James McDougal Hart

Born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, James Hart was a leading figure of the second generation Hudson River School painters and was known for idyllic landscapes, especially with cows. His family emigrated to Albany, New York in 1830 when he was age two, and Hart, at age 15, apprenticed to a sign and banner painter in Albany. Later he switched to portrait painting.

At age 22, he went to Germany and enrolled in the Dusseldorf Art Academy for three years and returned to Albany where he (showing 500 of 4504 characters).

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Note from Letitia Hart, descendant of the artist:

James and Marion Hart and seven of their children, including James M. Hart age 1 yr., 9 mos., and William Hart age 6 yrs., 10 mos., came from Scotland to New York on the ship, Camillus. They landed on February 12, 1830. This information comes from a hand written record at the National Archives. The year of arrival is illegible because of the poor handwriting of the clerk at the dock. The manifest lists the pare (showing 500 of 5984 characters).

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James McDougal Hart (May 10, 1828 – October 24, 1901), was a Scottish-born American landscape and cattle painter of the Hudson River School. His older brother, William Hart, was also a Hudson River School artist, and the two painted similar subjects. Hart was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and was taken to America with his family in early youth. In Albany, New York he trained with a sign and carriage maker—possibly the same employer that had taken on his brother in his early career. Unlike his brother, however, James returned to Europe for serious artistic training. He studied in Munich, and was a pupil of Friedrich Wilhelm Schirmer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Hart returned to America in 1853. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1848, became an associate in 1857 and a full member in 1859. James Hart was particularly devoted to the National Academy, exhibiting there over a period of more than forty years, and serving as vice president late in his life from 1895 to 1899. Like his brother, James also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association (he lived for a time in Brooklyn) and at major exhibitions around the country. Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, Hart based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While James Hart and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in Düsseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. William Hart, who did not seek academic European training, seems to have been more comfortable painting small and mid-sized works. Like his brother William, James excelled at painting cattle. Kevin J. Avery writes, “the bovine subjects that once distinguished [his works] now seem the embodiment of Hart’s artistic complacency.” (p. 250 in American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born Before 1835) In contrast with the complacency of some of his cattle scenes, his major landscape paintings are considered important works of the Hudson River School. A particularly fine example is Summer in the Catskills, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain. James Hart was survived by two daughters, both figure painters, Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867 - Sept. 1953) and Mary Theresa Hart (1872–1942). http://the-paintrist.tumblr.com/page/19
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James McDougal Hart (May 10, 1828 – October 24, 1901), was a Scottish-born American landscape and cattle painter of the Hudson River School. His older brother, William Hart, was also a Hudson River School artist, and the two painted similar subjects.

Hart was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and was taken to America with his family in early youth. In Albany, New York he trained with a sign and carriage maker—possibly the same employer that had taken on his brother in his early career. Unlike his brother, however, James returned to Europe for serious artistic training. He studied in Munich, and was a pupil of Friedrich Wilhelm Schirmer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.

Hart returned to America in 1853. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1848, became an associate in 1857 and a full member in 1859. James Hart was particularly devoted to the National Academy, exhibiting there over a period of more than forty years, and serving as vice president late in his life from 1895 to 1899. Like his brother, James also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association (he lived for a time in Brooklyn) and at major exhibitions around the country.

James McDougal Hart - The Old Homestead, oil on canvas, 1862, High Museum of Art Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, Hart based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While James Hart and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in Düsseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. William Hart, who did not seek academic European training, seems to have been more comfortable painting small and mid-sized works.

Like his brother William, James excelled at painting cattle. Kevin J. Avery writes, "the bovine subjects that once distinguished [his works] now seem the embodiment of Hart's artistic complacency." (p. 250 in American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born Before 1835) In contrast with the complacency of some of his cattle scenes, his major landscape paintings are considered important works of the Hudson River School. A particularly fine example is Summer in the Catskills, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.

James Hart was survived by two daughters, both figure painters, Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867 - Sept. 1953) and Mary Theresa Hart (1872–1942). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McDougal_Hart
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Birth: May 10, 1828 Death: Oct. 24, 1901

Artist. The younger brother of William Hart, James moved with his family from Kilmarnock, Scotland to Albany, NY in 1830. There he was apprenticed to a sign painter and developed an interest in art. In 1851 he went to Dusseldorf, Germany to study and remained for three years. He returned to Albany and opened a studio. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1848, became an associate in 1857 and a full member in 1859. After the 1870s, he and his brother William opened studios in Keene Valley, NY, in the heart of the Adirondacks. James Hart was particularly devoted to the National Academy, exhibiting there over a period of more than forty years, and serving as vice president late in his life from 1895 to 1899. Like his brother, James also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association (he lived for a time in Brooklyn) and at major exhibitions around the country. Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, James based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While James and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in Düsseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. His children, Robert, Mary, and Letitia were artists, as was his wife, Marie Thereas Gorsuch, and his sister, Julie Hart Beers Kempson. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York State Historical Assocation, the Corcoran Gallery, and Vassar College. (bio by: Shock)

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Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the American landscape was viewed as a dangerous wilderness, a harbor for Native Americans to plan and execute attacks, and an inconvenient obstruction to agricultural prosperity and development. It was to be conquered rather than admired. The American War of Independence brought about a desire for national identity, divorced from British influence and with an unmistakably American appearance. The landscape paintings of the Hudson River School were to embody this aspiration and answered such critics as the Reverend Sydney Smith, who in his 1820 article for the Edinburgh Review, asked: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? Or looks at an American picture or statue?"

The Hudson River School, as it has come to be termed, was "founded" by the painter Thomas Cole and was so-named because its proponents showed a fondness for depicting the scenery to be found in the countryside bordering the Hudson River. The locale was perhaps not accidental as the governor of New York, De Witt Clinton, was an ardent supporter of the arts and actively encouraged painters to use nature as an unexploited source of American inspiration. In an 1816 address he delivered at the opening ceremonies of the New York-based American Academy of the Fine Arts, he exalted both the American wilderness and the American cultural landscape as appropriate subjects for native arts, questioning: "And can there be a country in the world better calculated than ours to exercise and to exalt the imagination - to call into activity the creative powers of the mind, and to afford just views of the beautiful, the wonderful, and the sublime?"

Clinton's view was shared by Thomas Cole and his followers, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Worthington Whittredge and James MacDougal Hart amongst others. Cole believed that nature manifested to man the mind of the Creator and saw the artist as a prophet. His ideas were undoubtedly inspired by the poetic works of Byron, Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth, as well as the Romantic movement in European painting. Moreover, John Ruskin had expressed similar thoughts in the first volume of Modern Painters, which was first published in England during 1843. An American edition followed in 1847. Ruskin wrote: "The landscape painters must always have two great and distinct ends; the first, to induce in the spectator's mind the faithful conception of any natural objects whatsoever; the second, to guide the spectator's mind to those objects most worthy of its contemplations, and to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with which these were regarded by the artist himself."

These ideals were beautifully manifested in the paintings of James MacDougal Hart. He formed part of a dynasty of Hart painters, his brother William; sister, Julie Hart Beers Kempson; wife, Marie Theresa Gorsuch; and son, William Gorsuch Hart, also accompanying him in the art. Born in Kilmarnock, Scotland in 1828, James MacDougal Hart's family emigrated to Albany, New York during 1831. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed as a sign painter, but eventually sought a higher calling as a landscape artist. His work, like many of the painters associated with the Hudson River School, was inspired by study at the Düsseldorf Academy. However, his paintings also reflect the influence of Scottish painting and in particular the work of Edwin Landseer whose landscapes so embodied the Victorian Romantic notion of Scotland, as idealized by Sir Walter Scott. Hart returned to New York in 1852 and the following year moved to Albany. In 1857 he established a permanent home in New York City and until his death in 1901 continued to produce paintings which glorified America as a rural Eden. One of his favorite subjects was cattle, as can be seen in The Coming Storm, where he depicted them huddled under a tree, as cows are wont to do during stormy weather. He is known to have once commented: "I strive to reproduce the feeling produced by the original scenes themselves. . ." and in this painting he certainly succeeds. The paintings of James MacDougal Hart can be found in several public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

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Family links:

Children:

 Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867 - 1953)*

 Mary Theresa Hart (1872 - 1942)*

*Calculated relationship

Burial: Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn Kings County (Brooklyn) New York, USA Plot: Section 90, Lot 3037

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