PASTORAL INTERLUDE: William T. Richards in Chester County

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PASTORAL INTERLUDE: William T. Richards in Chester County
(8/2001; #041)

A catalogue will accompany the Brandywine River Museum's special exhibition, Pastoral Interlude: William T. Richards in Chester County. The following text has been excerpted and adapted from an essay in the catalogue by guest curator Dr. Linda S. Ferber, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

By the early 1870s Richards was already established as a coastal and marine painter specializing in the terrain at and near the recently developed resort of Atlantic City, New Jersey. From 1874 he summered regularly in Newport, becoming identified with images of the Rhode Island as well as the New Jersey coast, the subjects for which he is still best known today. The same decade also witnessed Richards' rise to fame as a participant in the American Watercolor Movement. However, in the mid-1880s, after almost two decades of painting coastal and marine subjects, William Trost Richards (1833-1905) returned to landscape in a succession of paintings inspired by sites in rural Pennsylvania.

The catalyst for this return occurred in 1884, when the artist purchased the Oldmixon Farm in Chester County to provide a livelihood for his eldest daughter and her family. Oldmixon Farm was located at the western edge of the county in West Caln township near Sadsburyville and not far from Coatesville. As a born and bred Philadelphian, Richards was shaped first by the rich local culture and artistic influences of his hometown. As a boy in the 1840s, he made fishing and sketching forays along the Frankfort and Wissahickon Creeks near Philadelphia. Later he tramped and sketched farther afield, west to Chester County in 1851, and north to the Wyoming Valley in 1852. Over the next six years, after the purchase of Oldmixon Farm, Richards enjoyed regular Chester County sojourns and opportunities to interpret the rolling farmlands, waterways and woods in a region that had long been Quaker territory rich with historical associations. Thereafter, summer seasons were mostly divided between Graycliff, at the edge of the New England coast, and the Oldmixon Farm. He was newly inspired by the Brandywine scenes: "Before the weather had become so cold, I drove over to Coatesville, by ways more charming than I could have believed. In one place for instance the road runs by a mill race which on each side is bordered by old apple trees - through which is seen the long slopes of the meadow. Everywhere there are pictures which make me impatient for next summer."

Working against his current market as a marine painter, the artist portrayed the region in several monumental landscape compositions, in a series of watercolors, and in vigorous plein-air oil sketches that captured every nuance of terrain and weather. Landscape subjects had figured prominently during the first two decades of his career when American scenery was the main focus of his ambition. Richardsí commitment to interpret the American landscape had been early and complete. ìYou know somewhat of the high ideals and standards I have formed,î he wrote in an earnest 1854 "declaration of principles": "I care not to be a painter of trees and water and houses if they can be all- I [shall] endeavor to do even the commonest incident in art well [and] I shall seek also to be a Poet." As a young landscape artist in the 1850s, Richards professed idols who were the luminaries of the New York School: Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Frederic Church (1826-1900), and Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900). Richards entered what he termed the "race" for fame at a time dominated by the New York School's national landscape type based on sites in New York State and New England. Both worshipful and competitive, he tellingly described himself in orbit around these "landscape suns."

But at the time, the mounting sectional tensions of the 1850s had already begun to undermine the assumption of widespread political and cultural unity implied in such landscape imagery by use of the panoptic point of view and by popular response to New York and New England landscape subjects as national symbols. Richards did respond to these social and political tensions in subtle but profound ways over the next decade, and beyond, by his choice of landscape styles and subjects. Barely a year after the Adirondack series of 1857, for example, Richards began to retreat from the national program of panoramic wilderness subjects. He espoused John Ruskin's program of arduous and close study from nature. Richards' devotion to Ruskinian truth to nature led to production of his first all-foreground landscapes; a radical change in outlook from the panoramic birdís eye view - elevated and unobstructed in all directions ó to the wormís eye view - a claustrophobic vision set at ground level and limited to objects immediately before the eye with little or no recession. By 1861 Richards was on his way to becoming the best-known landscape painter among Ruskin's disciples in the United States, who were known as the American Pre-Raphaelites. Richards produced obsessively detailed paintings: hybrids of landscape and still-life like Some Fell Among Thorns (c. 1863), and Neglected Corner of a Wheatfield (1865).

These marvels of close study, painted during the years of the Civil War, were also dense allegories of horticultural and agricultural symbolism. However, in time, this legacy of close attention to descriptive detail earned increasing criticism as literal, mimetic and unimaginative, especially as American taste began to turn in the 1870s toward a more painterly, suggestive approach to landscape. Richards returned once again to his earlier and more expansive style, but now his works were tinged with a more somber temper. When considered in the cultural context of the last quarter of the 19th century, when the confident worldview of the earlier period had waned, Richards' stately Chester County pastorals gain wider resonance. Changes in ideas about the meaning of the American landscape and man's place in nature reflected scientific challenges to traditional beliefs and values. Also, political unrest and economic uncertainty prevailed in the United States during the post-Civil War era in which a rapid transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society and new artistic impulses from Europe modified popular taste and influenced markets. Although in his later series of Chester County paintings, Richards revisited motifs treated in earlier works, such as the harvest, the seasons and the times of day, these paintings, unlike his earlier works, the landscapes of the 1880s are different. Many, such as February and October are cast in a retrospective, even melancholy, mood that departs from the celebratory and optimistic note animating his earlier interpretations of these themes in the 1850s and 1860s.

We understand now that Richards' Pennsylvania landscapes of the 1880s not only celebrated the wooded hills, winding streams and harvest fields of the Brandywine region, but also accommodated myriad cultural messages and memories. These stately pastorals functioned as sites in which the artist, his patrons, and a larger audience worked out critical private and collective anxieties, the "surly moods," associated with late 19th-century culture in America.
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Brandywine River Museum, U.S. Route 1 and PA Route 100
P.O. Box 141, Chadds Ford, PA 19317
For more information send email to: inquiries@brandywine.org
© 2001 Brandywine Conservancy

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PASTORAL INTERLUDE: William T. Richards in Chester County (8/2001; #041) A catalogue will accompany the Brandywine River Museum's special exhibition, Pastoral Interlude: William T. Richards in Chester County. The following text has been excerpted and adapted from an essay in the catalogue by guest curator Dr. Linda S. Ferber, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. By the early 1870s Richards was already established as a coastal and marine painter specializing in the terrain at and near the recently developed resort of Atlantic City, New Jersey. From 1874 he summered regularly in Newport, becoming identified with images of the Rhode Island as well as the New Jersey coast, the subjects for which he is still best known today. The same decade also witnessed Richards' rise to fame as a participant in the American Watercolor Movement. However, in the mid-1880s, after almost two decades of painting coastal and marine subjects, William Trost Richards (1833-1905) returned to landscape in a succession of paintings inspired by sites in rural Pennsylvania. The catalyst for this return occurred in 1884, when the artist purchased the Oldmixon Farm in Chester County to provide a livelihood for his eldest daughter and her family. Oldmixon Farm was located at the western edge of the county in West Caln township near Sadsburyville and not far from Coatesville. As a born and bred Philadelphian, Richards was shaped first by the rich local culture and artistic influences of his hometown. As a boy in the 1840s, he made fishing and sketching forays along the Frankfort and Wissahickon Creeks near Philadelphia. Later he tramped and sketched farther afield, west to Chester County in 1851, and north to the Wyoming Valley in 1852. Over the next six years, after the purchase of Oldmixon Farm, Richards enjoyed regular Chester County sojourns and opportunities to interpret the rolling farmlands, waterways and woods in a region that had long been Quaker territory rich with historical associations. Thereafter, summer seasons were mostly divided between Graycliff, at the edge of the New England coast, and the Oldmixon Farm. He was newly inspired by the Brandywine scenes: "Before the weather had become so cold, I drove over to Coatesville, by ways more charming than I could have believed. In one place for instance the road runs by a mill race which on each side is bordered by old apple trees - through which is seen the long slopes of the meadow. Everywhere there are pictures which make me impatient for next summer." Working against his current market as a marine painter, the artist portrayed the region in several monumental landscape compositions, in a series of watercolors, and in vigorous plein-air oil sketches that captured every nuance of terrain and weather. Landscape subjects had figured prominently during the first two decades of his career when American scenery was the main focus of his ambition. Richardsí commitment to interpret the American landscape had been early and complete. ìYou know somewhat of the high ideals and standards I have formed,î he wrote in an earnest 1854 "declaration of principles": "I care not to be a painter of trees and water and houses if they can be all- I [shall] endeavor to do even the commonest incident in art well [and] I shall seek also to be a Poet." As a young landscape artist in the 1850s, Richards professed idols who were the luminaries of the New York School: Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Frederic Church (1826-1900), and Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900). Richards entered what he termed the "race" for fame at a time dominated by the New York School's national landscape type based on sites in New York State and New England. Both worshipful and competitive, he tellingly described himself in orbit around these "landscape suns." But at the time, the mounting sectional tensions of the 1850s had already begun to undermine the assumption of widespread political and cultural unity implied in such landscape imagery by use of the panoptic point of view and by popular response to New York and New England landscape subjects as national symbols. Richards did respond to these social and political tensions in subtle but profound ways over the next decade, and beyond, by his choice of landscape styles and subjects. Barely a year after the Adirondack series of 1857, for example, Richards began to retreat from the national program of panoramic wilderness subjects. He espoused John Ruskin's program of arduous and close study from nature. Richards' devotion to Ruskinian truth to nature led to production of his first all-foreground landscapes; a radical change in outlook from the panoramic birdís eye view - elevated and unobstructed in all directions ó to the wormís eye view - a claustrophobic vision set at ground level and limited to objects immediately before the eye with little or no recession. By 1861 Richards was on his way to becoming the best-known landscape painter among Ruskin's disciples in the United States, who were known as the American Pre-Raphaelites. Richards produced obsessively detailed paintings: hybrids of landscape and still-life like Some Fell Among Thorns (c. 1863), and Neglected Corner of a Wheatfield (1865). These marvels of close study, painted during the years of the Civil War, were also dense allegories of horticultural and agricultural symbolism. However, in time, this legacy of close attention to descriptive detail earned increasing criticism as literal, mimetic and unimaginative, especially as American taste began to turn in the 1870s toward a more painterly, suggestive approach to landscape. Richards returned once again to his earlier and more expansive style, but now his works were tinged with a more somber temper. When considered in the cultural context of the last quarter of the 19th century, when the confident worldview of the earlier period had waned, Richards' stately Chester County pastorals gain wider resonance. Changes in ideas about the meaning of the American landscape and man's place in nature reflected scientific challenges to traditional beliefs and values. Also, political unrest and economic uncertainty prevailed in the United States during the post-Civil War era in which a rapid transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society and new artistic impulses from Europe modified popular taste and influenced markets. Although in his later series of Chester County paintings, Richards revisited motifs treated in earlier works, such as the harvest, the seasons and the times of day, these paintings, unlike his earlier works, the landscapes of the 1880s are different. Many, such as February and October are cast in a retrospective, even melancholy, mood that departs from the celebratory and optimistic note animating his earlier interpretations of these themes in the 1850s and 1860s. We understand now that Richards' Pennsylvania landscapes of the 1880s not only celebrated the wooded hills, winding streams and harvest fields of the Brandywine region, but also accommodated myriad cultural messages and memories. These stately pastorals functioned as sites in which the artist, his patrons, and a larger audience worked out critical private and collective anxieties, the "surly moods," associated with late 19th-century culture in America. Top of Page
Brandywine River Museum, U.S. Route 1 and PA Route 100 P.O. Box 141, Chadds Ford, PA 19317 For more information send email to: inquiries@brandywine.org © 2001 Brandywine Conservancy