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Luminist Horizons: The
Art and Collection of James A. Suydam
September 14 - December 31, 2006
The first major exhibition
in a quarter century to explore luminism in nineteenth-century American
landscape painting, Luminist Horizons: The Art and Collection of James
A. Suydam, is on exhibit September 14 through December 31, 2006 at the
National Academy Museum. The exhibition features approximately fifty-five
paintings by Suydam (1819-1865) and the artists of his circle, including
John F. Kensett, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Sanford R. Gifford,
Jasper Cropsey, and many others. Suydam's collection, bequeathed in its
entirety to the National Academy in 1865, documents the many American and
European influences on Suydam and his peers as they explored qualities of
light and atmosphere in the landscape. Luminist Horizons reveals
the exceptional strength of the artist's collection and presents the first
ever retrospective of Suydam's career, including his masterpiece, Paradise
Rocks, Newport (1860).
Luminist Horizons contributes
a new, individual perspective on the development of luminism in Civil War
America. Often characterized by art historians as an aesthetic of solitary
isolation, luminism was, instead, a gregarious experience for Suydam and
his peers. His first acquisition was a landscape (1850) by Asher B. Durand
depicting two artists conversing while admiring the landscape. Accompanied
by close friends, such as Kensett, Gifford, and Worthington Whittredge,
Suydam visited popular sites during the 1850s and 1860s, particularly in
the Hudson River Valley, the Mt. Washington region, and along the Rhode
Island coast. He made these iconic sites his own by interpreting their well-known
vistas with his unique colorism, crisp geometry, and fresh compositional
arrangements.
Suydam was a son of one of New York's early Dutch merchant
families. He inherited a considerable fortune early in life that permitted
him to tour Europe and the Middle East for several years after he completed
his studies at New York University. His career in art began in middle age,
as an amateur painter working under the influence of Durand and the instruction
of Kensett, whose landmark Bash Bish (1855) Suydam owned.
By the later 1850s, Suydam transformed himself into a professional
artist and was elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design
in 1861, the same year as the onset of the Civil War. In the midst of national
crisis, Suydam and his peers created an art of stability, peace, and order.
Luminist Horizons is co-curated
by Mark D. Mitchell, Associate Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the
National Academy Museum, and Katherine E. Manthorne, Professor of American
Art at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A full color
catalogue by the curators with an introduction by Annette Blaugrund, and
published by George Braziller Publishers will accompany the exhibition.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
- THE REVIEW PANEL
- October 6th, November 3rd, December 1st, 6:30PM in the
Huntington Library
- On the first Friday of every month the National Academy
invites contemporary critics to discuss current art exhibitions and debate
the ideas, issues, and aesthetics consequently generated. This popular
panel is moderated by David Cohen, art critic for the New York Sun and
editor of artcritical.com.
-
- FAMILY ARTS
- October 7th, November 4th, December 1st, 10:00AM - 12:00PM
in the Galleries
- Families gather for an educator-led gallery talk and
an art-making workshop with professional artist Martha Bloom. Fee. Due
to limited space reservations are required. Phone 212 369 4880 x 300 or
email education@nationalacademy.org.
-
- SYMPOSIUM: LUMINISM REVISITED
- Saturday, October 28, 2006, 1pm - 6pm in the Huntington
Library
- This afternoon symposium will feature a panel of leading
scholars as they present new research relating to luminism and the social,
philosophical, ethical, and scientific ideas of mid-nineteenth century
America. Fee.. Reservations required, phone 212 369 4880 x 300 or email
education@nationalacademy.org.
-
- LUNCHTIME LECTURES The Exhibition Series with
- Thursdays, 12 pm - 1 pm in the rotunda of the museum,
in the galleries, and in the Huntington Library
- November 2, Associate Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art,
Mark Mitchell lead visitors through highlighted paintings from Luminist
Horizons.
- November 16, Associate Curator of Nineteenth-Century
Art, Mark Mitchell moderates a panel of professional artists to discuss
the importance of luminism on current works.
- December 7, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary
Art, Marshall Price, leads us through some American artists' representations
of the Italian culture and landscape.
-
-
(above: Andreas Achenbach, 1815 -1910, German, Off Ostend,
1859, Oil on canvas, 49 ? x 68 inches. National Academy Museum, Bequest
of James A. Suydam)
(above: Daniel Huntington, 1816-1906, James Augustus
Suydam, NA, 1862, Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches. National Academy Museum,
bequest of James A. Suydam)
(above: Eastman Johnson, 1824-1906, The Art Lover, n.d.,
Oil on canvas, 12 3/8 x 15 ? inches. National Academy Museum, Bequest of
James A. Suydam)
(above: James A. Suydam, N.A. 1819-1865, Beach at Newport,
Rhode Island, ca. 18601865, Oil on canvas. Collection of Henry
and Sharon Martin)
WALL TEXT FROM THE EXHIBITION
-
- Luminist Horizons
- The Art and Collection of James A. Suydam
-
- James A. Suydam, N.A. (1819-1865) was an American landscape
painter and collector distinguished for his artistic subtlety and intellectual
refinement. Well known in his day, Suydam's work as an artist and art advocate
began later in life and lasted only a decade before his sudden death at
the height of his career. His legacy was ensured, however, his bequest
of his expansive collection of ninety-two paintings, including several
of his own works, to the National Academy of Design. This exhibition, the
first to explore Suydam's career, offers a fresh opportunity to appreciate
his contributions to American art.
-
- Suydam's art and collection reveal the close relationships
among the painters of his circle-known as luminists for their fascination
with light and atmosphere-and their many contemporary influences on both
sides of the Atlantic. In concert with his most intimate colleagues-including
John F. Kensett, N.A. (1816-1872), Asher B. Durand, N.A. (1796-1886), Sanford
Gifford, N.A. (1823-1880), and Worthington Whittredge, N.A. (1820-1910)-Suydam
developed his signature style, characterized by gentle tonal gradations,
abstracted forms, and a limited palette, along the shores of Rhode Island
during the early 1860s. His aesthetic, exemplified by his masterpiece,
Paradise Rocks, Newport, was admired by contemporaries as "nature
in repose."
-
- Peace was in short supply during Suydam's career, however.
Amid the violence of the American Civil War, the artist and his colleagues
sought order and reassurance in the national landscape. Suydam's art and
professional ambitions matured during the period as well, culminating in
his election as a full National Academician (N.A.) in 1861, the same year
as the war's onset. In this context, his paintings not only provide a sense
of stability, but also evoke profound sentiment underlying their calm surfaces
in response to national events. Ultimately, the exhibition extends the
understanding of the luminist painters' horizons to include such broader
historic as well as artistic influence.
-
- This exhibition is made possible by the generous
support of the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts,
Eli Wilner & Company, the Lucelia Foundation, the Robert Lehman Foundation,
The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, Furthermore: a program of the J.
M. Kaplan Fund, and the Asher B. Durand Society of the National Academy
Museum. Programs of the National Academy are made possible with public
funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
-
-
- Early Career
-
- Suydam began to draw shortly after his graduation from
New York University (then known as the University of the City of New York)
in 1842 while on a three-year Grand Tour of Europe and the Middle East
under the capable guidance of expatriate painter Miner Kellogg, Honorary
N.A. (1814-1889). The son of one of New York's oldest Dutch merchant families,
Suydam entered a business partnership with his brother upon his return
that lasted for nearly a decade. Consequently, his artistic practice did
not begin in earnest until the 1850s, when he studied with one of the leading
figures of American landscape movement, John F. Kensett, N.A.
-
- Suydam's public début at the National Academy's
Annual Exhibition of 1856 marked the beginning of his transition from gentleman-amateur
to professional artist. His early works are distinguished by their sense
of intimacy and variety. Suydam's inherited wealth allowed him more creative
freedom than many of his peers, and the diversity of his early compositions
illustrates his experimentation with the prevailing conventions of landscape
painting.
-
-
- Newport
-
- The beaches of Newport, Rhode Island offered Suydam enduring
inspiration beginning in the late 1850s. Settling on a broad, open format
that prioritized poetic effect over narrative, the artist painted in larger
scale and exhibited his canvases with greater frequency in New York and
around the country. In Suydam's mature work, areas of color interact and
balance against one another, evoking rather than recording specific features
found in nature.
-
- The expressive aspects of these later works may be attributed
to the artist's own emotional investment. "I must paint what I feel,"
he wrote. Suydam's demanding professional commitment to the Academy as
treasurer of its Fellowship Fund and ongoing anxiety over the Civil War
worsened the recurring depression with which he struggled throughout adulthood.
He did, however, find welcome relief in his summertime painting excursions.
Through his restricted palette and mannered composition, Suydam manipulated
his subjects to exaggerate their most expressive features and thereby cultivate
the tranquil, contemplative aspect of his work that was most admired by
his contemporaries.
-
-
- Artistic Circle
-
- In 1858, Suydam moved his workspace to the new Tenth
Street Studio Building, located a few blocks from his family's townhouse
just off Washington Square. Other Tenth Street artists who moved there
at about the same moment included his close friends and fellow landscape
painters Frederic Edwin Church, N.A. (1826-1900), Sanford R. Gifford, N.A.
(1823-1880), Louis Rémy Mignot, N.A. (1831-1870), and Worthington
Whittredge, N.A. (1820-1910). Although Kensett, Suydam's closest colleague,
did not take a studio in the building, they were virtually next-door neighbors
at home on Waverly Place. All members of the National Academy of Design
and the Century Association, a social club, the artists of Suydam's innermost
circle lived, worked, relaxed, traveled, and exhibited together, facilitating
the close friendships that contributed to their art.
-
- Asher B. Durand, N.A. (1796-1886) was in many ways the
group's artistic patriarch, serving as a vital inspiration to the group.
Durand's Landscape (1850) was among Suydam's earliest purchases
and depicts two artists discussing the scene before them, a model of the
collaborative artistic discovery enjoyed by Suydam and his peers. An integral
member of what he called his "fraternity," Suydam contributed
an important philosophical counterbalance to the commercial spirit that
permeated the New York art world during the 1860s.
-
-
- Beyond Landscape
-
- Suydam's collection of American and European genre paintings
offers a different perspective on his artistic sensibility. Depictions
of women and children were common in the sentimental society of Victorian
America, but in the collection of the bachelor Suydam, their frequency
suggests particular resonance in his personal life. Similar to the tranquility
of the landscapes that he painted, the depictions of women and children
in his collection are more the subjects of desire than reality.
-
- Reading, a prominent theme in Suydam's genre collection,
reflects the significance of books to Suydam's life. After the artist's
death, his library was sold at auction and is therefore fully documented.
His books portray a rich intellectual life, including interests in English
and American literature, fluency in French, and aptitude for music. Most
substantive, however, were his collections of art history and philosophy.
The concentration of the readers in Suydam's collection conveys the seriousness
with which he regarded their activity.
-
-
- Luminism
-
- The term "luminism" has undergone almost constant
revision since it was coined by art historian John I. H. Baur during the
late 1940s. Suydam was a central figure in Baur's initial definition of
the term to describe the work of a group of then little-known American
landscape painters who shared a distinctive attitude toward light and nature
itself. Subsequent studies have explored and debated its correlation with
contemporary religious and philosophical movements, primarily transcendentalism
because of its focus on the divine presence in the landscape. Although
luminism is not a term that was used in the artists' day, it concisely
describes the qualities of light, atmosphere, and poetic evocation that
characterize Suydam's work as well as that of his closest peers.
-
- Suydam's art and collection make clear that, for him,
luminism was an aesthetic based in shared experience and mutual influence,
though not conformity. The works in this gallery depict many of the sites
that the artists visited and highlight the variety of their approaches.
These paintings constitute the core of Suydam's collection, including several
masterpieces of American art, and provide the artist's own unique perspective
on the aesthetic of luminism through his choices as an artist as well as
a collector.
-
-
- Conflict and Context
-
- Suydam and his colleagues worked against a backdrop of
violence. During the 1850s and early 1860s, the prelude to and onset of
the Civil War created uncertainty about the nation's future. Suydam's letters
and collection document his sympathy with the Union and abolition, but
the course of the war itself caused the artist great concern and occupied
his thoughts as he closely followed national events in the press. His sudden
death just months after the end of the war offered fitting closure for
an artistic career that so uncannily paralleled national events.
-
- Conflict is both a subtext of Suydam's art and a significant
theme in his collection, most prominently illustrated by the monumental
Off Ostend by German painter Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910). The
romantic, expressive drama of the storm scenes in Suydam's collection,
including an unusual work by Jasper Cropsey, N.A. (1823-1900), enrich the
appreciation of his own work by drawing attention to their emotive aspect.
Though emotion similarly animates Suydam's own paintings, he more often
phrased moods in the tenor of the escapist portrayals of the sunny Italian
countryside that he owned by artists such as Albert Flamm (1823-1906) and
Thomas Hicks, N.A. (1823-1890), which doubtless reminded him of his own
youthful travels in simpler times.
-
OBJECT LABELS FROM THE EXHIBITION
-
- Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910)
- Off Ostend
- 1859
- Oil on canvas
-
- Inspired by the grand sky effects of the seventeenth-century Dutch
masters, German realist Andreas Achenbach's powerful seascapes were derived
from sketches that he made on site. Achenbach's prominence in the art community
of Düsseldorf attracted the attention and emulation of many aspiring
landscape painters. Exhibited in New York in 18601861 when Suydam
likely saw and purchased the work, Off Ostend depicts the struggle
for survival of a Belgian fishing community on the North Sea.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- George Henry Boughton, N.A. (1833-1905)
- Wandering Thoughts
- 1865
- Oil on canvas
-
- This painting was among the first of expatriate George Henry Boughton's
genre scenes depicting American colonial life-the subject for which he
would become best known-and among last that Suydam acquired before his
death. This portrayal of a chaste young Puritan contemplating a flower
is made more haunting by the ghostly contours of other figures around her
that the artist appears to have painted out, but whose presence in the
woman's thoughts is suggested by the cut flower's short-lived beauty. Painted
at the conclusion of the Civil War, Wandering Thoughts reflects
wistfully on a simpler time in American history.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- George Henry Boughton, N.A. (1833-1905)
- Winter Scene
- 1860
- Oil on canvas
-
- Known primarily as a painter of figures, George Henry Boughton got
his start in New York as a landscapist. Winter Scene is one of a
handful of winter scenes he executed that demonstrate his abilities to
blend frozen streams, snow-covered ground, and frosty atmosphere into a
nuanced tonal composition. Boughton later had a highly successful career
both in England and America, but at this still early stage he received
needed patronage and encouragement from Suydam.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- John George Brown, N.A. (1831-1913)
- The Victim
- 1861
- Oil on canvas
-
- This painting depicts a characteristic subject by J. G. Brown, who
specialized in newspaper boys, bootblacks, and ruffians. Here, a group
of snowball-wielding pranksters has ambushed their prey, a diligent errand
boy with his basket.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Benjamin Champney (1817-1907)
- Conway Valley
- 185557
- Oil on canvas
-
- Conway Valley depicts a favorite spot in the White Mountains
of New Hampshire, where the New York landscape painters frequently spent
their summers hiking and sketching. Sometimes dubbed the leader of the
White Mountain School for his devotion to the area, Benjamin Champney has
evoked all that he, Suydam, and their circle appreciated about the place.
The three figures sitting in the foreground harmoniously commune with one
another and with nature.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Frederic Edwin Church, N.A. (1826-1900)
- Scene among the Andes
- 1854
- Oil on canvas
-
- One of two Colombian scenes that Suydam purchased directly from Frederic
Edwin Church after Church's first trip to South America in the summer of
1853, Scene among the Andes is among the first compositions that
Church painted after his trip. The gentle tonal gradation and colorism
of Scene among the Andes parallel the primary aspects of Suydam's
own work in the ensuing years, though not Church's own direction. Scene
among the Andes offers a pastoral, peaceful counterpoint to the more
ominous tenor of the second work that Suydam purchased from Church, his
Scene on the Magdalene. The prominence of the century plant (amaryllis)
in the foreground, reaching up and out to overlap the river in the distance,
is believed to be a discrete allusion to the Century Association, of which
Suydam and Church were both members.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Frederic Edwin Church, N.A. (1826-1900)
- Scene on the Magdalene
- 1854
- Oil on canvas
-
- Frederic Edwin Church's portrayals of the South American landscape
often layer beauty and danger, and never more effectively than in his Scene
on the Magdalena. The brilliant sunlight at the horizon bathes the
sky and serene, reflective water in rich color, but casts deep shadows
along the Colombian river Magdalena's banks. At its brightest point in
the water, the reflected sun silhouettes the sloping contour of a crocodile
moving toward the unsuspecting spear-fishers at the lower right. In the
foliage behind them, a similar struggle unfolds as choking vines envelope
the trees above. In a pencil sketch related to this scene, Church noted
"trees entirely smothered in vines." Such mortal struggles in
nature fascinated the young Church, and resonated with audiences in America
where the threat of violence and civil war constantly lurked throughout
the later 1840s and 1850s.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Jasper Cropsey, N.A. (1823-1900)
- Coast Scene
- 1855
- Oil on canvas
-
- Jasper Cropsey is best known for his idyllic scenes of brilliant autumn
foliage and pastoral New England life. Coast Scene, in contrast,
depicts a tumultuous seascape off what is believed to be Newport, Rhode
Island. "In its grandest moods," Cropsey wrote in his 1855 essay
"Up Among the Clouds," the storm cloud is "more impressive
than all the other cloud regions-awakening the deepest emotions of gloom,
dread, and fear; or sending thrilling sensations of joy and gladness through
our being."
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Jasper Cropsey, N.A. (1823-1900)
- The Lake of Nemi
- 1848
- Oil on paper
-
- Located southeast of Rome in the Alban Hills, the picturesque Lake
of Nemi offered the young, newly-married Jasper Cropsey an impressive,
time-honored vantage on the Italian countryside. This painting is a reduced
version-probably a study, as suggested by the artist's notes inscribed
in the upper right-of a larger composition that is now unlocated. Suydam
likely purchased the work in a set of seven studies that he bought directly
from Cropsey in 1856 when Cropsey was financing his second trip abroad.
Cropsey and Suydam shared much in common, including their Dutch and Huguenot
ancestries and their early studies of architecture.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- William P. W. Dana, N.A. (1833-1927)
- Admirals in Embryo
- undated
- Oil on linen
-
- Trained in France, William P. W. Dana was praised in America upon his
return for "a refinement of taste" that was "rare among
our artists." This rendering of young boys playing in a beached boat
combines Dana's interest in marine painting with his affectionate renderings
of childhood. Here, the boys' play parallels the activities of men on the
sea in the distance, but the boys' wreck is inscribed in French "VAU[T]
RIEN," meaning worth nothing.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Albert Flamm (1823-1906)
- The Roman Campagna
- 1859
- Oil on canvas
-
- German painter Albert Flamm was a prominent student of Andreas Achenbach
and later an instructor at the academy in Düsseldorf. His treatments
of the Italian countryside during the 1850s favored bright sunlight and
open expanses often portrayed by Suydam and his American colleagues. Within
Suydam's collection, Flamm's work suggests a pendant in both scale and
ambition to Achenbach's massive Off Ostend of the same year, and
which Suydam likely purchased at the same auction in 1861. The opposition
in tone between these two works of similar scale reflects a recurring theme
of paired opposites in Suydam's collection, including the two works by
Jasper Cropsey included here.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Édouard Frère (1819-1886)
- Finishing the Meal
- ca. 1855
- Oil on panel
-
- French genre painter Édouard Frère was enormously popular
in America as a painter of poor waifs and kitchen scenes. The presence
of what were considered the finer specimens of Frère's work in Suydam's
collection allowed the artists in his circle to study and emulate them.
Frère's strongest influence was on the Americans' handling of color,
painterly touch, and suggestion of narrative.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Sanford R. Gifford, N.A. (1823-1880)
- Mount Mansfield, Vermont
- 1859
- Oil on canvas
-
- Sanford Gifford was one of Suydam's closest friends and was traveling
with him New Hampshire when Suydam fell ill and died in September 1865.
Mt. Mansfield was typical of the sites among the Green and White Mountains
that the artists frequented during their summer travels. In this depiction
of the site, one of nearly twenty that Gifford created after a visit in
the summer of 1858, the artist has turned our gaze away from the sun and
toward the uneven contours of the mountains. Instead of the tourists who
flocked to the area and its new hotels, Gifford has also returned us to
an imagined moment in history when Native Americans still lived in the
area. Often cited as a quintessential example of luminist aesthetics because
of the richness of its hazy atmosphere, Mt. Mansfield also draws
attention to the shared traits of asymmetry and heightened color that characterize
both Gifford's and Suydam's works.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- William Hart, N.A. (1823-1894)
- Twilight
- ca. 1860
- Oil on canvas
-
- A fellow tenant of the Tenth Street Studio Building with Suydam and
other members of their circle, William Hart helped to codify their shared
aesthetic principles in a series of lectures delivered at the Brooklyn
Academy of Design in 1865. Entitled The Field and the Easel, Hart's
lectures described their art as a balance between documents of specific
sites and embodiments of poetic sentiment. Twilight offers an example
of this balanced approach, depicting the outskirts of a village during
the ebbing moments of daylight as the campfire at left and homefire at
right match the sunset in color and warmth.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Thomas Hicks, N.A. (1823-1890)
- The Home Guard
- 1863
- Oil on canvas
-
- This seemingly satirical painting by Thomas Hicks is the only direct
representation of the Civil War in Suydam's extensive collection. Notable
for its sense of irony, the work shows a Union soldier occupied holding
yarn as he woos a young woman under the contemptuous watch of her chaperone,
rather than engaged in the service of his country. Moreover, the soldier
is no symbol of virility, with his balding head and slender limbs. Suydam
and Hicks were both pro-Union abolitionists, however, evidenced by Suydam's
ownership of Hicks' portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the work is
therefore more likely a veiled indictment of the Union's poor management
of its manpower than a critique of the soldiers themselves.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Thomas Hicks, N.A. (1823-1890)
- Italian Study
- ca. 184748
- Oil on paper mounted on composition board
-
- Thomas Hicks completed this rare landscape, unusual because Hicks was
predominantly a portraitist, while traveling through Europe as a student.
This romantic rendering of Italy's scenic ruins must have reminded Suydam
of his own creative efforts while on the Grand Tour earlier in the decade
and of the appeal that such sites of antiquity held for him.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Daniel Huntington, N.A. (1816-1906)
- The Fair Student
- 1858
- Oil on canvas
-
- This depiction of a young woman reading was painted by Daniel Huntington
while the artist was visiting London. The subject reflects a common theme
in Huntington's work: the transmission of learning between generations.
The figure's dress, the decorative objects in the room, and the Baroque
style of the patriarchal portrait on the wall collectively suggest that
Huntington's work is intended to be a period piece. Suydam apparently preferred
the present, somewhat subjective title for the work over the more descriptive
one that Huntington originally used to describe it in his account book,
Girl Reading.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Daniel Huntington, N.A. (1816-1906)
- James Augustus Suydam, N.A.
- 1862
- Oil on canvas
-
- Daniel Huntington's portrait of Suydam was created at the height of
Suydam's professional career and shortly after Suydam's elected as a full
National Academician (N.A.), a designation that is proudly incorporated
into the painting's title. Suydam is depicted not against a peaceful, luminous
coast such as those that he often depicted in his own work, but rather
an overcast, stormy seascape. Suydam's distant expression combined with
the turbulent backdrop manifest both his preoccupation with the events
of the Civil War and the persistent depression that plagued him in adulthood.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Daniel Huntington, N.A. (1816-1906)
- Glimpses from the Forest
- 1856
- Oil on canvas
-
- Originally listed in Daniel Huntington's account book as A Look
out from the Woods, this painting demonstrates the artist's early interest
in landscape painting, which he would largely abandon during the later
1850s for a distinguished career in portraiture. Such pristine forest was
increasingly rare in the northeast during mid-century as Americans' voracious
need for lumber, farmland, and pastures rapidly stripped the area of its
old-growth trees. Huntington's landscape, like his genre paintings in Suydam's
collection, depicts a bygone moment in America, rather than the treeless
shorelines of Suydam's own contemporary views.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Eastman Johnson, N.A. (1824-1906)
- The Art Lover
- 1859
- Oil on canvas
-
- Based on a drawing that he made while living and working in The Hague
during the early 1850s, Eastman Johnson's The Art Lover depicts
a Dutch girl's aesthetic education from a book of landscape prints. Suydam's
purchase of Johnson's painting after what is believed to be its first exhibition
in 1859 illustrates Suydam's interest in Dutch culture and his own Dutch
heritage. The subject's introspection and the composition's rich contrasts
of light and dark are aspects of the Dutch visual tradition that influenced
both Johnson and Suydam.
-
- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
-
- Miner Kellogg, H.N.A. (1814-1889)
- Circassian Girl
- undated
- Oil on panel
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- Circassian women became the subject of considerable fascination among
Americans during the mid-nineteenth century. Considered the ideal Caucasian
type, historically found in what is today southwestern Russia, their legendary
beauty was famously exploited after Russian conquest of their homeland
during mid-century forced them to flee into neighboring Turkey. Kellogg's
familiarity with the Near East, illustrated here by the Circassian Girl,
encouraged Suydam to include the region on his extended Grand Tour during
the early 1840s.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- John F. Kensett, N.A. (1816-1872)
- Approaching Shower
- 1859
- Oil on canvas
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- Similar in tone to much of Suydam's work, John F. Kensett's Approaching
Shower provides a sense of pastoral balance with nature. A man leads
his herd of cattle home ahead of the coming rain, which itself offers an
opportune excuse to illustrate the effects of rain on the atmosphere. The
restful tenor of this painting is interrupted only by the dead branch of
a tree at the lower right that foretells the snaking form of a lightning
strike.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- John F. Kensett, N.A. (1816-1872)
- Bash Bish
- 1855
- Oil on canvas
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- Bash Bish is widely recognized as one of John F. Kensett's masterworks.
The painting depicts a popular waterfall in the Berkshire Mountains of
western Massachusetts, near Stockbridge, that was admired as "one
of the wildest and most beautiful cascades in the country," according
to a writer for The Crayon in 1855. Kensett depicted the site repeatedly
during the 1850s, altering the scale, format, vantage point, and effects
in each. This version, painted on commission from Suydam, and is the largest
of the series and thrusts the viewer out into the open water of the pool
at the waterfall's base while creating a symmetrical balance of the cliffs
on either side of the falls. In contrast to the majestic, overwhelming
power of Niagara, Bash Bish Falls provides a more subtle and restrained
subject with its almost three-hundred-foot cliffs skewed to a more human
scale. The fact that this, one of Kensett's most ambitious compositions,
was painted on commission from his student, Suydam, reveals the complexity
of their evolving relationship.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- John F. Kensett, N.A. (1816-1872)
- Glimpse through the Wood
- undated
- Oil on canvas
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- This modest forest interior differs dramatically in kind from the other
forest interior by John F. Kensett in Suydam's collection, his large-scale
Bash Bish. This more intimate scene conveys the feeling of intimacy
that characterized Suydam's own early work during the 1850s. Kensett often
painted in small scale, providing an important model for Suydam's early
oil paintings.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- John F. Kensett, N.A. (1816-1872)
- On the Narragansett Coast
- 1864
- Oil on canvas
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- The close interaction of Suydam and John F. Kensett as colleagues during
the later phase of Suydam's career is documented by this painting. In their
shared subject, degree of abstraction, compositional arrangement, saturated
color, tonal gradation in the sky, and contemplative mood, the two artists
worked closely toward similar ends. Their poetic landscapes of Narragansett
Bay during the 1860s provide important evidence of their collective effort
and mutual influence.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- John F. Kensett, N.A. (1816-1872)
- Study from Nature
- undated
- Oil on canvas
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- This somewhat uncharacteristic scene by Kensett offers a composite
of elements of his better-known subjects of forest interiors and mountain
valleys. Likely a depiction of New Hampshire or Vermont, Kensett has balanced
the carefully rendered birches and rock at the right with the more atmospheric
form of the mountain at the left. That balance of specific detail with
atmospheric effect is a recurring trait of luminist painting.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- George Cochran Lambdin, N.A. (1830-1896)
- Drawing the Elephant
- 1859
- Oil on canvas
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- Among the scenes of childhood that Suydam acquired, the theme of nurturing
art talent in the young takes on special importance. Here we see the work
of a realist painter acted out in miniature: one child holds up a toy elephant
while the young artist stares intently at the model as she draws, and the
youngest looks on in admiration. This is one of Lambdin's finer genre scenes
and it features in the background a vase of roses, which became his specialty
after the Civil War.
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- National Academy Museum, Bequest of James A. Suydam
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- Louis Lang, N.A. (1814-1893)
- The Fainting Spell
- 1860
- Oil on canvas
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- Suydam may have been John F. Kensett's closest professional colleague,
but Kensett's dearest friend was undoubtedly genre painter Louis Lang,
with whom he shared rooms at their boardinghouse. Lang's depiction of a
listless young woman in this composition adopts the popular Victorian theme
of feminine vulnerability and underscores the sentimentalism found in Suydam's
genre painting collection.
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