American Paintings – NY&SB

In the last two weeks I’ve had the opportunity to view two new installations of American paintings, 19th century through the Ashcan School, one at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the other at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Surprisingly, but perhaps because of my different expectations, the former was disappointing while the latter was thrilling.
I had no idea that Santa Barbara, hidden in storage, had a relatively comprehensive collection, covering the major artists and schools – the kind of collection I’ve been lobbying the MIA to pursue for the last dozen years. The works, with two exceptions, are not “museum masterpieces,” but they are highly representative and provide a framework for anyone wanting to learn about American art history.
The two masterpieces in my view (all of this, of course, is my view) are William Merritt Chase’s “Lady in Pink” (1886) and George Inness’s “Morning, Catskill Valley” (1894) (titles abbreviated throughout). The Chase is a worthy substitute for a Whistler and could just as easily be called, “Symphony in Peach,” as the sitter’s dress and the background are slightly different shades of the same color, resulting in a harmony that is elegance personified. Chase followed Whistler’s model and painted with just as much confidence – hence the grand scale. The frame as well as the painting, it should be noted, would hold its own in any museum in the country.
Inness had a long career and large output, moving from carefully delineated and realistic landscapes to landscapes (always landscapes) so soft and blurred as to be ethereal, if not spiritual. This Catskill Valley scene falls perfectly in the middle. His technique reflects Impressionism in the summary way he sketches in even the foreground cow, yet the cows, the farmer in the field, the house on the hill come through, at some distance from the canvas, as distinct and specific, grounding the almost abstract composition in a world we recognize as real and American.
The Chase and the Inness are two of the larger works in the exhibition, which adds to their importance for this collection. The best small work is, fortunately, by another of the top ten American artists of the period, Childe Hassam, “Manhattan Club” (c. 1894). Despite its size, it has everything you could want in a Hassam painting of La Belle Epoque in New York: the clothes, the architecture, the carriage, the specific context, the all-encompassing vision. The contrast between the marble and brick facades of the two background buildings is deliciousness itself. In the center foreground we see two well-dressed couples passing each other, like a dancing do-si-do, animating the scene, oh so politely.
The Hudson River School marches around the opening gallery almost like a textbook, missing, perhaps, only Asher Durand, although his absence is no more notable than his presence would be. Alvan Fisher (1819) and Thomas Birch (1835) represent the Romantic era of American landscape, when it had yet to break free of its European, Claudean heritage to celebrate the American scene just for what it was. Neither work is particularly good, but together they are instructive. They are of a piece with Thomas Cole’s horrendous “Meeting of the Waters” (1847), the largest work in the show, left mercifully unfinished. The label describes the combination of “picturesque, sublime and beautiful,” typical of Cole’s allegories, and the best I can see of the work is that it is typical of Cole at his worst, which is pretty bad. At the same time that Jasper Cropsey is exquisitely delineating rocks, trees and waterfalls of the Eastern woods (see below), Cole prominently displays a gondola in the foreground on his mythical river of life.
Cropsey’s “Javetta Falls” (1846) kicks off a wonderful wall of mid-century American realism. His subject is Kensett-like in its intimate viewpoint and attention to detail, while the Kensett that hangs next to it is a familiar beach-in-profile scene by that master of landscape – not one of his best 200 paintings, perhaps, but still quite representative and respectable. William Haseltine’s “Indian Rock” (1863 or 1868) is similarly of a rocky ocean shoreline. The paint is flatter than Kensett’s, and Haseltine is not in Kensett’s league as an artist, but this is a fine example, probably as good as Haseltine gets.
Albert Bierstadt is the great painter of the American West, and “Mirror Lake” (1864) makes this point despite its small scale. In the distance rise the impossibly grand peaks in their mysterious haze, while the foreground offers a scene with animals and people you could step into. This is restrained Bierstadt, combining grandeur and intimacy. Thomas Moran, Bierstadt’s only rival, is present with two typical canvases, “Mountain Landscape” (1864) a view of the West and “Veracruz” (1885) a later, Turner-inspired vision of Mexico. The only thing missing from a complete picture of Moran’s oeuvre is one of his earlier, plainer paintings of Pennsylvania.
Hanging next to the Inness is one of the room’s two real disappointments, a Lockwood de Forest, “California Coastal Range” (1923) that has none of the magic or place-specific mood of his sketches or the views of Egypt I have seen. He seems to be included merely for his local connection, when at his best he can hold his own with all but a few of the artists in this show. The other letdown is Sanford Gifford’s “Isola Bella,” which is truly a bad painting by any measure. Gifford is a master of light and atmosphere, but here his mist makes no sense. A mid-distant island is distinctly drawn, but the hills behind it are almost invisible. Then a snow-covered peak much further off is quite clear. The colors appear bleached out, representing no sunset I have ever witnessed, if that is, in fact, the time of day.
The Gifford follows two superior sunset scenes. In Frederic Church’s “Moonrise in Greece” (1889), the setting sun throws a spotlight on three ruined Corinthian columns, with the moon rising on the distant horizon. Adding to the appeal of this picture is its provenance: a gift from the widow of Lockwood de Forest, who was a pupil of Church’s. Church’s works are among the highest-priced on the market, so this is a wonderful way to have acquired one.
Francis Silva’s painting is called “Sunset Off City Island” (c. 1880), but it appears that the sun has gone down some time ago. With the moon a tiny sliver in the sky, Silva has taken on a major lighting challenge, and he is largely successful. Silva does not have quite the stature of Fitz Henry Lane, absent from this collection, but he paints similar subjects in the same Luminist style, and this work fills that niche admirably. Ralph Blakelock, on the other hand, is sui generis, and his small nighttime scene, “Lake By Moonlight,” contains nothing unusual for him but is enough to let you recognize any other Blakelock you’ll see in the future.
The next gallery in the exhibition brings us into the 20th century, skipping American Impressionism and Tonalism and landing squarely in the Ashcan School, with a particular nod to a famous 1908 exhibition by a group calling themselves The Eight. While Santa Barbara manages to have examples by every artist of this school, the unfortunate fact is that most of the examples aren’t very good, and certainly are not on a par with the Hudson River paintings in the first room.
There is not much to say about the works by Arthur Davies, Maurice Prendergast, George Luks, Louis Eilshemius and even Everett Shinn, except that they probably should have stayed in storage. John Sloan’s “City from the Palisades” (1908) is a decent men’s-club picture, and I rather like the Gifford Beal, although he is generally rated a minor talent. The only painting in this bunch worthy of long-term display is George Bellows’s “Steaming Streets” (1908), in which the grit of the city is combined with its raw energy in a composition daring-for-the-time.
Moving out of the city and this particular school, Frederic Remington is well represented by “Fight Over the Water Hole” (1897), a fanciful grisaille that neatly captures what Remington was about and is easy on the eyes. Stuary Davis’s “Yellow Hills” (1918), by contrast, looks to the future, showing how the Armory Show led to the birth of American Modernism. It is not given much context, but it is a fine painting.
Two big names are offered but are best forgotten: John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer. Neither painting ranks among the top 500 works by either artist and are present for their name value alone. The rest of the exhibition is largely skippable. There are mediocre still lifes by Peto and Harnett, although it is instructive to see the increase in sophistication from Harnett’s 1870 “Secretary’s Table” to his 1885 “Still Life” (the latter belonging to the Hammer Collection, not the SBMA). Severin Roesen’s “Still Life” (1848) is one of hundreds, although earlier than many. The only surprise in the still life section is a study of grapefruit by Edward Leavitt, whom I had not seen before, and whose work, at least, jumps off the wall.
The final wall holds a handful of genre paintings, the lowest of the low in American art. William Sidney Mount and one or two others aside, American genre paintings are derivative of far superior European models – Chardin and 17th-century Dutch, in particular – and feature a cloying sentimentality that makes them hard to look at, except perhaps on chocolate boxes. John George Brown’s “Boy Fishing” (1877) is the most saccharine of the sweeteners, but not by much.
Fortunately, by the time one gets to the display of genre paintings, the visitor has been so uplifted and impressed by what has come before that he leaves with the overall feeling of astonishment that this small museum has had such a treasure trove of American art in its basement for so long.

The holdings of the Met came as no surprise: they have been on display, albeit in different form, for many years. (Interesting newly learned fact: the Met’s American Wing was founded by then-Met-president Robert de Forest, Lockwood’s brother.) What was new was the organization, or more specifically the rationalization, of the collection. The galleries now have a similar layout, whereas before there were small rooms, two-story spaces, a mezzanine, stairways, and a grand salon with painting stacked to the ceiling. Each space has a theme: colonial portraits, the Civil War, American life 1860-1880, that sort of thing. Room for idiosyncracy has been deleted. At the end of the day, I couldn’t help wondering if some paintings had been hung because they fit a category so well, while others were omitted because they didn’t. (For example, one of my favorites, Charles Caryl Coleman’s “Apple Blossoms,” a purely decorative work painted in Europe, has been relegated to a period room on a lower floor.)
One advantage of the previous salon-hang was that you could pick out works you liked, or look for artists who interested you, without being bothered that other paintings held no particular interest. In the new display, with a more limited number of paintings hung, each time I came upon a mediocre piece I felt let down. And truth be told, that’s the way I felt about 80% of the objects. Instead of noting what I didn’t like, or found mediocre, I ended up writing down my favorite paintings, which, with one exception, averaged out to little more than one per gallery.
The exception, in some ways a surprise but in the main not, was the gallery featuring John Frederick Kensett. I knew, of course, his large painting “Lake George” (1869) from the American Sublime show that came to Minneapolis a decade ago. It bears repeated, and constant, viewings. Just as sublime, and new to me, was his “Hudson River Scene” (1857), a majestic landscape of Claudean composition, made real by traces of humanity in an S-curve leading from foreground to back. There is more depth in this painting than anything else around it, with linear and aerial perspective both leading the eye along the water, and the hidden sun lighting up a far-off hill in the center distance. Kensett’s trademark rocks appear abridged on the right side, and all the other familiar touches are present: sailboats on the water, a small port town, smoke from a cabin on the opposite shore. Green, gray and a little brown are all the colors he needs, although the sky adds a little drama with its clouds of dark grey, peach and bright white.
The other surprise is the suite of six small canvases, all painted in 1872 and among a total of 38 from the “Last Summer” given to the Met by Kensett’s brother after the artist’s sudden death that year. They are all different, but all closely attuned to the natural world. Most remarkable is “Sunset on the Sea,” a luminous view that verges on abstraction: sea, sun, sky – no boats break the flat horizon line. Whistler did much the same thing in Europe a few years later, but Kensett manages to keep his image grounded in our world.
As boring as it may be, I will spend the rest of this appraisal simply listing the paintings about which I had no reservations, paintings I would want in my museum. Lest I be accused of being overly picky, I should note that when I left the American Wing and exited through the galleries of European art, I felt that the ratio of important works to space fillers immediately soared.
John Singleton Copley, “Mrs. John Winthrop” (the Boy with a Squirrel has his head pasted onto someone else’s body)
Ralph Earl, “Elijah Boardman” (1789) – great stockings, fun background, handsome face and a foot that projects out of the frame.
George P.A. Healy, “Euphemia White van Rensselaer” (1842) – stunning yellow bonnet, recalling best portraits of Lawrence, Rubens, Gainsborough.
William Sidney Mount, “Cider Making” (1840-41)
George Caleb Bingham, “Fur Traders Descending the Missouri” (1845 ) – these are two classics by the greatest mid-century genre painters, of Long Island and the Mississippi, respectively.
Frederic Edwin Church, “The Parthenon” (1871)
William Bradford, “An Arctic Summer” (1871) – the wonders of 19th-century travel by Luminist masters.
Winslow Homer, “The Veteran in a New Field” (1865) – classical but topical
Kenyon Cox, “Augustus Saint-Gaudens” (1887/1908) – tonally beautiful, the artist at work.
Albert Bierstadt, “Merced River, Yosemite Valley” (1866) – the height of Romanticism, American style
Winslow Homer, “The Gulf Stream” (1899) – later Homer, more existential, more universal
Thomas Eakins, “Pushing for Rail” (1871), “The Champion Single Sculls” (1874), The Writing Master” (1882) – America’s greatest artist is well represented
John Henry Twachtman, “Arques-la-Bataille” (1885) – a very American Tonalist landscape
Theodore Robinson, “Low Tide, Riverside Yacht Club” (1894) – French Impressionism comes to America
Julian Alden Weir, “The Factory Village” (1897) – rich, strong, secure, industrial America
William Lamb Picknell, “Banks of the Loing” (1894) – Sisley himself couldn’t do better.
William Merritt Chase, “James Abbott McNeill Whistler” (1885) – the full-length portraits are stars of the collection
John Singer Sargent, “Mrs. Hugh Hammersley” (1892) – how rich can furniture and fabric be!
James McNeill Whistler, “Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Black: Portrait of Theodore Duret” (1883)
Thomas Eakins, “The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton” (1900)
Elihu Vedder, “Lair of the Sea Serpent” (1899) – the quintessential fantastical.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, “Flight Into Egypt” (1923) – modernly timeless and most spiritual.
James White Alexander, “Study in Black and Green” (1906)
Mary Cassatt, “The Cup of Tea” (1880), “Lady at the Tea Table” (1885) – the first is in the school of Monet and Morisot and is the ultimate American Impressionist painting; the latter, much sterner, derives from Degas and Manet.
Childe Hassam, “Peach Blossoms – Villiers-le-Bel” (1887) – the most decorative of Americans at his prettiest.
William Merritt Chase, “For the Little One” (1896), “At the Seashore” (1892) – American period painter, par excellence.
Robert Reid, “Fleur de Lis” (1905) – esthetic America at century-turn.
George Bellows, “Swans in Central Park” (1906) – unusual composition, very 20th century.
Maurice Prendergast, “Central Park” (1914-15) – not his best, but still a Prendergast
As I look back on all these works, I say, not bad after all. Then again, for every work I have singled out, there are four that didn’t excite – and this is the Met.