BARBARA GROSECLOSE
Itinerant Painting In Ohio:
Origins and Implications
Among the most intriguing features of
Ohio's art history is the
role of itinerant painting in the
development of the region's art-
how and why itinerant painting occurred,
what implications the
itinerant experience had for the career
of the individual artist, and
in what manner Ohio itinerant painting
might have contributed to
(or be related to) the growth of
"mainstream" American painting.
Itinerant painting is deceptively simple
to characterize: the artist
travels from one location to another to
purvey his wares in the
tradition of the medieval craftsman in
Europe or the "hawker" or
peddler in American commercial life.
While professionals of various
callings were constrained to follow
peripatetic careers in the early
days of the west-doctors, lawyers,
judges and ministers come readi-
ly to mind-the peddler remains the
archetypal nomad. He was also
the embodiment of a particularly
American brand of en-
trepeneurship. Popularly thought to be a
clever and shrewd
businessman, the peddler was, like the
country itself, always on the
move; necessarily genial and
"democratic" in his social contacts, he
was at ease in both rural and
metropolitan settings. The vigor with
which he pursued his difficult
occupation was much admired, and
one sometimes feels the prevalence of
the peddler image in Amer-
ican art is a consequence of the
artist's identification with the com-
mercial traveller's life.1
A comparison of C.B. King's painting The
Itinerant Artist (fig. 1)
with J.W. Ehninger's famous canvas The
Yankee Peddler (fig. 2)
reveals the close alliance. The painter
unpacks his equipment and
demonstrates his craft to an admiring
audience, much as the ped-
Barbara Groseclose is an Associate
Professor in the Department of History of Art at
The Ohio State University.
1. Cf. Patricia Hills, The Painter's
America, Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910
(New York, 1974), 5.
130 OHIO HISTORY |
|
dler displays his wares to an awed gathering. Whereas the peddler traded mostly in necessities, however, the artist frequently had to sell what his clients might regard as a luxury, and thus the painter was both craftsman and salesman, technician and businessman. The conditions which fostered itinerant painting help explain its ubiquity: demographics alone account for both the inception and continuation of itinerant painting, as the scattered population of this vast land and the limits imposed by primitive information dis- semination and transportation meant that would-be patrons re- quired individual contact. Secondly, the traditional patronage base provided by the state or church in Europe did not exist to any great degree in this country and, again, circumstances demanded that the individual patron be approached. Finally, even after the founding of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1806 and the National Academy of Design in 1825, training institutions were neither adequate nor numerous enough to afford a sound education in the visual arts; the apprentice-like role the painter assumed in his travels compensated.2 2. Early art schools in the United States existed tenuously at best and frequently |
Itinerant Painting in Ohio 131 |
|
Present-day viewers tend to forget the hardships, the frustrations, the demeaning conditions under which the itinerant painter was forced to work. The mere act of travel was arduous, always dirty and grueling, sometimes hazardous. Roads were extremely poor, often muddy and impassable, at other times dry and baked into ruts so badly a coach could not traverse them (for those lucky enough to travel by stage or wagon; most artists walked). Inns were frequently havens for the tired traveller, but they could sometimes be flea- ridden, inhospitable places where the wanderer needed care in order to avoid being robbed by the innkeeper or his fellow-travellers. The elements also continually beset the itinerant: rivers might be so
collapsed as a result of the squabbling of dissident members and/or public apathy. The American Academy of Fine Arts is a good example. Established as the New York Academy of Fine Arts in 1802, lack of interest forced the organization to close the following year. Reopened in 1816, the academy became something of a fiefdom for its president, John Trumbull, a situation which eventually incited rebellion in young artists and led to the founding of a rival institution, the National Academy of Design. The latter institution, like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, is still in opera- tion today. See Milton Brown, American Art to 1900 (New York, 1977) 222-23; also see Lois Fink, Academy: The Academic Tradition in American Art (Washington, D.C., 1975). |
132 OHIO HISTORY
swollen one could not cross, or winds so
gusty one could not sail; rain
and snow storms delayed journeys and
brought the already penu-
rious dangerously near starvation.3
The diary of James Guild, an itinerant
painter from Mas-
sachusetts, gives some idea of the
depression which could settle on
an artist forging his way alone in the
wilds, as well as the cunning
and enterprise which attended the most
meager success. Guild be-
gan his wanderings as a peddler and
tinker, but swiftly changed to
painting when that occupation proved
more profitable:
Soon it began to rain and I in the
wilderness accompanied by no friend, and
all the consolation I had was in hoping for the better.
While I was traveling
over the dreary forrest, my mind was not
without its thoughts .... While
contemplating . .. my foot slipt and
down went... I, trunk and all, and
hurt myself and bruised my trunk. I got up and cried
out, O heaven what
shall I do, was I born for misfortune?
0, I am poorer than a beger, and I can
never prosper .... Now I went to
Canadagua. Here I went into a painters
shop, one who painted likenesses ....
When I saw them I asked him what
he would show me one day for, how to
distinguish the coulers and he said $5,
and I consented to it and began to
paint. He showed me one day and then I
went to Bloomfield .... I put up at a
tavern and told a Young Lady if she
would wash my shirt, I would draw her
likeness .... I opperated once on
her but it looked so like a rech I
throwed it away and tried again .... It
could not be caled painting, for it
looked more like a strangle cat than it did
like her. However I told her it looked
like her and she believed it ....
Then I traveled on and stoped at every
house and inquired if they wanted
any profile likeness taken, and if I
could not get but a trifle, I would paint
for the sake of learning. In about three
days I was quite a painter.4
One aspect of the itinerant's
difficulties upon which Guild did not
expound was the task of finding patrons,
a venture sometimes more
worrisome than the toil of travel. The
absence of dealers, galleries,
and large or small-scale support
institutions of any kind compelled
the artist to adopt new tactics.
Advertising, for example, became
common. Few were as flagrant as
Raphaelle Peale, who ran notices
in local newspapers promising "no
likeness, no pay" as he travelled
from city to city. But everywhere, and
especially in the midwest,
painters offered to supplement their
talent at portraiture by a varie-
ty of other skills-sign and coach
painting, framing, instructions in
3. See especially Neil Harris, The
Artist in American Society (New York, 1966),
69-74.
4. "The Education of James
Guild," in Charles L. Sanford, ed., Quest for America
1810-1824 (New York, 1964), 50 and 61. Spelling and grammar have
been preserved
intact.
Itinerant Painting in Ohio 133
anatomical drawing, watercolor, and
perspective. Arrival in a new
location was announced in gaudy
newspaper advertisements or with
handbills delivered door-to-door. Even
the ostensible news report
took on the role of publicity, as
evidence by the following excerpt
from the March 10, 1813, Zanesville Express:
"Mr. J. Carroll, Artist
and Portrait Painter, from London, a
student of the Royal Academy,
has come to spend a few days among us.
He paints Portraits of all
sizes . . . in oils, crayons or
watercolors .... Prices moderate
.... Quarters are at Robert Taylor's
tavern where people will
please call."5
In all, then, the itinerant's lot was
not an easy one, but conditions
in Ohio, at least, ameliorated to some
extent the artist's ordeal. This
country's westward expansion was
particularly advantageous to
Ohio. In the path of the most-frequented
roads westward and bles-
sed with excellent water transportation,
early nineteenth-century
Ohio combined the prosperity and
activity of an eastern industrial
power with the free-wheeling, open
society of territories further to
the west. In many ways Ohio offered
conditions made to order for
the aspiring artist, as the people were
prosperous enough to desire
the "finer things," such as
painting, yet provincial enough to patron-
ize local as well as imported artists,
the untutored as well as the
European-trained. Moreover, the arts were
an integral part of the
first Ohio communities from their very
origin and interest never
waned. For example, the state's probable
first painter, George Beck,
who arrived as a scout with an army
surveying party, painted land-
scapes in Cincinnati as early as 1790.6
No less a figure than Thomas Cole,
although born in England,
began his painting career in Ohio and
his account, as published in a
letter to his biographer William Dunlap,
provides a particularly
vivid description of the itinerant's
life:
About the year 1820, Mr. Stein, a
portrait painter, came to Steubenville. I
became acquainted with him-saw him
paint, and considered his works
5. Quoted in Donald MacKenzie,
"Painters in Ohio, 1788-1860," (unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University,
1960), 16. The dissertation, which also
has a biographical index, is the most
complete source of information on early Ohio
painters.
6. Beck (1748/50-1812) was an
English-born artist who exhibited in London at the
Royal Academy before his emigration to
this country where one of his first patrons
was George Washington. The date of his
arrival in the United States is unknown, but
he appears to have been especially
active in the decades around the turn of the
century. See Virgil Barker, American
Painting, History and Interpretation (New
York, 1950), 290-91.
134 OHIO HISTORY
wonderful-I believe they were
respectable. He lent me an English work on
painting.... My ambition grew and in my
imagination I pictured the glory
of being a great painter. The names of
[Gilbert] Stuart and [Thomas] Sully
came to my ears like the titles of great
conquerors, and the great masters
were hallowed above all earthly things.7
Cole determined to become a painter,
copying the likenesses of his
family for practice and then taking to
the road. St. Clairsville, about
thirty miles from Steubenville, was his
first stop and his inquiries
were "to ascertain what hopes he
might indulge of success as a
painter. The answers were most
discouraging. A German painter [?
Descombes] had been some time in the
village and painted all the
paintable faces."8 Viewing
his rival's efforts, Cole knew he could
paint at least as well-if not better-and
earned a saddle, a watch
and chain, and a dollar from his initial
efforts. However, he had to
pay all but the dollar to the innkeeper
for board (plus execute a
drinking scene for the tavern), and thus
he moved with haste to
Zanesville, where he had been assured
patrons could be found. After
a three-day's walk to Zanesville, Cole
once again found his prospects
dimmed because "the German"
Descombes had arrived shortly be-
fore and exhausted the limited market.
In time the two would-be
rivals came to an agreement: "If
you will say nothing about my
pictures," advised Cole's European
competitor, "I will say nothing
about yours."9 Dunlap,
Cole's early biographer, continues the narra-
tive:
Chillicothe now was the land of promise,
and another hundred miles was to
be trudged on foot with . .. bag and
luggage strapped over the pedestrian's
shoulder. It was now the burning heat of
summer, and health as well as
hope began to fail .... In two days and
a half he came in sight of Chilli-
cothe .... A new field of action was
before him . . . and at first fortune
7. Quoted in William Dunlap, A
History of the Rise and Progress of Arts of Design
in the United States, vol. III (New York, [1834] 1969), 352. Dunlap
identifies Stein as
a portrait painter from Virginia who
practiced his art mostly in Pennsylvania and
Ohio. His first name and life dates are
unknown, but MacKenzie, p. 24, reproduces
Stein's portrait of Bezaleel Wells
(o.c., 28 x 23") in the collection of the Western
Reserve Historical Society.
8. Dunlap, 354. It seems doubtful that
Descombes was German, given his last
name, but nothing is known about his
life (not even his first name) or work to
substantiate this assertion. Dunlap knew
little about Descombes except that it was
alleged that the painter gave up his
career to become a minister in Lancaster, Ohio,
later in his life. MacKenzie reproduced
the only known painting by Descombes, a
portrait of General Herrick, in the
collection of the Muskingum Philosophical and
Historical Society, Zanesville.
9. Ibid., 356.
Itinerant Painting in Ohio 135 |
|
seemed to smile. The landlord of the inn and his wife consented to take their portraits for his board; but no more sitters came. He obtained some pupils in drawing, but the hope of accumulating something to carry to those for whose welfare he wished to labour, became fainter and fainter .... He now turned his face toward home, and after five days . . . walking . . . entered Steubenville.10
From this unlikely and scarcely propitious beginning, Cole went on to become the founder of the Hudson River School and perhaps the leading American landscapist of the nineteenth century. Most art histories tend to dismiss as relatively unimportant his early itinerant years, probably because he left no paintings on which to base a judgment of his art during that period. But it is likely that Cole's first extant works painted outside of Ohio at the commence- ment of his "professional" career were directly influenced by his earlier Ohio experiences. For example, his 1825 Landscape with Dead Trees (fig. 3) and 1826 Daniel Boone before his Cabin at Great
10. Ibid., 356-57. |
136 OHIO HISTORY |
|
Osage Lake (fig. 4) were both executed in the years immediately following Cole's itinerant wanderings, and two aspects in particular are significant: the almost unmitigated wildness of the landscape in each and the artist's emotional, unsophisticated response to it. The landscapes convey the feel of the true forest and its vastness in relation to men, yet the composition in both paintings is awkward, the colors harsh, the minutiae of detail additive. It is probable that these early canvases represent the immediacy of contact with na- ture which Cole's early Ohio career engendered; the vibrancy of personal experience oddly is enhanced by the untutored style. In contrast, a later landscape, such as Home in the Woods (fig. 5), exhibits a more tranquil view of nature. Greater maturity, Euro- pean experiences, and a more cultivated technique are all evident in the later work, as well as a different, more detached response to wilderness-the result, perhaps, of nature now recollected in repose. |
Itinerant Painting in Ohio 137 |
|
Similar signs of the influence of an itinerant career in early Ohio upon the work of a nationally-known painter are apparent in the work of James Beard.11 As a youth in Painesville, Ohio, Beard took his first lessons in painting (four lessons at fifty cents each) from a passing itinerant, Jarvis Hanks. 12 With the meager technical know- ledge Hanks was able to provide, Beard promptly began taking likenesses of the townspeople for three to five dollars each. The supply of "paintable" faces was soon depleted, however, and at the age of fourteen Beard commenced travelling and painting, eventual- ly settling in Cincinnati. There he became the city's leading artist, first as a portraitist but later as a specialist in scenes of everyday
11. Beard (1812-1893) was born in Buffalo, New York, and moved with his family to Ohio in 1823. He has been unjustly neglected in art historical literature because, like his brother William Holbrook Beard (1824-1900), he sometimes painted "noxious sentimentalities" of animals in human situations. To consider these depictions alone, however, is to ignore the penetrating and informative scenes of frontier life for which he was also admired in his lifetime. His North Carolina Immigrants (location un- known), for example, sold in New York for $750, a very high price for genre. See James T. Flexner, That Wilder Image (New York, 1962), 233-35. 12. Both Dunlap, vol. II, 434, and MacKenzie, 203, give a biography of Hanks (1799-?), who painted in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. He settled in Cleve- land in 1836 and many of his portraits can be found in collections in that city, particularly the Western Reserve Historical Society. |
138 OHIO HISTORY
life (genre). In The Long Bill (fig.
6) or his 1840 The Ohio Land
Speculators, the topics are drawn from the lives of the state's
ordi-
nary citizens. The narratives are
humorously but not condescending-
ly treated, and whatever awkwardness the
scenes manifest in
draughtsmanship is lessened by the
viewer's sense of the artist's
intimacy with his subject. Beard's
success in genre was due to his
itinerant encounters, wherein he gained
familiarity with the com-
monplace occurrences of frontier life
just as Cole acquired know-
ledge of the forest from his similar
experiences.
This brief look at the art of Thomas
Cole and James Beard gives
some indication of the significance of
an itinerant career in Ohio for
the individual artist. Some conclusions
can be drawn about the
itinerant's experience vis a vis the
development of American art as
well. As the passages from Guild's and
Cole's diaries attest, the
itinerant painter played an important
role in acquainting the Amer-
ican provinces with art. To some degree,
the itinerant artist gen-
uinely elevated the cultural life of
Americans by providing them
with their first examples of the powers
and pleasures of the pictorial
arts, and in the process helped accustom
people to the presence of
the artist in their developing cultural
life. For the painters, begin-
ning a career as an itinerant provided
education of both an artistic
and non-artistic nature: honing their
skills painting "likenesses"
and "views," the itinerant
artists learned their craft while doing. At
the same time, they learned to deal with
patrons, to attempt to
satisfy a client without seriously
compromising their art, to expect
both sensitive and insensitive responses
to their work, and to re-
spond gracefully to each. Most
importantly, the itinerant artists'
experience contributed to
"mainstream" painting by helping turn
the American audience's eyes to their
own lives-their land, their
community, their customs. The itinerants
helped Americanize art,
as it were, not simply by introducing an
American theme-Daniel
Boone, for instance-but by demonstrating
the worth of American
life and lands as subjects for the
artist. The firsthand knowledge
itinerants obtained was invaluable in
this respect and endowed
their work with authenticity and
sincerity.
Ohio, in particular, was significant in
the development of a
national art in regard to the conditions
briefly sketched in this
article; "grassroots" art is
the substance, after all, of any genuinely
national pictorial expression. In
supporting numerous artists in
their early, itinerant/apprentice years,
Ohio helped nurture some of
this country's major artists and
provided a rich source for subject
matter in the portraiture and anecdotal
scenes of an appreciative
Itinerant Painting in Ohio 139 |
|
citizenry.13 When the itinerant mode declined, as it was inevitably to do, the altered circumstances the painter experienced were likewise the consequences of the state's encouragement of the fine arts. Given impetus by a cultural self-consciousness endemic to west- ern regions, Ohio's frontier areas struggled not only to support
13. I have, of course, treated only portraiture and genre, but there was also a small |
140 OHIO HISTORY
artists but to provide institutions for
teaching, exhibiting, and sell-
ing art which would emulate and even
rival those of the older and
more settled parts of the country.
Generous collectors and patrons
like Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati
lightened the financial bur-
den for many painters at the same time
they eased the way for the
exchange of a life on the road for
permanent residence.14 The West-
ern Art Union, founded in Cincinnati in
1847, had a longer life and
more beneficial effect than its eastern
counterpart, the American
Art Union.15 Providing
artists with a more secure system of patron-
age, the Art Union grew out of European
lottery-style organizations
wherein, for a small sum, participants
were eligible to win a canvas
purchased by the directors from the
proceeds of the contributions.
As the art unions proposed to support
American artists specifically,
the art support network, thus
established, further reduced the need
for painters to seek individual buyers.
Finally, the founding of
academies, such as the McMicken School
of Design in 1869 (which
became the Cincinnati Art Academy in
1884), enabled the aspiring
painter to receive instruction in a
regularized (not to say regimen-
ted) fashion, obviating the earlier
haphazard but pragmatic train-
ing he received on the road.16 As
a result of these combined efforts to
furnish the artist with monetary and
educational assistance, the
artist began to live in a settled
professional community and the
itinerant's role once more belonged to
the peddler, the tinker, and
the circuit-rider.
school of "viewpainters" as
well. Unfortunately, almost none of the work of these
early landscapists is extant.
14. Longworth was instrumental in
establishing the careers of, among other early
Ohio artists, Hiram Powers, Lily Martin
Spencer, Worthington Whittredge, and
Robert Duncanson. His assistance is
convincingly demonstrated in the letters of
these and other artists he aided, most
of which may be found under the individual
artist's name in the Archives of
American Art in Washington, D.C., and in Long-
worth's own letters in the Cincinnati
Historical Society. There is, however, to my
knowledge, no full-scale study of this
important benefactor's role.
15. See Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, American
Academy of Fine Arts and American
Art-Union 1816-52, 2 vols. (New York, 1943). The papers of the Western Art
Union
are located at the Cincinnati Historical
Society.
16. For a brief history of the
Cincinnati Art Academy, see Edna Mae Clark, Ohio
Art and Artists (Richmond, 1932), 236.
BARBARA GROSECLOSE
Itinerant Painting In Ohio:
Origins and Implications
Among the most intriguing features of
Ohio's art history is the
role of itinerant painting in the
development of the region's art-
how and why itinerant painting occurred,
what implications the
itinerant experience had for the career
of the individual artist, and
in what manner Ohio itinerant painting
might have contributed to
(or be related to) the growth of
"mainstream" American painting.
Itinerant painting is deceptively simple
to characterize: the artist
travels from one location to another to
purvey his wares in the
tradition of the medieval craftsman in
Europe or the "hawker" or
peddler in American commercial life.
While professionals of various
callings were constrained to follow
peripatetic careers in the early
days of the west-doctors, lawyers,
judges and ministers come readi-
ly to mind-the peddler remains the
archetypal nomad. He was also
the embodiment of a particularly
American brand of en-
trepeneurship. Popularly thought to be a
clever and shrewd
businessman, the peddler was, like the
country itself, always on the
move; necessarily genial and
"democratic" in his social contacts, he
was at ease in both rural and
metropolitan settings. The vigor with
which he pursued his difficult
occupation was much admired, and
one sometimes feels the prevalence of
the peddler image in Amer-
ican art is a consequence of the
artist's identification with the com-
mercial traveller's life.1
A comparison of C.B. King's painting The
Itinerant Artist (fig. 1)
with J.W. Ehninger's famous canvas The
Yankee Peddler (fig. 2)
reveals the close alliance. The painter
unpacks his equipment and
demonstrates his craft to an admiring
audience, much as the ped-
Barbara Groseclose is an Associate
Professor in the Department of History of Art at
The Ohio State University.
1. Cf. Patricia Hills, The Painter's
America, Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910
(New York, 1974), 5.