Sheffield School of Interior Design Distance Education

Welcome to the series that we\'ve created especially for Sheffield\'s Designer Monthly. Because Sheffield\'s Complete Course in Interior Design is a concentrated vocational training program, it does not delve into the history of art and design to the extent that a four-year college program might.

However, as Sheffield students know, we firmly believe that students of Interior design must reward themselves at every opportunity by viewing and enjoying all forms of art. Whether it\'s design, painting, architecture or music, your clients are paying you for your sense of taste. That means that the more areas of human creativity you sample, the richer your own sense of the world and the history of art and architecture will become.

We also know that not everyone lives near the wonderful collections of art and design that we enjoy here in New York City. That\'s why we\'ve created this series. By reading the articles in this series and using the Internet to view the illustrations we cite, you\'ll be able to learn a lot about each of the topics we cover.

Why don\'t we illustrate the article with images and photographs? The answer has to do with the ever-changing question of intellectual property on the Internet. Because of copyright restrictions on images, we have chosen not to scan or take them from the Internet. The best way to utilize this article is to print it out and go to the sites suggested in parentheses as you read.

[Please note: When we went to press these links were all working. Over time some may not function. You can always search for relevant individuals or subjects using your favorite search engine. Please also note that our policy of including hot links in certain articles does not constitute our company\'s endorsement of the content of other Web sites or of their policies or products.]

This series is being written by a New York writer named Susanne Reece, who helped us develop this concept. Susanne is an ideal candidate for the job because she was a graduate student in art history before becoming a professional writer. If you have comments, suggestions or topics you would like to see us cover, feel free to contact us at art@sheffield.edu.

American Painting: The Beginnings

We're pleased to present the first part of a series on American Painting from Colonial times through the 19th Century. This month we'll be discussing the Limner tradition – traveling artists in early America who painted everything from signs to portraits In subsequent articles we'll feature American Trompe L'oeil, Portraiture both before and after the advent of photography, and 19th century American landscapes.

The early Colonists in America brought with them many of the elements that continue to make the United States great: determination, love of freedom, a strong work ethic, inventiveness, faith, and good old Yankee ingenuity. They also brought an appreciation for and ability to make beautiful things – fine woodwork, carpentry, metalwork and textiles. Among the colonists were the craftspeople who stood at the very beginnings of an artistic tradition that would grow, prosper and eventually surpass the European traditions on which it was based to become the vanguard.

The early Colonists were practical. Art had a place, but it had to be practical. Finely etched metal vessels and decoratively carved and painted wooden furniture was in demand; sculpture and easel painting were not. A market for non-religious art thrived in major European cities like Antwerp and Amsterdam, where wealthy merchants purchased still-lifes, landscapes and seascapes, and genre scenes (scenes from everyday life) to decorate their fashionable homes. In the Colonies, the only form of painting that proved lucrative was portrait painting. Portraits, while providing decoration for the home, served the practical purpose of recording one's family for posterity. Once a luxury of royalty and aristocracy, portrait painting had been liberated during the sixteenth century in Europe by wealthy merchants eager to take on the trappings of the upper classes. Individual portraits of man and wife intended to hang side by side on a wall (pendant portraits), like the Portrait of Stephanus Geraerdts and Portrait of Isabella Coymans, (his portrait, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp; hers, private collection) by the Dutch painter Frans Hals, c.1650, as well as family group portraits were popular in Northern Europe from the sixteenth century. This tradition was carried into the New World by Dutch and English Colonists. One of the earliest American portrait paintings to survive is the Portrait of Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary, (c.1674; oil on canvas; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester Massachussets).

As is typical for this period, we do not know the name of the artist who painted the portrait of Elizabeth Freake and her baby – he is simply called the Freake-Gibbs painter, or "limner," after the families whose likenesses he captured on canvas. Limners–the term dates to the Middle Ages and originally referred to manuscript painters–were itinerant journeyman painters who traveled from town to town working primarily as decorative painters, making signs, decorating wood furniture and wood detailing in houses and on carriages. When the opportunity arose, they painted portraits. It was impossible for academically trained European painters to make a living in the Colonies. The limners were self-taught, and learned what they could from imported European portraits and engravings.

The Portrait of Mrs. Freake and Baby Mary is obviously based on European models. When compared with Frans Hals' Portrait of Isabella Coymans, we notice the same three-quarter view, with the subject dressed to the nines and placed before a dark background. Mrs. Freake was originally painted alone, and her portrait was intended as a pendant to her husband John's portrait, also attributed to the Freake-Gibbs limner. Baby Mary was added later. John Freake was a Boston lawyer and merchant. Elizabeth is dressed stylishly in a gown with a red underskirt and a delicate lace collar. Hardly a model of Puritan austerity, she also wears a pearl necklace. The chair on which she sits is richly carved and is upholstered in lush, hand-knotted "Turkish work."

Stylistically, the Freake-Gibbs limner's work is quite different from its European models. Although he attempts to create a three-dimensional effect with highlights and shadows, the overall result is flat and angular. The self-taught limner painters, for the most part, were unable to recreate the sophisticated shading and perspective techniques used by their professionally-trained European counterparts. The flat decorativeness of Colonial American portraits, though, is part of their charm, and we recognize the same impulse in true folk painters (not ones who consciously adopt a naive or primitive style), like Grandma Moses.

Limners continued to work into the nineteenth century; however, already by the Revolutionary period in America, expectations for art in the Colonies were changing. The difference between Gilbert Stuart's c.1793 Portrait of Mrs.Richard Yates, (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the portrait of Mrs. Freake is astounding. In just over a hundred years, American painters had caught up with their European counterparts. Stuart, who was born in Rhode Island, studied at Harvard, and after his graduation studied painting in Europe, handles paint with subtlety and finesse. He captures a sense of life in his sitter, and we get a feeling for the personality of this industrious Yankee matron as she looks up at us from her sewing.

Gilbert Stuart and his contemporaries, like John Singleton Copley, who portrayed none other than Paul Revere, (1768, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) worked in established cities, for more sophisticated and urbane patrons. Copley's stepfather was a print collector and was close friends with Scottish-born and European-trained painter John Smibert, who had a large collection of European prints and paintings. Copley, who began painting as a child, learned from the best; Smibert's collection included works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Poussin and Chardin, as well as copies of famous paintings Smibert made while on a tour of Italy.

With the Revolution and the birth of the new republic, the demand for different kinds of painting grew. Portraits remained a staple, but artists were now called upon to chronicle the history of a nation. John Trumbull's The Declaration of Independence, 1786-97 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut;) rivals the grand history paintings of his French mentor, the great history painter Jacques-Louis David, who he met while studying painting in Europe. Like David painting of a scene from the French Revolution, The Tennis Court Oath, (Begun 1791), Trumbull's portrayal of the founding fathers is vivid and dramatic, rendered in exacting detail, with expert handling of perspective and three-dimensional modeling.

The nineteenth century would see the addition of landscape painting as an important component of the American painting tradition. As the country spread towards the West coast, painters like Albert Bierstadt claimed and celebrated a distinctly American landscape in works like The Oregon Trail, (1869; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio).

While Bierstadt and others continued to rival and even surpass their European contemporaries, the Limner tradition quietly continued into the 19th century. Portraits like the Memorial to Nicholas M.S. Catlin, (c.1852; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) were still being painted even as Americans turned more and more to photographers to record their appearances; by 1850, New York city alone was home to over 70 daguerreotype photography studios. It's clear that art is an important part of American history and heritage; the history of American art is as rich and complex as the nation's history itself. Celebrate the 4th of July this year by learning more about American art; the list below is a good place to start.

Sources for Further Reading:

Milton Brown, et al., American Art, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1979.

Julius Held and Donald Posner, 17th and 18th Century Art, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, n.d.

Robert Hughes, American Visions The Epic History of Art in America, New York Knopf, 1997.

www.artcyclopedia.com
www.artchive.com
www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/amer-art_thecolonialperiod.asp
www.nga.gov
www.worcesterart.org

–Susanne Reece

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