Description
Signature: Signed Lower Left
Medium/Ground: Oil / Canvas
Size Inches: 39″ x 66″ , Massive Painting Size 60″ x 86″
Size CM: 99.06 cm x 167.64 cm
Year Created: c. 1863
Provenance: Thomas Colville Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, 2007; Private Collection, Michigan
Manoogian Collection, MI, Private Collection, Florida
Exhibitions: Petoskey, Michigan, Crooked Tree Arts Center, 2009; Savannah, Georgia, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2010
Lot Notes: Signed lower left “James M. Hart” painted in the Adirondacks, early 1860’s….these works from this period are
considered his best, this impressive size is one of his finest achievements. See High Museum James Hart as comparison.
Reverse bears label from Thomas Colville Fine Art Gallery
At age 22, he went to Germany and enrolled in the Dusseldorf Art Academy for three years and returned to Albany where he opened a studio and taught and painted until 1857 when he established a studio in New York City. There members of the newly rich, post-Civil War society were delighted with his serene, rural landscapes. It was a time when New York “swarmed with people newly rich and feverishly eager to acquire at once the trappings and paraphernalia of culture, oil paintings included.
James garnished his landscapes with barnyard animals, chiefly cows, and painted them with such fidelity that his delighted customers thought they could distinguish the Alderneys from the Guernseys.” However, on occasion he would go into the wilderness, the Catskills were not “wild enough” any longer, so the Adirondacks were his chosen scenery. At this time he was chosen to be the President of the National Academy of Art in NYC. He held this position for many years
The idea was to suggest that rural America was an idyllic place. The real American landscape was the untouched and undeveloped Adirondacks. This massive oil painting is the finest example of his works.
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