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Bierstadt and Other 19th-Century American Painters in ContextAuthor(s): Lance Mayer and Gay MyersSource: Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, Vol. 38, No. 1, Albert Bierstadtand 19th-Century American Art (Spring, 1999), pp. 55-67Published by: Maney Publishing on behalf of The American Institute for Conservation of Historic &Artistic WorksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3179838 .

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BIERSTADT AND OTHER 19TH-CENTURY AMERICAN PAINTERS IN CONTEXT

LANCE MAYER AND GAY MYERS

ABSTRACT-The work of Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is put into context by a study of con- temporaneous references that pertain specifical- ly to the appearance and presentation of Bier- stadt's paintings, including hanging practice, lighting, and framing. Documentary evidence is used to gain a better understanding of Bier- stadt's techniques. The authors' observations, after having treated a number of paintings by Bierstadt and his contemporaries and near-contemporaries, such as Thomas Cole (1801-48) and Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), are also in- cluded. This discussion in turn sheds light on the criticism of Bierstadt's methods that the artist suffered during his lifetime, as well as on the special problems of preservation of certain of Bierstadt's paintings.

TITRE-Bierstadt et autres peintres americains du XIXe siecle: une remise en contexte. RESUME-L'oeuvre d'Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) est mise en contexte au moyen d'une 6tude de ref6rences contemporaines A l'artiste qui traitent sp6cifiquement de l'apparence et de la presentation de ses tableaux, en particulier des pratiques pour l'accrochage, l'6clairage et l'encadrement. Les documents d'6poque sont utilises pour aider a mieux comprendre les techniques employees par Bierstadt. Les auteurs no- tent aussi leurs propres observations, obtenues lors du traitement de plusieurs tableaux de Bier- stadt et de ses contemporains ou quasi-contemporains, tels que Thomas Cole (1801-1848) et Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). Cette discussion apporte quelques eclaircissements quant aux critiques relatives aux methodes de Bier- stadt dont l'artiste fut l'objet au cours de sa car-

riere, ainsi que sur les problemes sp6cifiques de

preservation de certains de ses tableaux.

TITULO-Bierstadt y otros pintores norteamer- icanos del siglo XIX en contexto. RESUMEN-El trabajo de Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) es puesto en contexto a traves de un estudio de referencias contempor~neas que conciernen especificamente a la apariencia y presentaci6n de las pinturas de Bierstadt, incluyendo las practicas de colgado, iluminaci6n y enmarcado. Se utiliza evidencia documental para lograr un mejor entendimien- to de las tecnicas de Bierstadt. Tambien se in- cluyen las observaciones del autor despues de haber tratado varias de pinturas de Bierstadt y sus contemporineos o contemporineos cer- canos, como Thomas Cole (1801-1848) y Freder- ic Edwin Church (1826-1900). A su vez, esta dis- cusi6n arroja luz sobre la critica a los m6todos de Bierstadt que el artista sufri6 durante su vida, asi como tambien sobre los problemas especiales de preservaci6n de algunas de sus pinturas.

1. INTRODUCTION

This article was originally prepared to comple- ment the more technical papers at the sympo- sium held at the National Gallery of Art in 1992 in conjunction with the exhibition Albert Bier- stadt: Art and Enterprise. The catalog of that exhibition-which emphasizes the changing views of critics-inspired the authors to look for documents of the period relating to the technique, appearance, and settings of paintings by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and other American painters and to analyze these comments from a technical point of view. This kind of inquiry

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67



56 LANCE MAYER AND GAY MYERS

seems especially appropriate with Bierstadt because many of his critics focused on his technique and because special settings were so much a part of the way that the public experienced the large paintings of artists like Bierstadt and Fred- eric Edwin Church (1826-1900). The authors have also drawn upon their experience in treat- ing many 19th-century American paintings to

try to understand connections between tech-

nique and appearance as well as between technique and conservation problems.

2. PRESENTATION

The lighting and hanging of paintings are inex-

tricably connected. For instance, in a traditional

gallery with skylights in the ceiling, the amount of light falling on a painting might vary greatly from one section of wall to another or change ac-

cording to the weather and the time of day. Ar- tificial lighting, which developed in the 19th cen-

tury, is more controllable but the color of the

light can also make a painting appear different from the way it looks in daylight. The angle at which light strikes a painting is also important. A painting hung too high may reflect light from

skylights or ceiling-mounted artificial lights toward the viewer, making it difficult to see the

image. Poor lighting and direct reflections would have been especially noticeable on the large, dark, varnished paintings from the middle of the 19th century.

2.1. LIGHTING

The American critic and collector Jarves ([1864] 1960, 268) wrote, "Until recently... pictures were generally hung without regard even to light, so as to conform to the symmetry of the room." Some artists working in the second half of the 19th century realized that their paintings looked different in different kinds of light. San- ford Gifford (1823-80) described in a letter to

John Ferguson Weir that his painting of the Parthenon looked fine in good light but looked poor in dull light, so he took a great risk and re-

painted the entire sky, against Church's advice. Gifford (1880, 174) wrote that "now it looks better in a fine light, and will not suffer so much in a bad one." Other artists tried to disregard the limitations of lighting. It was said of the paintings of William Page (who shared a studio with Bierstadt in 1870): "Pictures painted in so low a

key, when hung upon the walls of our badly- lighted houses, can scarcely be seen; but [Page] has always held that they should not be falsely painted because houses are badly lighted" (Shel- don 1881, 225). Few artists reacted as strongly to bad lighting as an exhibitor at the National

Academy of Design in 1860: "Last year Elliot one day took out his knife and cut one of his

pictures out of its frame on the wall, being just- ly indignant at its having been stuck up in bad

light, several feet above the line of true vision"

(Cosmopolitan Art Journal 1861, 36). The lighting of Bierstadt's large western

scenes presented some special problems. In 1860, when his Base of the Rocky Mountains, Laramie Peak (1860, unlocated) was shown at the Tenth Street Studio Building, a reviewer observed that the lighting was poor (New York Tribune, March 27, 1860, quoted in Anderson and Ferber 1990). In 1864, when The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1863, Metropolitan Museum of Art) was first shown, a critic described his experience of look-

ing at the painting "under all circumstances of external light, in dark and bright weather, in

good and bad positions" (quoted in Hendricks 1974, 147). By the latter part of the 1860s, when he exhibited The Domes of the Yosemite (1867, St.

Johnsbury Atheneum), Bierstadt seems to have left less to the whims of weather or chance. The

lighting was described as very carefully controlled, and the point of view of the spectators was controlled as well by the construction of raised galleries (New York Post, May 7, 1867,

quoted in Anderson and Ferber 1990). Bierstadt's

large pictures apparently generated a great deal of thought and comments about proper viewing distance and height, which may have helped to stimulate the re-evaluation of hanging practices that occurred a little later in the 19th century.

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67



BIERSTADT AND OTHER NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN PAINTERS IN CONTEXT

Better control of lighting was possible because by the third quarter of the 19th century gas illu- mination was practical and widespread; period photographs of Bierstadt's studio at his home, Malkasten, show gas fixtures, and it is known that Bierstadt sometimes painted at night by gaslight. The exhibition space at the Tenth Street Studio Building also had what was described as brilliant gaslight (Weiss 1987). It was reported in 1864 that the paintings on exhibit at the Metro- politan Fair for the U.S. Sanitary Commission were illuminated by 490 gas jets (Hendricks 1974). Gaslight made evening exhibitions possible and, as Flexner (1970) has pointed out, allowed the new class of businessmen, who were becoming the new patrons of art, to come with their families to view paintings after a day of work.

The difference between daylight and gaslight was noticed at the time; in one case a viewer thought that Bierstadt's painting Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie (1866, Brooklyn Mu- seum) looked better by gaslight but was told by the artist that the painting looked better by daylight (Anderson and Ferber 1990).

2.2. HANGING PRACTICE

When Bierstadt began exhibiting his works, paintings were hung close together, often right up to the ceiling. This taste favored the overall decorative effect of a room at the expense of the individual work of art, and it allowed exhibitions to present more paintings for viewing and potential sale. But critics and artists were beginning to rebel against galleries and private own- ers hanging pictures so high that, as Philip Hamerton (1876, 134-35) wrote, "not a creature except the flies can even hope to behold them." Hamerton, a British writer whose books were published and widely distributed in America, made the poor hanging of paintings a bite noire. He wrote: "If a lad were to study Latin, and his tutor were to say to him, 'You shall not hold your book where you can read it, but it shall be placed at such a distance from you as to be il-

legible,' what would you think of that tutor? Would you not say that he was crazy? Well, but picture-hangers constantly do that" (Hamerton 1876,142). Or again: "When you go to a painter's studio and ask him to show you a picture, he does not run upstairs with it and hang it out at the window of the third storey and tell you to go out into the street and look up at it. No; he puts it on an easel, level with your eye, wheels the easel into the best light, and you really see the work. Now in a rationally contrived gallery you ought to be able to see every picture just as easily and comfortably as that" (Hamerton 1876, 243).

The 19th-century practice of hanging paintings with their tops leaning out away from the wall was made necessary in part because paintings were hung so high. This technique also helped to prevent glare by changing the angle at which light from above reflected off the surface of a painting. Today, most museums do not fol- low this practice, and they often have problems lighting tall, dark paintings without glare at the top. But the appearance of a painting could suffer if it were tilted so far forward that very little light fell on it. Thomas Cole once had to explain to his patron Daniel Wadsworth that some of the paintings that Wadsworth had lent to an exhibition at the National Academy of Design looked bad for this reason; the problem had to be corrected part way through the exhibition (Mc- Nulty 1983).

The spacing of paintings remained surpris- ingly tight, even in some of the new "reformed" schemes for hanging pictures. Clement and Hut- ton (1885, xiv) said of the new Grosvenor Gallery, which opened in 1877, "The pictures are not placed closely together, as is of necessity the rule in ordinary galleries, but a space of at least one foot is allowed on every side of each work."

2.3. FRAMING

Picture frames were an important part of the presentation of paintings; Bierstadt's paintings were sometimes framed in gold-leafed frames

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




Fig. 1. Stereograph of a gallery of paintings, Amer- ican, third quarter of the 19th century. Courtesy of William Schaefer Photographs and Fine Art, Chester, Connecticut

and sometimes in dark-stained wood frames, as is shown in photographs of The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak at the 1864 Sanitary Commission Fair in New York. A dark wood frame may have made Bierstadt's landscapes appear even

brighter by comparison and may have enhanced the illusionistic "window" effect, especially when the paintings were dramatically lit. But Hamerton (1876, 370), writing in 1871, specifi- cally disliked the massive dark wood frames in which Bierstadt's paintings were shown when

they were exhibited in England: "As a cornice for some room, richly furnished in carved wood, they would have been very noble and appropriate; as picture-frames, they had the radical vice of not showing the picture to advantage .... Gold adds to the splendour of a work of art more than any other surrounding."

The contrast between a wood frame and the

splendor of a gold frame is clearer when one sees a 19th-century gilt frame that has been protected from grime in a glazed shadow-box since it was made. Several such pristine examples of

gilt frames from Bierstadt's period can be found

at the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate, Norfolk, Con- necticut. Twentieth-century eyes have become so accustomed to worn, dirty, and deliberately patinated frames that gilt frames as 19th-centu-

ry artists saw them might look gaudy to us now. But seeing the brilliant reflections from a per- fectly preserved frame makes it possible to understand Thomas Cole's (1801-48) comment that the frame he had selected for a painting would

actually help to light it (McNulty 1983). It also

explains Thomas Sully's remark that Washington Allston (1779-1843) preferred the look of an old frame to the "glaring glitter" of a new one (Sully [1873] 1965, 31). Early photographs show some-

thing of the brilliant effect that a wall hung with

paintings in new, shiny gold frames would have made (fig. 1).

A practice that conservators have occasional-

ly noticed, and that can be documented in written sources as well, is some artists' preference for

finishing a painting after putting it into a frame

(Burnet 1850; Hamerton 1876). We do not know that Bierstadt did this, but many artists are said to have kept frames in their studios in order to

complete their paintings. M. E H. De Haas, for instance, was said to have put each picture into a frame when it was about half-done (Sheldon 1881).

3. BIERSTADT'S TECHNIQUE

An 1859 stereograph view of Albert Bierstadt and his New Bedford patrons (fig. 2) gives several clues about Bierstadt's working methods. The painting Thunderstorm in the Rocky Moun- tains (1859, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is on the easel. An examination of the original stereo-

graph (William Schaefer Photographs and Fine Art, Chester, Connecticut) shows that the painting is not very far along. The branches on the left are just single strokes; they will eventually become much more twisted and complex. The artist has begun the area of water at the lower

right with a series of strokes, and he has not yet begun painting the deer on the right. It is tempt- ing to try to decipher the small square shapes re-

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




Fig. 2. Bierstadt Brothers, stereograph of Albert Bierstadt painting. Courtesy of William Schaefer Pho-

tographs and Fine Art, Chester, Connecticut

sembling pieces of paper, which are leaning against the painting. A historian of photogra- phy who was shown this image suggested that the smaller objects could each be one half of a

stereograph card, because stereograph images have a square format (Hendrickson 1992). Bier- stadt and his two brothers were photographers who produced stereographs. Another possi- bility is that the small squares are studies on

paper, perhaps like the tiny, nearly square (3 1/4 in. by 3 3/4 in., 8 x 8 cm) oil sketch on

paper by Bierstadt, Mountain Landscape with Sunset (1870s, Lyman Allyn Art Museum). This

small painting has the appearance of a true sketch that was painted very quickly, all at

once, wet- into-wet.

3.1. STUDIES

Bierstadt produced a variety of different kinds of studies. Italian Costume Studies (fig. 3), dating from his first trip to Italy in 1857, is a very straightforward study in which the artist set down details of costumes that he later

incorporated into larger paintings. It is done in oil on paper, but unlike some other studies,

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




Fig. 3. Albert Bierstadt, Italian Costume Studies, 1857, oil on paper, 29.6 x 47 cm (11 11/16 x 18 1/2 in.) Lyman Allyn Art Museum, acc. no. 1948.9

where most of the sheet is covered with paint, here much of the blue paper is still visible. A close examination shows that when beginning this study Bierstadt put down very thin layers of paint, as on the neck of the container, and then used the texture of the paper to give liveliness to following strokes, as can be seen in the broken stroke at the top of the container and in several "practice" strokes along the edge of the design.

In the case of Italian Costume Studies, Bier- stadt applied a natural resin varnish layer lo-

cally in order to saturate or "wet up" the de-

sign. The varnish can be seen as a faint line of discoloration around the figures and as un- even gloss in reflected light. It is likely that after Bierstadt painted the image it was too

matte, or "sunken in," and he needed to varnish the design in order to see the details in the darks. Another case of this technique can be seen in the study Ox (undated, Oakland Mu-

seum, Kahn Collection), where an outline of

varnish can also be seen. Bierstadt must have varnished the study of the ox before it was

quite dry, because one can clearly see where the pigment was picked up and has bled into the varnish layer, especially around the head of the animal. Even watercolor artists sometimes felt this need to add a coating to better saturate works of art on paper. For example, a watercolor and gouache painting by Bierstadt's

predecessor in the West, Alfred Jacob Miller

(1810-74), Trappers Making their Escape from Hostile Blackfeet (undated, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University), shows that the artist applied a glossy gum coating locally in the darker areas so that he could have a greater range of values in the darks.

On some of Bierstadt's studies the paper was prepared with a thin white oil ground before painting. This is true of a highly finished

study of South Dome, Yosemite Valley (Richard Manoogian Collection), which is inscribed in

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




Fig. 4. Albert Bierstadt, In the Mountains (detail), 1867, oil on canvas, 89.4 cm X 127.6 cm (36 3/16 x 50 1/4 in.) Wadsworth Atheneum, acc. no. 1923.253

the artist's hand on the back, "May 1867," along with the name of the artist's wife, Rosalie O. Bierstadt. Albert Bierstadt was probably not ac-

tually in Yosemite in the spring of 1867. If the in-

scription marks the date that the painting was

given to his wife, the painting could be a very detailed study made earlier on-site, as opposed to a studio production made after the artist re- turned to New York. But compared to many other studies, it is much more finished; every part of the paper is covered with paint, and it can be seen as an independent completed painting on its own. The very careful application of paint is more similar to the handling of paint that Bier- stadt used in his larger finished paintings than to some of his quicker, sketchier studies.

The large number of preparatory sketches and studies that Bierstadt made became a topic of discussion during the artist's lifetime. It was re-

ported that 50 studies were made for his 1858

painting Lake Lucerne, now in the National

Gallery of Art (Home Journal, April 3,1858, quoted in Anderson and Ferber 1990). Six years later, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak was criticized

by American pre-Raphaelites who thought that

"twenty times the study that the artist has given to this picture,-study represented by actual

sketches, built upon a previous ten years ... would not have justified him in attempting to fill so large a canvas" (New Path, April 1864, 161,

quoted in Anderson and Ferber 1990, 194). By

1870, perhaps in response to this criticism, a kind of "sketch escalation" can be seen, and publicity around The Emerald Pool (1870, Chrysler Muse-

um) claimed that 200 studies were made for it

(Hendricks 1974).

3.2. FINISHED PAINTINGS

It is interesting to examine closely the surfaces of some of Bierstadt's completed paintings, because many of his strongest critics disliked his

painting methods and associated them with

techniques taught in Diisseldorf, where Bierstadt had studied. As the Diisseldorf style, which had been much admired in New York around mid-

century, fell in esteem during the following decades, both Bierstadt and the Dilsseldorf school were criticized for "conventional lifeless- ness" and "hardness" (Jarves [1864] 1960, quoted in Hendricks 1974, 144; The Albion, 11 May 1867, quoted in Hendricks 1974, 164, n. 29). Bier- stadt's straightforward method of applying paint can be seen in many of his paintings. For

example, in The Matterhorn (undated, private col-

lection, on loan to the Lyman Allyn Art Muse-

um), most of the painting was done wet-into- wet. Although the brush strokes accurately describe the subject, the strokes are rather repet- itive and would not be called beautiful or inter-

esting in their own right. In some passages, es-

pecially in the sunlit mountainside, the paint appears to have been quite viscous and sticky, forming small, stiff peaks as it came off of the artist's brush. Parts of the rocky foreground in the lower left were clearly painted in several layers over paint that was already dry, and there is some traction crackle in the nearby dark ever-

green trees.

Many of Bierstadt's paintings that are painted without excess medium or unusual added media are also in very good condition. However, his

technique varies enough that this is not always the case. For instance, some of the earliest paintings done in Europe, such as A Rustic Mill (1855,

private collection), show severe wrinkling, probably from excess oil in the paint. A few of Bier-

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




stadt's paintings from the 1860s also have traction crackle, such as In the Mountains (1867, Wadsworth Atheneum), which shows traction crackle over most of the surface of the painting (fig. 4).

In the Yosemite Valley (1866, Wadsworth

Atheneum), demonstrates Bierstadt's typical technique for his medium-sized paintings. The

technique is for the most part simple, using opaque paint, with few brush strokes that have a life of their own. Critics at the time sometimes called his paint application "hard" or "dry" (Watson's Weekly Art Journal, May 20, 1865, quoted in Hendricks 1974, 158, n. 20). One wonders whether some critics may have associated the lack of liveliness or personal expression in Bier- stadt's paint application with a lack of feeling in the painter. Even in the painting of the trees, the brushwork is very simple. It shows paint application that would seem old-fashioned, as more

painterly tricks of impasto with glazes dragged over them came into fashion with the rise in

popularity of the Barbizon School. By the 1860s,

George Inness (1812-94) was being praised for

his "rugged handling" and "great sprawling marks of the brush" and, significantly, for his

depth of feeling as well (Burke and Voorsanger 1987, 82). In the Yosemite Valley also shows one of

Bierstadt's mannerisms. He uses a very thin

layer of paint, having some opacity to it and

tending toward brownish, to represent the sur-

face of a body of water. A study of the surfaces of Bierstadt's paint-

ings illustrates Baigell's contention (1981) that it

was probably not just the amount of detail in

Bierstadt's paintings that some critics did not

like--other artists painted with as much detail-

but it was also the fact that Bierstadt's surfaces

are not variegated and that large areas of his

paintings are relatively uniformly painted. In

his larger paintings, unlike his small studies on

paper, Bierstadt rarely dragged his paint over

the texture of the support to enliven or vary the

application of his paint. Similarly, in his larger

paintings, he seldom glazed over texture that he had made beforehand with thick layers of im-

pasto or painted with colors that were thin

enough to show the marks of his brush. It may have hurt Bierstadt in the eyes of the

critics that his technique not only was simple and methodical but looks simple and methodical as well. The average viewer could be baffled by how the built-up texture and glazing of some other artists was done but could well imagine how Bierstadt's work was done, stroke by stroke.

On the other hand, when some critics said

they disliked the way that Bierstadt put on paint, they appear to have been criticizing his manner of representation-they were saying that he was not good enough at putting paint on canvas to make a successful illusion of the object represented. For instance, in 1863 a critic said of The Mountain Brook (1863, Collection of Gil

Michaels): "Again, the sense of paint is too

strong. ... The large boulder in the centre is not stone-like in texture, but rather like a huge mass

of gray paint" (New York Leader, April 18, 1863,

quoted in Anderson and Ferber 1990, 193). Sim-

ilarly, it was written in the American pre-

Raphaelite journal New Path that Bierstadt's The

Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak would have been better "if the marks of the brush had, by dexter-

ous handling, been made to stand for scrap and

fissure, crag and cranny, but as it is, we have

only too little geology and too much bristle"

(quoted in Ferber and Gerdts 1985, 31).

3.3. PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES

To understand the context of the criticism of

Bierstadt's technique, it is instructive to examine

the methods of paint application used by some

of the artist's predecessors and contemporaries. In a small painting on panel by Thomas Cole, Storm Near Mount Washington (ca. 1825-30, Ellen

Battell Stoeckel Estate), the handling of paint can be seen to be radically different from Bier-

stadt's. Cole loved to swirl the paint around

while it was still wet. His paint is more trans-

parent than Bierstadt's, so the brush strokes are

more easily traceable; they show the process and movement of the brush.

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




Fig. 5. Albert Bierstadt, The Burning Ship, oil on canvas, 76 x 127 cm (29 15/16 x 50 in.) Shelburne Museum, acc. no. 27.1.4-64

The same qualities of paint handling are seen in a medium-sized painting by Cole, Mount Aetna from Taormina (1844, Lyman Allyn Art Mu-

seum), as well as in his larger, slightly earlier version (1843) at the Wadsworth Atheneum, which at 10 ft. wide is as large as some of Bier- stadt's great pictures. Cole's larger Mount Aetna was painted very quickly, with a fairly big brush, and the thinly applied paint allows the warm

underlayers to show through. There are many wet-into-wet strokes that Cole has blended on the canvas or partly mixed on his palette so that

they come off the brush as distinct swirls of color. Cole painted this large painting in only five days (Parry 1988)-a far cry from Bierstadt, who worked for months on his large paintings.

There is also a technical difference between the study of Storm Near Mount Washington by Cole and any Bierstadt study that the authors have seen. Solubility tests and ultraviolet fluo- rescence indicate that Cole mixed a large amount of varnish with the dark areas of paint, possibly to get even more transparency than he could get with pure oil paint. Cole may have added varnish to his paint for reasons of speed and con- venience as well, so the painting would dry quickly and he could see the result immediately without having to varnish the painting and risk

disturbing the paint, as Bierstadt did when he varnished his Ox too soon.

A small study from 1850 by Church, New Eng- land Scenery (Lyman Allyn Art Museum) shows

many similarities with Cole: the paint is also ap-

plied thinly over a pinkish underlayer, and the

paint was moved around when it was wet with a kind of brush-stroking that is reminiscent of Cole's work. Church's larger 1851 painting, New

England Scenery (George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum), is similar to the study, except for some rearranged elements, but the paint application is tighter in style. The distinction in paint handling between small studies and large finished pictures blurs with Church (and perhaps to some degree with other landscape painters as

well), since Church did a number of small, very detailed paintings. A letter from Church gives a

potential customer a price list and asks what size he can afford and which kinds of subjects he likes, the implication being that the picture will be painted to order in the size wanted (Church 1854).

3.4. SPECIAL TECHNICAL PROBLEMS

Bierstadt's The Burning Ship (Shelburne Mu-

seum), probably painted in 1871 (fig. 5), has more complicated problems than most of the other Bierstadt paintings that we have treated. It is painted in extremely thin layers, and in some

places increased transparency of the paint may allow some of the underlayers to be more visible than they once were. A more precise interpreta- tion is complicated by the fact that the painting had been overcleaned in some places, and in other places residues of old varnish remain.

Solvent tests indicated that parts of the sky could be easily undercut by solvents, suggesting that an artist-applied retouch varnish was present. It makes sense that a retouch varnish would have been used on such a dark, subtle picture, because it would be extremely difficult for the artist to see what he was doing during the course of painting if the dark paint became "sunken in" and matte as it dried.

The sky was further complicated by some thin, oil-resin layers around the moon that may have been put on by the artist. They had become

browner with time and had been partly removed in a previous cleaning. These effects are ex-

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




tremely subtle, and the painting actually looks

quite good in normal light. But the effect that is visible around the moon is similar to problems that have developed on paintings by other

artists, where thin, subtle modifications of lighter colors, done in medium-rich paint, become brown as the medium darkens over time. A strik-

ing example is a painting of Niagara Falls by John

Ferguson Weir (1841-1926) (undated, Yale Uni-

versity Art Gallery), where the thinnest modifications of the white mist at the foot of the falls have turned irreversibly brown because there was too much medium in the layer.

Artists at the time knew that some of their

paint additives could have bad effects-that they

might turn dark, or might lead to a painting being damaged when it was cleaned-but many artists continued to use them. The authors came

across an interesting case of an extremely soluble

glaze, of a kind that rarely survives, on a paint-

ing from 1853 by Junius Brutus Stearns

(1810-85), Still Life with Trout and Fishing Tackle

(Toledo Museum of Art). The artist had rubbed a

very thin, dark brown layer into the texture of

the paint in order to define some of the shadows, and then partially wiped it off. Lint, probably from a rag that the artist used to wipe off the

glaze, is still visible in a few places. The dark

glaze is under an old varnish layer; it is ex-

tremely sensitive to even mild solvents and has

all the characteristics of bitumen-containing

paint. The authors had treated another painting

by Steams that had been damaged during a previous cleaning, possibly by the removal of a sim-

ilar layer. Fortunately, Still Life with Trout and

Fishing Tackle escaped damage when someone

in the past began cleaning in a corner but

thought better of it and stopped. The word "glazing" might have meant dif-

ferent things to different artists in the 19th cen-

tury. Church's Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford (1846, Wadsworth Atheneum) is mentioned by the artist in a letter in 1846. He writes that "some

of the gentlemen connected with the Wadsworth

Gallery are trying to purchase my Hooker pic-

ture. This I have improved by glazing, etc." (Na- tional Collection of Fine Arts 1966, 82). Church

might have meant framing the painting behind

glass. On the other hand, if he meant "glazing" in the sense of applying layers of transparent paint, it is interesting that the painting now looks

very straightforward and solidly painted. One wonders whether the term could have meant

simply putting on deeper shadows, using a

medium of drying oil rather than a special medium containing resin or other additives.

In looking at landscape paintings by Bierstadt and his contemporaries, we have not seen any actual evidence of the overall glazing or toning with bitumen or other slightly tinted layers that

is mentioned in painting manuals by Thomas

Sully ([1873] 1965) and John Burnet (1850). Bur-

net cites Joshua Reynolds's opinion that

Apelles's atramentum is a description of glazing. Jarves (1869), too, mentioned that something like

the atramentum of Apelles was used by painters of his own time for lowering the pitch of their

paintings. An ambiguous reference says that Gif- ford "varnished the finished picture so many times with boiled oil, or some other semi-trans-

parent or translucent substance, that a veil is

made between the canvas and the spectator's

eye," but the passage goes on in a confused way, and it is not really clear whether the layer re-

ferred to was tinted (Sheldon 1881, 18-19). Hartwell (1999) discusses some of the special

problems of Bierstadt's later paintings. In our

work we have also noticed unusual construc-

tion and materials in Bierstadt's late paintings. When we treated Indian Sunset, Deer by a Lake,

probably from the 1880s (Yale University Art

Gallery), we found that the paint was in some

places more transparent and glazelike than any

paint we had seen in his earlier work. The paint

layers were very sensitive to solvents, a fact that

may be related to the painting's dark, graphite-

containing ground, which was itself extremely sensitive to solvents. The painting is still mount-

ed on its original spring-cornered paneled

stretcher, patented in 1875 by Wright and Gard-

ner. Other painters were also apparently inter-

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




ested in the manufacturer's claims for this kind of stretcher. A painting by A. H. Wyant (1836-92), Landscape with Cows (ca. 1875-80, Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate) is stretched on a Wright and Gardner spring-cornered, paneled stretcher with exactly the same label as the Bierstadt Indi- an Sunset, Deer by a Lake. The authors have also seen an even earlier version of a spring-cornered stretcher, sold in New Haven and patented by Todd in 1866, on a portrait by an unknown

painter of Le Grand Lockwood (undated, Lock- wood-Mathews Mansion), who was, coinciden-

tally, the first owner of Bierstadt's Domes of the Yosemite.

Innovations like spring stretchers show that some artists were willing to use new technology to help to preserve their paintings. In the 1840s the cleaning of paintings at the National Gallery in London and Charles Eastlake's important book Materials for a History of Oil Painting (1847) had raised consciousness about conservation and the importance of good technique. By mid-

century many artists and art lovers were aware that paintings by artists of previous generations had not always lasted well. Jarves, for instance, wrote of Washington Allston's paintings that "like most colorists by temperament he experi- mented to a degree that has proved injurious to the permanent transparency and brilliancy of most of his pictures. Their subtler qualities are now gone forever" (Jarves [1864] 1960, 173). Of William Page it was said that "some of Mr.

Page's pictures, too, have lost color, or begun to

peel, the reason being that he has been fond of

making all sorts of experiments in the mixing of

pigments" (Sheldon 1881, 223). The techniques used by George Inness were a

sign that a strain of poor craftsmanship would continue well into the future of American landscape painting. George Inness Jr.'s description of his father's working methods, which were based in part on French Barbizon practice, sounds like a conservator's nightmare. Inness used large amounts of driers, a great deal of medium, and many layers of glazes (Inness 1917). He wrote that his father was one day visited by a student

from the Art Students League, who watched the painter as he squeezed a lot of raw umber on his palette, picked up the largest brush he could find, and with the aid of a medium that looked like Spaulding's glue he went at the canvas as though he were scrubbing the floor, smearing it over, sky and all, with a thin coat of brown. The

young man looked aghast, and when Pop was

through said: "But, Mr. Inness, do you mean to tell me that you resort to such methods as glazing to paint your pictures?" Father rushed up to the young man, and, glowering at him over his

glasses, as he held the big brush just under his visitor's nose, exclaimed: "Young man, have you come here from the Art Students League to tell me how to paint? Then go back there and tell them I'd paint with mud if it would give me the effect I wanted" (Inness 1917, 254-55).

One could not ask for a greater contrast to Bierstadt's generally careful methods and sound

techniques.

4. CONCLUSIONS

When standing in front of one of Bierstadt's

paintings, conservators should perhaps cele- brate, above all, Bierstadt's good craftsmanship, which makes it possible to still see, in most cases, the effects that the artist wanted the viewer to see. One cannot stand in front of one of Bier- stadt's large paintings without being impressed by another element of his technique-his au-

dacity in painting something so big, and with so much detail, that no one had quite done it in that way before. Audacity in the arts can be seen as another part of the context in which Bierstadt was painting. Moby Dick came out in 1851, and after Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, Matthew Arnold criticized Walt Whitman for thinking that he was a big man because he lived in a big country, which perhaps could have been said about Bierstadt as well. This kind of audacity seems not only typically American, but an element of the technique of some of the best and most distinctive things that have been done in the arts in America.

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67




REFERENCES

Anderson, N. K., and L. S. Ferber. 1990. Albert Bierstadt: Art and enterprise. New York: Brooklyn Museum in association with Hudson Hills Press.

Baigell, M. 1981. Albert Bierstadt. New York: Wat-

son-Guptill Publications.

Burke, D. B., and C. H. Voorsanger. 1987. The Hudson River School in eclipse. In American par- adise: The world of the Hudson River School. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. 71-98.

Burnet, J. 1850. An essay on the education of the

eye. In A treatise on painting in four parts. London:

J. and J. Leighton.

Church, F. 1854. Letter to E. P. Mitchell, Philadel-

phia, December 14. Archives of American Art, Historical Society of Pennsylvania Papers, roll P-

22, frame 103.

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19th century and their works. A handbook containing two thousand and fifty biographical sketches. 3d ed. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co.

Cosmopolitan Art Journal. 1861. 6:36.

Eastlake, C. 1847. Materials for a history of oil painting. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and

Longmans.

Ferber, L. S., and W. H. Gerdts. 1985. The new

path: Ruskin and the American pre-Raphaelites. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum and Schocken

Books, Inc.

Flexner, J. T. 1970. Nineteenth century American

painting. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Gifford, S. R. 1880. Letter to John Ferguson Weir,

June 10, Archives of American Art, John Fergu- son Weir Papers, roll D-129, frames 174-75.

Hamerton, P. G. 1876. Thoughts about art. Rev. ed. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Hartwell, D. M. 1999. Bierstadt's late paintings: Methods, materials, and madness. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 38(1):33-44.

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London, Conn. 06320.

Inness, G. Jr. 1917. Life, art, and letters of George In- ness. New York: Century Co.

Jarves, J. J. [1864] 1960. The art idea. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

Jarves, J. J. 1869. Art thoughts. New York: Hurd and Houghton.

McNulty, J. B., ed. 1983. The correspondence of Thomas Cole and Daniel Wadsworth: Letters in the Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, and in the New York State Library, Albany, New York. Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society.

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lection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution.

Parry, E. C. III 1988. The art of Thomas Cole: Ambi-

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hundred and four examples of the work engraved on wood. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

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York: Reinhold Publishing Corp.

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Weiss, I. 1987. Poetic landscape: The art and experience of Sanford R. Gifford. Newark, Del.: Univer- sity of Delaware Press.

LANCE MAYER and GAY MYERS are both

graduates of the conservation training program at the Intermuseum Laboratory in Oberlin, Ohio. Since 1981, they have been in New London, Con- necticut, where they spend the majority of their time working as independent conservators for many large and small museums as well as private collectors. For a number of years they have carried out research and published on painting materials and methods, and were recently awarded a Winterthur Fellowship to study 19th- century American painters' techniques. Authors' address: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 625 Williams St., New London, CT 06320

JAIC 38 (1999):55-67



albert bierstadt and 19th-century american art || bierstadt and other 19th-century american painters...

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