Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh

Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh

• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 150974320
• Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh, Morven Museum & Garden
• Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh, Artist, Hardenbergh.org
• Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh, Artist and Ornithologist By Patricia H. Burke, Lynnette Mager Wynn

Hardenbergh is often referred to as “New Jersey’s Audubon.” A dedicated naturalist and ornithologist, he painted New Jersey shorebirds in their natural habitats at the head of Barnegat Bay. A collection of his paintings and samplings from his commercial work are currently on display for the first time in Morven Museum & Garden’s second floor galleries.

The great-great-grandson of the first president of Queens College (Rutgers University) Hardenbergh was self educated. Until his marriage later in life, he lived on a houseboat near Bay Head creating renderings of the native birds, landscape vistas, marshlands and shore sites at the turn of the last century when the land and waterways were still undisturbed by encroaching development. As noted in exhibition materials, during this time, Hardenbergh also “collected and preserved shore birds, sending important specimens to the Biology Department at Princeton University.”

At age 18, Hardenbergh’s paintings were exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, where he was described as “a careful and accurate ornithologist and prominent artist.”

However, on Morven’s Zoom “Sneak Preview” of the exhibition, Elizabeth Allan, Morven deputy director and curator of Collections and Exhibitions, said despite that he came from a very wealthy and educated family, the people who knew Hardenbergh in Bay Head “thought he was a bum.” And as Tom van Nostrand, who has collected Hardenbergh’s paintings for 40 years added Hardenbergh bartered his paintings for things he wanted -- groceries, repair work on the houseboat, etc.

Hardenbergh’s paintings did not command high prices during his lifetime, but today their value is significant.

This exhibition opens in the first gallery with a centered display case holding “Bird Playmates,” a game Hardenbergh developed to help children learn to identify birds. In another display case you’ll find a beautifully preserved specimen of a Virginia Rail collected by him in 1878 and sent to Princeton University’s museum collection. A respected ornithologist, it is said he painted everyday and for twenty years was always accompanied in the field by his beloved dog Nip. A large oil on canvas, “Hardenbergh’s Dog, Nip, On Point” c.1900 is displayed in a place of prominence in this gallery.

The next room holds watercolor paintings of various shorebirds as well as a display case holding five “Shorebirds” carved by Lloyd Johnson of Bay Head. Displayed on the wall is “Game Bird Set, 1887,” Haviland & Company, Limoges, France, porcelain plates from the Collection of the Ocean County Historical Society in Toms River. A case below holds a large platter also painted by Hardenbergh.

The next four galleries are replete with oil and watercolor paintings of landscapes and waterways as well as birds and fish. Representing Hardenbergh’s 1896 attempt to make his art more available commercially is his chromolithograph “Quail.” As explained by Patricia Burke whose book “Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh: Artist and Ornothologist” accompanies the exhibition, this print is “a great example” of what was a new technique when he produced it in 1896.

Moving along through the galleries, you’ll find duck decoys carved by Barnegat Bay carvers and used by hunters who lived and worked during Hardenbergh’s time. Also on display is a “Pair of Sneakbox,” c. 1945 intricately carved to show the rower, duck decoys and oars by Walter Harvey Sr. From the Collection of Arthur Birdsall, the label informs “With its origins in New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay, a sneakbox is a small boat used for hunting waterfowl that can be sailed, rowed, poled or sculled.”

Displayed nearby in this room of ducks and fish is a glorious painting of a “Striped Bass” swimming low amid rocks. Although Hardenbergh’s palette is primarily limited to grays and browns, the underbelly of the fish glistens with the subtle rosy hue of life.

Whether it be fish and fowl or marshlands and meadows, Hardenbergh’s paintings all convey that pulse of how alive his subject felt to him the day he spent painting it. Stand before his painting “Golden Rod, Loveland Meadow” and you will see the light he saw dancing across the field and up into the trees. When you see “Moonrise over the Ocean” you’ll see the clouds scudding by and the moonlight riding on the ripples.

All of his paintings have that “moment in time” quality. It might be a rabbit running in snow, men and open sails on a Hay Scow plying its way across the bay, trees bending in wind-driven snow during the Blizzard of 1912, or a sunny peaceful day at the “Bay Head Yacht Club with the Old Yacht Club in the Background.”

And in his oil on canvas painting, “Grouse,” you feel as if you are right there with the birds as you see the male step one foot onto a fallen branch and the hen following but looking up at a perched insect as if contemplating grabbing it to feed their chick who is tasting his reflection in swamp water.

Not only does this exhibition offer fine art, it offers an opportunity for visitors to learn about what life was like along New Jersey’s coastline during Hardenbergh’s time. It’s a history lesson and an education about identifying and naming New Jersey’s shorebirds. And it also offers an opportunity to set aside today’s cares and go with Hardenbergh and Nip into the fields and marshlands, along the creeks and the shores of Barnegat to see it all through his artistic vision, to experience the way it was then.

SOURCE: Fine Arts: ‘In Nature’s Realm: The Art of Gerard Rutgers Hardenbergh’ lands in Princeton