

William Sheldon, at the end of his book Recent

P-13:291, “Art for Art’s Sake,” Philadelphia Item, 9

Ideals of American Art, 150, concluded that the quali-

February 1895. Koehler also thought that a “loss of

ties he discerned in recent American art would

higher aspirations” resulted in so diminishing art that

“have a profound and perfect value in the

it became “purely sensuous[!].” Koehler, American Art,

ennobling influence which his [the American

13–14, 40.

artist’s] art is exerting upon our social life.” In Re-

7. Harrison Morris remembered that “dear

cent Ideals, 48, Sheldon also approvingly quoted the

good Hovenden of many lovable qualities” was

American landscape painter George Inness, who

asked to write a piece for the Report of the Art De-

said that the aim of art was “not to edify but to

partment of the World’s Columbian Exposition and

awaken an emotion.” Inness meant a noble or spiri-

that Hovenden decided to write on why popular art

tual emotion (specifically, Swedenborganism).

was the best art. At first it was a short report, but

Hovenden, too, would have approved Inness’s be-

he became enthusiastic and enlarged it, adding por-

lief that art should awaken an uplifting emotion.

tions to it as ideas came to him. Hovenden carried

4. For quotation, see AAA, P-13:293, “What

these papers in his “satchel” which he took with him

Is the Purpose of Art? Lecture at the Academy of

rather than leaving it in a hotel room (for fear of

the Fine Arts by Thomas Hovenden,” Norristown

losing his notes). Morris recalled that one night

Daily Herald, 9 February 1895. As an example of

when he and Hovenden shared a hotel room in the

Hovenden’s appreciation of sentiment, he wrote a

Everett House in New York, he awakened to see

marginal note, “I like this very much, T.H.,” on a

Hovenden out of bed, writing down a thought “on

newspaper review of the Art Palace at the World’s

his nightgown with a lead pencil.” See Morris, Con-

Columbian Exposition of 1893. The review seems

fessions in Art, 5–6. I know of no article by Hovenden

today to epitomize sentimentality. The reviewer

having been published.

wrote of Breaking Home Ties: The mother’s “eyes

8. The penciled draft almost filled three “Man-

are brave and she is hiding the pitiful quiver of

hattan Pencil Tablet” writing pads. There is no dis-

lips and chin, but we know—we know. He is go-

cernible order to the notations. On one of the

ing away this lad, going into the world. Oh, poor

pages, there is a three-by-six-inch pencil sketch for

little mother. . . . Why, only yesterday you were

The Founders of a State (1895), which helps date the

making him kites and mending balls for him.” See

notations. The pages of the draft often contain

AAA, P-13:148, Jean Blewett, “As a Woman Sees

only disjointed sentences or phrases on general

Things,” Toronto Globe, 18 November 189[3]. In

topics or ideas. Any notations on “art for art’s

the original Scrapbook, Hovenden’s marginal no-

sake” and Impressionism are similar to what Hov-

tation can be read.

enden said in his lecture and add nothing new to

263

264

NOTES TO PAGE 183

what he expressed then. His outlook is sentimental,

11. In 1883, Burr H. Nicholls wrote Hovenden

for instance he wrote of being “moved by what is no-

that he was sorry to hear he had “had so much trou-

ble, true and beautiful . . . by noble words and deeds

ble” with his eyes. Burr H. Nicholls to Thomas Hov-

. . . by contemplation of purity and goodness in the

enden, 23 January 1883, Hovenden Papers, private

abstract and in the lives of some of those it is our

collection. In 1889, Hovenden wrote a letter to the

privilege to meet.” The three writing pads remain

managing editor of the Philadelphia Press explaining

among the Hovenden Papers, private collection,Au-

that he had not replied to him earlier because his

tograph Draft of Notations about Art by Hovenden.

eyes had troubled him so much that he could not

Most of the statements made were so general that

write. Thomas Hovenden to Managing Editor,

they add little to further understanding of

Philadelphia Press, 16 April 1889,Autograph Collec-

Hovenden’s attitudes.

tion of Simon Gratz, the Historical Society of Penn-

9. Hovenden exhibited few new paintings at

sylvania.At the end of one of the three writing pads

the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylva-

in the Hovenden Papers, private collection, on

nia Academy of the Fine Arts in 1894 and 1895 (he

which Hovenden made penciled notes, around

died in August 1895). It was reported in the spring

1894–95, his characteristic small, neat handwriting

of 1894 when Hovenden was in Washington that he

became considerably larger and noticeably irregular,

was finishing the painting. On 2 August 1894, John

with even some overwriting and on one of these

V. Sears sent Hovenden two proofs of photographs

pages, he wrote: “I have been unable to use eyes.” In

taken in Hovenden’s studio showing the picture fin-

a handwritten letter Hovenden wrote to his wife in

ished and framed. John V. Sears to Thomas Hoven-

March 1895 when she had gone to Florida to be

den, 2 August 1894, Hovenden Papers, private

with her sister who was ill, he wrote: “My eyes feel

collection.

so crooked I must stop—am trying to write without

10. The letter continued: “ ‘The Celestial

looking at the paper.” Thomas Hovenden to Helen

Country’ [John Mason Neale’s translation of De

Corson Hovenden, 22 March 1895, Hovenden

Contemptu Mundi by Bernard of Cluny and the

Papers, private collection. The newspaper reports

source of the hymn “Jerusalem the Golden”] was

include AAA, P-13:301, “Artist Hovenden Killed,”

Mr. Hovenden’s favorite poem and Jerusalem the

unidentified, undated newspaper clipping with Nor-

Golden was long on his mind before he attempted

ristown 14 August 1895 dateline;AAA, P-13:342,

the painting and like every other canvas he

untitled clipping, Chicago Times Herald, 15 September

painted it seemed to him far short of what he

1895; and AAA, P-13:341, “A Recollection of

wished it.” Helen Corson Hovenden to Samuel P.

Thomas Hovenden,” Newtown (Pa.) Enterprise, 14 Sep-

Avery, 26 October 1895, Hovenden Papers,

tember 1895, which stated that Hovenden began to

private collection, and John Mason Neale, “The

experience eye problems about 1890. I am indebted

Celestial Country” in “Poems of Religion,” in

to ophthalmologist Dr. Frederick Williams of Stam-

William Cullen Bryant, ed., The Family Library of Po-

ford, Connecticut, for help in understanding the sig-

etry and Song, revised and enlarged (New York:

nificance of Hovenden’s problem; conference 7

Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1886), 311–13.

January 1988.

NOTES TO PAGES 185‒187

12. For the quotation about a severe illness, see

Archives of American Art but is loose at the back

AAA, P-13:283, untitled clipping, Philadelphia

of the Hovenden Scrapbook, private collection.

Telegram, 20 June 1895. Hovenden’s only complaint

Edward Brooks, superintendent of Philadelphia

when he wrote his wife on March 22, 1895, was

Public Schools, wrote a three-stanza poem titled

that his eyes bothered him. For Richfield Springs,

“Breaking Home Ties” from which these last four

see AAA, P-13:315, “Where Hovenden Lived and

lines are taken. Printed in Thomas Hovenden: In

Worked,” Philadelphia Press, 16 August 1895. For

Memoriam, 11–12.

Hovenden’s health again being fine and that the pic-

15. Helen Corson Hovenden in her letter to

ture would soon be done, see AAA, P-13:302,

Samuel P. Avery, 26 October 1895, wrote that she

“Hovenden Killed,” Philadelphia Press, 15 August

hoped that Avery would see the “large unfinished

1895. This last report written the day after Hoven-

canvas” which Hovenden “was working on with so

den was killed, as well as others written after Hov-

much enthusiasm” at its exhibition at the National

enden’s death, would, of course, have been

Academy of Design in New York in the winter or

influenced by the shock of Hovenden’s death.

spring of 1896. A newspaper writer stated that at

13. This summary has been based on the most

the time of Hovenden’s funeral he was told that the

specific early account among hundreds of notices

painting would be framed and not touched again,

about Hovenden’s death from 15 August to 20 Au-

see AAA, P-13:327, “Funeral of Thomas

gust 1895, some of which filled fifty-one pages of

Hovenden,” Philadelphia Ledger, 19 August 1895.

the Hovenden Scrapbook; see AAA, P-13:300–28.

16.As early as 1908, a leak was discovered in

This early account was “Thomas Hovenden Killed:

the Gallery, according to a letter from Ida Corson

The Eminent Artist Loses Life at a Grade Crossing,”

DeCaindry to Helen Corson Hovenden, 1 August

Norristown Times Herald, 19 August 1895, 3, col. 1, on

1908, Hovenden Papers. Martha Maulsby Hovenden

file at the Historical Society of Montgomery County,

noted in her diary for 8 September 1934 that she

Pennsylvania, Scrapbook B-711, 68. For another

was “sick” to find out that an old leak in the Gallery

complete account, see AAA, P-13:302, “Hovenden

had not been properly repaired and that water had

Killed,” [Philadelphia Press, 15 August 1895 [front

come in on the back of the “big picture.” Diary

page]. For the inquest, see AAA, P-13:328, “Rail-

entries refer to visitors to the Gallery. Martha

road Officials Censured,” New York Tribune, 20 Au-

Maulsby Hovenden Diaries 1924–29, 1930–34,

gust 1895; P-13:328, “Blamed for Hovenden’s

1939–41, private collection.

Death,” Philadelphia Record, 20 August 1895; and P-13:328, “The Company Censured,” Philadelphia Press, 20 August 1895. 14. Nathan B. Coy of the Colorado State Teach-

17. Hovenden Papers, and Nancy Corson by telephone, 25 May 1988. 18. Letter from Catherine Stover, Archivist, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 3 January

ers’ Association used the phrase “poetic consistency”

1978 and Who’s Who in American Art 1, 1936–37, s.v.

in a letter dated 24 November 1898 to Helen Cor-

“Hovenden, Martha.”

son Hovenden inquiring about the facts of Hovenden’s death. The letter was not microfilmed by

19. On the Valley Forge reliefs, see a pamphlet titled The Washington Memorial Chapel, 1971, 14–15.

265

266

NOTES TO PAGES 188‒190

I relied on Martha Hovenden’s Diaries, 1924–29,

24. Samuel Isham noted such a difference in

1930–34, 1939–41, Hovenden Papers and Memo-

the work of the “younger men” who studied in

rabilia, private collection.

Europe in the 1870s compared with earlier painters.

20. For Sartain, see AAA, P-13:323, “Sartain Talks of the Dead Artists,” Philadelphia Press, 18 Au-

See Isham, History of American Painting, 297. 25. AAA, P-13:63, “The Great Deficiency in

gust 1895. Sartain spoke of having often visited

American Art,” unidentified, undated newspaper

Hovenden at Plymouth Meeting, of Sartain’s admi-

clipping [written ca. 1881–82]. AAA, P-13:4, “Our

ration of Hovenden as a man and an artist, and of

Young Artists,” New York World, 3 March 1881. Nei-

Hovenden’s love of the secluded country life. For

ther Bridgman nor Chase painted American genre;

Pach, see Dictionary of American Biography, 1961 ed.,

Bridgman began specializing in Oriental subjects in

s.v. “Hovenden, Thomas,” by Walter Pach. Early in

the 1870s and Chase painted studio interiors and

the twentieth century, Frank Jewett Mather stated

portraits in the 1880s. “Then came the life-sized

that the “modern dogmas of flatness and blandness”

Salon figure picture, generally with a story, which

prevented “due praise” for the American painter

Thomas Hovenden, a pupil of Cabanel, introduced

Elihu Vedder (1836–1923). See Frank Jewett

into America.” See E. P. Richardson, Painting in

Mather, Modern Painting: A Study of Tendencies (New

America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,

York: Henry Holt, 1927), 310.

1965), 277.

21. John Canaday, “Change of Pace,” New York

26. Huntington expressed his views to G[eorge]

Times, 8 April 1962, sec. 2, 21. (Canaday had his own

W[illiam] Sheldon, see Sheldon American Painters,

blind spot: he did not appreciate the work of the

107–8; I am grateful to Doreen Bolger for directing

Abstract Expressionist painters.) Between 1929 and

me to this source.

1962, there were no articles on Hovenden listed in

27. Eakins resigned in February 1886; see

Art Index. From 1962 to 1980, almost all references

Louise Lippincott, “Thomas Eakins and the Acad-

to Hovenden were to reproductions of his pictures

emy,” In This Academy, 174–78. On Hovenden’s ap-

(for instance, Breaking Home Ties was reproduced in

pointment, see “Philadelphia Letter: Thomas

Life magazine in color, 29 August 1949, 60).

Hovenden Succeeds Professor Eakins as Instructor

22. Morris, Confessions in Art, 6–7. Morris was director from 1892 to 1905. 23. “Advent of a Great American Painter,” The

at the Pennsylvania Academy,” Art Interchange (22 May 1886): 163; AAA, P-13:10, untitled article, The American (8 May 1886). Hovenden headed

Studio and Musical Review 1 (19 February 1881): 51.

the list of three instructors in Painting and Draw-

It was claimed that “no figure-painter in America can

ing, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’

come near him.” See AAA, P-13:4, untitled, uniden-

“Circular of the Committee on Instruction” for

tified, and undated newspaper article [ca. 1881 from

1886–87 and for 1887–88, published in Philadel-

context].Another newspaper account stated: “We

phia in 1886 and 1887, available at the Pennsylva-

can place above him [Hovenden] none of our native

nia Academy of the Fine Arts. On teachers and

artists who exhibit figures.” See AAA, P-13:5, “Fine

classes, “Circular of the Committee on Instruction,

Arts,” unidentified newspaper, 22 January 1881.

1886–1887,” 3. According to Goodrich, Thomas

NOTES TO PAGES 190‒191

Eakins, vol. 1, 294, Bernhard Uhle taught portrait

just paint,” see AAA, Robert Henry Papers, Roll 885,

painting in 1886–87.

Frame 112, entry for 9 April 1887, and Homer,

28. Lippincott, “Thomas Eakins” 170–78, for Eakins’s intolerance, and 177 for his “intense and

Robert Henri, 31. 31. AAA, Robert Henri Papers, Roll 885, Frame

narrowly directed” teaching, and 178 for “more

115, entry for 19 April to May 1887; also, Homer,

firmly” redirected under Anshutz. Also, see Doreen

Robert Henri, 28, 31 (where quotation is given).

Bolger, In This Academy, 59–60;William C. Brownell,

32. On Henri’s references to Hovenden, which

“The Art Schools of Philadelphia,” Scribner’s Monthly

reveal Henri’s independence, sensitivity to criticism,

18 (September 1879): 737–50; Goodrich, Thomas

varying estimations of Hovenden, and Henri’s

Eakins, vol. 1, chapters 6 and 10, esp. 282–94.

increased regard for his teacher,AAA, Robert Henri

29. The first account: “Unique Artistic Event:

Papers, Roll 885, Frames 69, 71–73, 79, 82, 85, 88,

A Philadelphia Negro’s Picture Bought by French

90–91, 94, 101, 105–7, 112, 114–15, 124–25, 130,

Government,” Providence [R.I.] Journal, New York,

from 17 December 1886 to 12 May 1888.

June 5 [1897] dateline, Hovenden Papers, private

33. For Henri quotes, John W. McCoubrey,

collection. The second: “An Artist’s Triumph,

Sources and Documents: American Art, 1700–1960

French Government Buys an American Picture,

(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965),

Painted by H. O. Tanner,” Baltimore Morning Herald,

174–75.

7 June 1897, 4, col. 4, Hovenden Papers. In a 1902

34. On respect for past art, see Frank H.

biographical essay, W. S. Scarborough, Vice-

Goodyear, Jr., “The Eight,” In This Academy, 191. On

President of Wilberforce University, quotes the

drawing, see Homer, Robert Henri, 37 and 276 n. 9.

phrase from the second account, crediting “good authority.” W. S. Scarborough, “Henry Ossian [sic] Tanner,” Southern Workman, 31 December 1902, 622;

35. AAA, P-13:317, “Hovenden and Rothermel,” Philadelphia Press, 17 August 189 [4]. 36. The Philadelphia Enquirer stated in an edi-

I am grateful to Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., for a

torial two days after Hovenden’s death: “His later

copy of this essay. On Tanner’s recalling Hovenden’s

pictures it is true told a story, but it is not the

Last Moments of John Brown, see “Catalogue,” Mosby

story so much as it is the instant appreciation of

and Sewell, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 136.

the fact that they faithfully portray American life to

30. Diary entries for 17 December 1886 and 8

which their popularity is due.” See AAA, P-13:313,

January 1887, which are on microfilm among the

“Thomas Hovenden,” Philadelphia Enquirer, 16

Robert Henri Papers. I am grateful for the permission

August 1895.

to examine this restricted material.Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Robert Henri Papers, 1. Diaries (1881–1906), Roll 885, Frames 69, 85.Also, Homer, Robert Henri, 28. On “Don’t think,

37. The quotations are from Sears’s description of Breaking Home Ties. 38. AAA, P-13:317, “Hovenden and Rothermel,” Philadelphia Press, 17 August 1895 [4].

267

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INDEX

Page references in italics refer to illustrations. Abolition Hall, 101

Sartain, John (1895), 187; Sears, John V., 155,

Academic Nude (1874–75), 27

157–58, 174, 234n. 56, 251n. 6; Sheldon,

Academy of Fine Arts (Institute of France), 21

George William, 19, 20, 120, 235n. 58;

An Accident (Dagnan-Bouveret; 1879), 143, 144,

technique, 179–80; Tuckerman, Henry T., 73

246–47n. 53 African Americans: 95, 228n. 4, 232nn. 32–33, 235–36n. 66; advancement, 118; Corson, Helen, 106–8, 110; free blacks versus plantation, 232n.

art education, comparison to European, 70. See also Cork School of Design; National Academy of Design art exhibitions, 176, 261n. 61; after Hovenden’s

30; male suffrage, 223n. 52; mythical Old South,

death, 185; Bendann’s Gallery, 235n. 62;

110; Plymouth and Whitemarsh census, 231n.

Centennial Exposition (Philadelphia; 1876), 73;

22; racist “humor,” 232n. 31, 235n. 58; similari-

Earles Galleries, 170, 243nn. 30, 32; Knoedler

ties to Breton peasants, 100, 229–30nn. 13, 14;

& Company Gallery, 243n. 29; Metropolitan

women working outside home, 253n. 17. See also

Fair (1864), 4; Philadelphia Society of Artists,

domestic genre, African American paintings by

70; Salon (Paris), 20, 201nn. 48, 49; Society of

Hovenden

American Artists, 69, 261n. 60; World

Ain’t That Ripe (ca. 1884–85), 122, 123 apprenticeship, 2 art, American: development, 70; expectations

Columbian Exposition, 165 art exhibitions, National Academy of Design, 7, 69, 264n. 9; (1891), 255n. 25; annual spring,

(1880–95), xv, 72–73; Hovenden contribution,

7, 103; In the Hands of the Enemy (1889), 142,

94, 110; preferences (1870s), 20

246n. 50

art, purpose of, 263n. 3 art criticism: Breaking Home Ties, 161–62; Bringing

art exhibitions, Pennsylvania Academy, 264n. 9; (1891), 162; (1893), 175, 260–61n. 59

Home the Bride, 174–75; In the Hands of the Enemy,

“art for art’s sake,” 182, 183, 263–64nn. 7, 8

145–46, 247n. 55; The Last Moments of John Brown

art museums, 70

(1882–84), 137–39; A Village Blacksmith (1882),

artists, American: Academy of Fine Arts, 21; com-

90 art critics: African American paintings, 119; after

munity in New York City, 196n. 17; European studies, 19; genre painters, 78; Paris, 20, 59;

Hovenden’s death: 189, 267n. 36; Benjamin,

Pont-Aven, 31–32, 206n. 6; return to U.S., 68,

S. G. W., 73; European training, 74; Hovenden

69, 72, 74

critique, 189; Pach, Walter (1961), 188;

Attention, Company! (Harnett; 1878), 124

270

INDEX

Baltimore, 7, 198n. 27

A Brittany Image Seller (1878), 39

The Banjo Lesson (Tanner; 1893), 110, 111

A Brittany Peasant Girl. See What O’Clock Is It?

Battell, Robbins, 129, 237–38nn. 5, 6

Brown, John, 131–33, 135; execution, 239n. 14;

Battle of Bunker’s Hill (Trumbull; 1786), 139

Memoirs of John Brown (Sanborn), 133, 240n. 16;

Beard, James Henry: Goodbye, Old Virginia (1872),

song, 240n. 15

96 The Beech Wood (Lambdin; 1864), 199n. 36

“Brown of Ossawattomie” (Whittier; 1895), 136, 137, 242n. 28

Benjamin, S. G. W., 73 Bible-reading theme, 80

Cabanel, Alexandre, 19, 203n. 59; The Choir Direc-

Birth of Venus (Cabanel; 1863), 22

tor’s Widow (1859), 30; historical genre, 205n.

Bramley, Frank: A Hopeless Dawn (1888), 168

72; influence on Hovenden, 22, 24, 29, 30; Oth-

The Breakfast Room (Tarbell; ca. 1903), 160

ello Relating His Adventures (1857), 29; paintings,

Breaking Home Ties (1890): criticism, 161–64, 165,

22, 23, 28; style, 21, 203n. 58

263n. 4; criticism by J. V. Sears, 155, 157–58,

The Cabinetmaker (1888), 90–91, 92

162, 251n. 6; history of painting, 163; interpre-

Canaday, John, 189

tation, 154, 155, 157, 166–67; models and

Catching the Bee (Johnson; 1872), 16

props, 156, 251–52n. 8; mother figure, 158–60;

Centennial Exposition, 73, 89

pamphlet, 253n. 15; public response, xiii, 166,

charcoal drawings, 27

167; self-criticism, 159; value, 163

childhood, xiii, 1–3

Brenan, James, 2

Chinese immigrants, 78, 223n. 50, 227n. 2

Breton, Jules: influence on Homer, 230n. 13; influ-

Chloe and Sam (1882), 113–14

ence on Hovenden, 34, 207n. 14 A Breton Interior in 1793 (1878): comparison to In Hoc Signo Vinces, 56; criticism, 53; description,

The Choir Director’s Widow (Cabanel; 1859), 28, 30 Church near Pont-Aven from Finistère (1878), 40–41, 211n. 32

52, 213n. 50; models and props, 216n. 70; pub-

Civil War, 52, 126, 138, 142‒46

lic reaction, 54

Cogitation (Woods; 1871), 77

Breton peasant: Hovenden’s view, 38, 210n. 27,

Colonial Revival, 89, 227n. 75

211n. 30; native costume, 215n. 58; similarities

Concarneau, Brittany, 207n.11

to African Americans, 100, 229–30nn. 13, 14

Cork (Ireland), 1; emigrants from, 195n.12

Breton Woman Blowing the Dinner Horn, 46

Cork School of Design, 2, 194nn. 8, 9

Bringing Home the Bride (1893), 171–72, 260n. 52;

Corliss steam engine, 89, 226n. 75

criticism, 174; criticism of light and color, 175; models, 259–60n. 51; props, 260n. 52; similar works, 260n. 53

Corson family: Quaker anti-slavery view, 100, 101, 230nn. 18, 19 Corson, Helen, 60, 62, 160; African American

Bringing Home the Bride (Erdmann), 173

genre, 106–8, 110; photograph of, 187; photog-

Brittany, 33; artists, 34, 207–8nn. 13, 14; Concar-

raphy by, 101, 102, 156, 185, 186, 230n. 20;

neau, 207n. 11

photographing Hovenden at work, 157, 173,

INDEX

180; Pont-Aven, 32, 45, 206n. 6, 212n. 37; Un-

Shaver, 116, 117; public response, 119; Sunday

cle Ned and His Pupil (1881), 103, 105

Morning, 111, 112, 113; Taking His Ease, 115;

Country Wedding: Bishop White Officiating (Krimmel; 1814), 152 Courbet, Gustave: influence on Hovenden, 34, 207n. 14 courtship genre: Death of Elaine, 62, 64–65; Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady, 62, 63; The Favorite Falcon, 60, 61, 62

Their Pride, 117–18; value of, 234n. 54, 235n. 59; Young Woman Holding a Cabbage, 120; Youth Blowing Smoke Rings, 121, 122 —American Impressionism, 165–66, 256n. 36; by Hovenden, 175, 178, 181, 217n. 77 —American paintings, 151; The Breakfast Room, 160; Country Wedding: Bishop White Officiating,

Cowboys in the Bad Lands (Eakins; 1888), 148

152; The Image Peddler, 153; Mother and Child,

craftsman genre, 84–85, 93; The Cabinetmaker

159; Reading the Bible, 224n. 55

(1888), 90–92; A Village Blacksmith (1882), 87–89, 90

—American paintings by Hovenden, 84, 94, 152–53, 180; Breaking Home Ties, 155; Bringing

The Crisis (Dicksee; 1891), 178

Home the Bride, 171–72; Elderly Couple Winding

Cushing, Frank Hamilton, 149

Wool, 225n. 65; Jerusalem the Golden, 178–79; Lady Tending Flowers, 15; The Old Version, 80–81;

Dagnan-Bouveret, Pascal A. J.: An Accident (1879), 143, 144 Dat Possum Smell Pow’ful Good (1881), 103, 104 Death of Elaine (1882), 62, 64: costumes and mod-

The Puzzled Voter, 76, 79; A Reverie, 17; The Revised Version, 82–83; Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof? 85, 225nn. 67, 68 —European paintings: The Choir Director’s Widow

els, 66; criticism, 67; interpretation, 65; Study

(1859), 30;A Fortune Teller of Brittany (1871–72),

for (1882), 65, 66

35; A Hopeless Dawn (1888), 167, 169; The

Dem Was Good Ole Times (1882), 108, 109, 110 Dicksee, Frank: The Crisis (1891), 178

Postman (1868), 36 —European paintings by Hovenden: Breton Woman

domestic genre painting

Blowing the Dinner Horn, 46; One Who Can Read,

—African American paintings: The Banjo Lesson

48–49; Pendant le Repose, 44–45, 47; A Sunny Day

(1893), 110; Goodbye, Old Virginia (1872), 96; Negro Boy Dancing (1878), 107; Sunday Morning in Virginia (1877), 99; Uncle Ned and His Pupil (1881), 103, 105, 231n. 25; A Visit from the Old Mistress (1876), 98 —African American paintings by Hovenden,: 100, 102–3, 123–25; Ain’t That Ripe, 123; banjo

in Brittany, 37, 38 drawings by Helen Corson: Uncle Ned and His Pupil, 231n. 25 drawings by Hovenden, 217n. 73; Death of Elaine, 65; Study for In Hoc Signo Vinces, 57; Study for A Village Blacksmith, 89; Venus de Milo, 5, 6

theme, 108–9; Chloe and Sam, 113, 114, 115; Dem Was Good Ole Times, 108, 109, 110; A Home

Eakins, Thomas, 250n. 70; Cowboys in the Bad Lands

Missionary, 10; I’se So Happy! 108; Never Too Late

(1888), 148; Negro Boy Dancing (1878), 107;

to Mend, 105–6; The Old Nurse’s Visit, 8; Old

Pennsylvania Academy, 190, 266n. 27; views on

271

272

INDEX

Hovenden, 191; Will Schuster and Black Man Going Shooting for Rail (1876), 99, 229nn. 10, 11 Ecole des Beaux-Arts: atelier, 23–24, 27; Prix de Rome, 202n. 53 Edmonds, Francis William: The Image Peddler (1844), 153 education. See art education

Harnett, William Michael: Attention, Company! (1878), 124; Still Life with Letter to Thomas B. Clarke (1879), 79 Henri, Robert, 190–91 Hicks, Thomas: Reading the Bible (1863), 224n. 55 historical genre painting —American paintings, 128, 237n. 3; accuracy,

Elaine. See Death of Elaine

238n. 9; Battle of Bunker’s Hill (1786), 139; Cow-

Elderly Couple Winding Wool, 225n. 65

boys in the Bad Lands (1888), 148; definition,

emigration, 3

213n. 44; John Brown on His Way to Execution

England, trip to, 167, 257n. 43

(1860), 133, 134, 240n. 18; John Brown’s Blessing

Erdmann, Otto: Bringing Home the Bride, 173

Just Before His Execution (1867), 134, 135; The Pio-

European studies, xiii, 19, 201n. 49, 236n. 67;

neer’s Rest (1886), 148

comparison to American, 70; effect on American art, 69–70, 219n. 7

—American paintings by Hovenden, 126; accuracy, 131, 238–39nn. 8, 10; criticism, 140–41; The Founders of a State, 129; In the Hands

factory workers, 90

of the Enemy, 128; John Brown After His Capture,

Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady (1880), 62, 63

133; John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, 140; large-scale

The Favorite Falcon (1879), 60, 61, 62, 217n. 75

versus small-scale, 150; The Last Moments of John

For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep (Langley),

Brown, 127, 129–30

170 The Founders of a State (1895), 129; Helen Corson photograph, 185, 186; history of painting, 146,

—European paintings, 212n. 44; Cabanel, Alexandre, 205n. 72; The Musician (1859), 59 —European paintings by Hovenden, 28, 49–50; A

248–49n. 66, 265nn. 15, 16; Indian Territory,

Breton Interior in 1793, 52–54, 213n. 50; In Hoc

147; setting, 147, 249n. 69; similar paintings,

Signo Vinces, 55–57; Vendéan Guardsman, 50, 52;

148; woman figure, prominence, 150

Vendéan Soldier, 51

France: art, 20; restoration of Paris, 20; studies in, 19; War of the Vendée, 49–52, 212–13n. 42, 215nn. 56, 59; writers, 34 Franco-Prussian War, 20

A Home Missionary (1874), 9, 10 Homer, Winslow, 229nn. 8, 9; The Initials (1864), 12; influence of French painters, 230n. 13; Prisoners from the Front (1866), 138; Sunday Morning in Virginia (1877), 99; A Visit from the Old Mistress

Gloanec Pension, 32

(1876), 98; Watermelon Boys (1876), 123

Goodbye, Old Virginia (Beard; 1872), 96–97

A Hopeless Dawn (Bramley; 1888), 168

Grandma’s Second Sight (1893–94), 84, 226n. 70

House, Edward H.: John Brown article, 136,

Greenwich Village, 5

241–42n. 27 Hovenden, Elizabeth, 3, 195n. 11

And the Harbor Bar Is Moaning (1886), 169–70, 258n. 45

Hovenden, Helen Corson. See Corson, Helen Hovenden, John, 195n. 10

INDEX

Hovenden, Martha Maulsby, 186–88; model for

John Brown After His Capture (1882), 133

Bringing Home the Bride, 172, 173; model for

John Brown at Harper’s Ferry (1859, 1883), 140

Grandma’s Second Sight, 226n. 70

John Brown Meeting the Slave-Mother (John Brown on

Hovenden, Thomas, xvi; beliefs, xv, 179–80; “art for art’s sake,” 181–83, 263–64nn. 7, 8; childhood, xiii, 1–3 ; commitment to students, 190; death, xv, 185, 265n. 13; family, 153–54,

His Way to Execution) (Ransom; 1860), 133, 240n. 18; lithograph, 134, 240n. 19, 245n. 45 John Brown’s Blessing Just Before His Execution (Noble; 1867), 134, 135

156; illnesses, 183, 264n. 11; legacy, 191; New

Johnson, Eastman, 198n. 30; The New Bonnet

York stay (1880–81), 68, 75; parents, 193n. 1;

(1876), 154; Not at Home (1872–80), 18;

students, 190–91; style, xiv; “What Is the

A Ride for Liberty:The Fugitive Slaves (ca. 1863),

Purpose of Art?” lecture, 182

97, 98

Hovenden, Thomas, influences: Breton, Jules, 34, 207n. 14; Cabanel,Alexandre, 22, 24, 29, 30;

Jones, Frank Coates: Mother and Child (ca. 1885), 159; Pont-Aven description, 32

Courbet, Gustave, 34, 207n. 14; French painters,

Jones, H. Bolton, 5, 7, 198n. 27

207n. 14; Plymouth Meeting, 68; Pont-Aven, 58,

Jones, Samuel, 102–3, 231nn. 22, 23; Portrait of

67;Wylie, Robert, 34, 38, 49, 58

Samuel Jones (ca. 1882), 102–3

Hovenden, Thomas, Jr., 186, 188 Knoedler & Company Gallery, 243n. 29 The Image Peddler (Edmonds; 1844), 153

Koehler, Robert: The Strike (1886), 161

The Image Seller (1876), 38, 39, 210n. 28

Krimmel, John Lewis: Country Wedding: Bishop White

immigration, 78; Irish immigrants in New York

Officiating (1814), 152

City, 196n. 16 Impressionism, 164–65, 255n. 28

Lady Tending Flowers (1873), 15; similar works, 14

In Hoc Signo Vinces (1880), 55, 56; public reaction,

Lambdin, George Cochran: The Beech Wood (1864),

57–58 In the Hands of the Enemy (1889), 128, 142–43; copyright and exhibition, 246n. 50; criticism,

199n. 36 “Lancelot and Elaine,” 62, 64 landscape genre by Hovenden: criticism, 176–77,

144–46, 247n. 55; pamphlet, 248n. 59; setting,

180; A Morning in May (1893), 176; Springtime

246n. 52; similar works, 246–47n. 53

(1893–94), 175–77;A Study (1895), 181

In the Woods, 11; similar works, 12, 199n. 36 Indian Territory, 147 The Initials (Homer; 1864), 12

Langley, Walter: For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep, 170 The Last Moments of John Brown (1882–84), 127;

Interior of Blacksmith’s Shop (Wood; 1875), 93

accuracy, 131, 245n. 43; commission, 129, 237n.

Ireland: Dunmanway, 1

4, 238n. 7; criticism, 137–39; description,

I’se So Happy! (1882), 108

129–30, 238n. 8; exhibition, 243nn. 29, 30, 32; interpretation, 142; models, 241n. 22; mother

Jerusalem the Golden (1894), 178, 179; criticism, 183; self-criticism, 264n. 10

and child, 136, 245n. 46; New York Tribune article, 136, 241–42n. 27; pamphlet, 137, 242n. 28;

273

274

INDEX

posing site, 239n. 11; public controversy,

The Old Nurse’s Visit (1872), 8, 9

141–42; self-criticism, 140–41, 244n. 39; simi-

Old Shaver (1886), 116, 117

lar paintings, 133–36

The Old Version (1881), 80, 81, 83

Loyalist Peasant Soldier of La Vendée. See Vendéan Guardsman Lucas, George, 204nn. 64, 65 McCoy, John W., 11, 68; Hovenden collection,

One Who Can Read (1877), 48, 49 Othello Relating His Adventures (Cabanel; 1859), 28, 29 Pach, Walter: criticism after Hovenden’s death, 188

199n. 33; Hovenden correspondence, 19,

painters, xv. See also artists

43, 72

painting subjects: American, 72; Bible-reading

media, romanticizing the Old South, 96

theme, 80; Plymouth Meeting, 76; Pont-Aven,

Meissonier, Ernest: The Musician (1859), 59

35

middle-class, 162, 166, 254n. 20 models, xiv; Breaking Home Ties, 156, 251–52n. 8; A Breton Interior in 1793, 216n. 70; Bringing Home the Bride, 259–60n. 51; Death of Elaine, 66;

Paris: comparison to New York, 69; Salon, 20, 201nn. 48, 49 Paris studies: (1874–75), 19–20; (1878–79), 58–59

Grandma’s Second Sight, 226n. 70; Jones, Samuel,

Parsons, Charles, 6

102–3; The Last Moments of John Brown, 241n. 22;

The Path to the Spring (1879), 43, 44

Plymouth Meeting, 84; xiv; A Village Blacksmith,

Peabody Institute, 199n. 33

226n. 73

Pendant le Repose (1878), 44–45, 47

A Morning in May (1893), 175; value, 178

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts:

Morris, Harrison S., 189

exhibitions, 162, 175, 255n. 25, 260–61n. 59,

Mother and Child (F. C. Jones; ca. 1885), 159

264n. 9; Hovenden’s students at, 190–91

The Musician (Meissonier; 1859), 59

Peonies (1886), 162, 163 Philadelphia Society of Artists, 70

National Academy of Design, 5, 69–70, 73, 196n. 18; program, 6, 197nn. 22, 23; spring exhibitions, 7, 103 Negro Boy Dancing (Eakins; 1878), 107

The Pioneer’s Rest (Volk; 1886), 148, 250n. 70 Plantation Economy in the Old South (Walker; ca. 1876), 97 Plymouth Meeting: census, 222nn. 8, 39, 231n.

Neo-Classicism, 194n. 9

22; economy, 75–76; influence on Hovenden,

Never Too Late to Mend (1882), 105–6

68; residents as models, 84; xiv; studio, xiv

The New Bonnet (Johnson; 1876), 154

Pont-Aven, 31–33, 209n. 23; and American artists,

New York City, 1860s, 3; artist community, 196n.

208n. 16; discovered by artists, 206n. 6;

17; Civil War, 4; Greenwich Village, 5; Hoven-

influence on Hovenden, 58, 67; painting

den’s emigration, 3; Irish immigrants, 196n. 16

subjects, 35

Noble, Thomas Satterwhite: John Brown’s Blessing Just Before His Execution (1867), 134, 135 Not at Home (Johnson; 1872–80), 18

Portraits: Portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing, 149; Portrait of Samuel Jones, 102–3 post–Civil War reconciliation, 95, 96

INDEX

The Postman (Wylie; 1868), 36

Study of a Bearded Man (ca. 1874–75), 27, 28

Prisoners from the Front (Homer; 1866), 138

Study of an Old Lady (ca. 1874–75), 25, 204n. 65

Prix de Rome, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 202n. 53

Study,Triumph of Flora (Cabanel; 1870–72), 23

The Puzzled Voter (1880), 76, 79; similar paintings,

Sunday Afternoon. See The Old Version

77

Sunday Morning (1881), 111–12, 113 Sunday Morning in Virginia (Homer; 1877), 99

Quakers: Corson family, 100–101, 230nn. 18, 19;

A Sunny Day in Brittany (1876), 37, 38

women, 160 Taking His Ease (1885), 115 Ramsey, Milne, 32, 59, 217n. 75 Ransom, Louis Liscolm: John Brown on His Way to Execution (1860), 133–34, 240n. 18 Reading the Bible (Hicks; 1863), 224n. 55 A Reverie (1873), 17; description, 14, 16, 200n. 42; technique, 18

Tanner, Henry Ossawa: The Banjo Lesson (1893), 110; influence on Hovenden, 111, 190 Tarbell, Edmund. C.: The Breakfast Room (ca. 1903), 160 Their Pride (1888): 117, 118 technique: Academic Nude (1874–75), 27; Church

The Revised Version (1881), 82, 83

near Pont-Aven from Finistère (1878), 40–41; A

A Ride for Liberty:The Fugitive Slaves (Johnson; ca.

Reverie (1873), 18; Study for A Village Blacksmith

1863), 97, 98

(1882), 87, 89; Study of an Old Lady (1874–75), 25, 204n. 65

Salons, 20, 210n. 48

themes of painting, xiii–xiv

Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin: Memoirs of John Brown,

Tolerton, George, 193n. 4

133, 240n. 16, 242n. 27 Sartain, John: criticism after Hovenden’s death, 187, 266n. 20 Sears, John V., 162, 234n. 56; Breaking Home Ties,

The Traveling Clock-Mender, 92–93, 262n. 66 The Trial of Constance de Beverly (1883), 174 Trumbull, John: Battle of Bunker’s Hill (1786), 139

155, 157–58, 251n. 6; Bringing Home the Bride,

Tuckerman, Henry T., 73

174

Two Lilies, 200n. 42. See also A Reverie

self-portraits: (ca. 1873), 12, 13, 14; (ca. 1881), 69, 71; (ca. 1893–95), 183–84; Self-Portrait of the Artist in His Studio (1875), 25, 26, 27 Sheldon, George William, 19, 20, 120, 235n. 58

Uncle Ned and His Pupil (Corson; 1881), 103, 105, 231n. 25; banjo theme, 106–7 Underground Railroad, 101

Society of American Artists, 69 Springtime (ca. 1893–94), 177; value, 262n. 66

Vendéan Guardsman (1877), 50, 52

still life by Hovenden: Peonies (1886), 162, 163

Vendéan Soldier (ca. 1877), 51

Still Life with Letter to Thomas B. Clarke (Harnett;

The Vendéan Volunteer. See A Breton Interior in 1793

1879), 79 The Strike (Koehler; 1886), 161 A Study (1895), 181

Vendée, War of the, 49–52, 212–13n. 42, 215n. 56 “The Village Blacksmith” (poem by H. W. Longfellow), 87

275

276

INDEX

A Village Blacksmith (1882), 87, 88, 90; model, 226n. 73 A Village Blacksmith, Study for (1882), technique, 87, 89 A Visit from the Old Mistress (Homer; 1876), 98 Volk, Douglas: The Pioneer’s Rest (1886), 148

Who Shall Eat the Fruit Thereof? (1883), 85, 225nn. 67, 68; similar paintings, 84, 226n. 69; Study for (1883), 86 Will Schuster and Black Man Going Shooting for Rail (Eakins; 1876), 99 women: lost boats and waiting, 168–71, 258n. 44; organizations, 200n. 40; Quaker, 160; working,

Walker, William Aiken: Plantation Economy in the Old South (ca. 1876), 97 Walters, William T., 10, 19, 199n. 32 Watermelon Boys (Homer; 1876), 123, 236n. 69 “What Is the Purpose of Art?” 182

160–61, 253n. 17 Wood, George Bacon, Jr.: Interior of Blacksmith’s Shop (1875), 93 Woods, Thomas Waterman: Cogitation (1871), 77

What O’Clock Is It? (1876), 42–43, 212nn. 34, 35

World Columbian Exposition (1893), 165

“What Shall American Artists Paint?” 74–75

Wylie, Robert: compared to Hovenden: 34–35,

When Hope Was Darkest (1892), 167–68, 170–71

208n. 15, 209n. 20; A Fortune Teller of Brittany

white supremacy; 6, 227n. 2, 228n. 4

(1871–72), 35; influence on Hovenden, 34, 38,

Whitemarsh township: census, 222nn. 38, 39;

49, 58; The Postman (1868), 36

economy, 75–76 Whittier, John Greenleaf: “Brown of Ossawattomie” (1895), 136, 137, 242n. 28

Young Woman Holding a Cabbage (1880s), 120 Youth Blowing Smoke Rings (1884), 121, 122