The Overland Monthly/Volume 1/Art Beginnings on the Pacific
ART BEGINNINGS ON THE PACIFIC.
I.
A GREAT chemist some years ago declared that the civilization of a people could be estimated by the amount of nitric acid they used. History, however, shows that a high order of civilization is not incompatible with the crudest knowledge of chemistry, and of the utilities and elegancies which chemistry has created. It would be more true to say that the civilization, of a people may be estimated by their progress in Art, whether we take the word in its broadest sense or in the limited one which applies to the exercise of taste in ornamentation. Art is the very germ of civilization, as it is its crowning flower. Much sinewy growth and sturdy battling precede its blossoming, and are indispensable to it, especially if it is to be perennial.
It is interesting to observe and record the beginnings of Art in a young community, and we propose to do this for San Francisco because it is the metropolis of the Pacific, where some day there will exist a distinct Art School, supported by a cultivated public taste, and where already there are more evidences of aesthetic culture than exist in any other community so isolated, so exposed to frontier influences, and so youthful. First, it should be said that the term Art is used here in the sense which restricts it to drawing, painting, sculpture and engraving. That understood, let the reader take a brief retrospective glance. In 1835 the first house was built on the rough and sandy site of San Francisco. In 1848 the parent village of Yerba Buena, containing a mixed population of about eight hundred, donned the saintly name which has since become famous and felt the stimulating shock of the gold discovery. During the twenty years that have followed, the city has increased its population to 135,000; has leveled many rocky and sandy heights; has filled in and covered with warehouses two hundred and thirty acres of tide lands, extending the city frontage half a mile beyond the original beach; has created about two hundred millions of wealth; has exported a thousand millions of gold and silver, nearly all the product of California mines; has established manufactures whose annual product is valued at twenty-five millions, and has taken rank as the third American city for the importance of its foreign commerce. These "facts" are known to Mr. Gradgrind, and it must be confessed they justify the pride with which he repeats them; but what can be said of the city's taste for Art, of its devotion to the beautiful for its own sake, of its sympathy with the forms and sounds and colors by which the most exquisite genius of mankind has expressed its purest and sweetest and tenderest ideas, emotions and longings? Let us establish a slight claim to be linked with the world's aesthetic progress, if we would have its better opinion, which looks beyond the mere practicalities, or values them most as they conduce to finer results.
If the records of Art in San Francisco are meagre, and relate more to promise than to achievement, we can remember that New York, when it was over two hundred years old and had a population of nearly 300,000, could boast of little more, and has made most of its progress within the last fifteen years.
Strictly speaking there ave no records of Art in this city, and only one attempt has been made to write a connected memoir on the subject. In July, 1863, John S. Hittell, one of the most observing and useful literary men of the State, published in The Pacific Monthly—a periodical which succeeded the Hesperian—an article of nine pages, giving a sketchy account of the most notable pictures and artists then known in the city, but not entering into the antecedents of his topic. Anything like an historical account is only to be gathered from the unwritten recollections of a number of persons who have had more or less familiarity with Art and its votaries here since 1849. In that year the city was scarcely more than a collection of tents on the sandy slope running down to the crescent-shaped beach that has long since disappeared. The inhabitants were all moved by a keen hunger for sudden wealth in its grossest form. There were many designing arts, but no arts of design. There was no society, and there were no libraries nor collections of pictures, except those designated by Burns as "the Deil's pictur-books." In some of the Mission churches south of San Francisco were a few biblical or saintly paintings which had been introduced from Mexico or Spain, and some of these are reported to have been the work of good artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Artists there were, as well as philosophers, scientists and litterateurs, in the first crowd that rushed to these auriferous shores; but all were absorbed in gold-hunting. A few men, like Bayard Taylor, who came here partly to report what they saw as well as to try their luck in the diggings, made hasty sketches of men and scenery to illustrate their notes; but there was no local demand for the product of pencil or burin, and nobody tried to create one. The great work of the times was to found a State and build a city. Even the first introduction of fine pictures had a purely commercial motive. With few exceptions they were not brought to adorn homes or public halls, but to lend another attraction to the vicious "saloons" wherein fortunes were won or lost on the turn of a card or the toss of a die. In the winter of 1850 S. J. Gower, who had an auction room or Montgomery Street near California, exhibited and sold at low prices the first collection of paintings ever brought to the State, comprising thirty or forty old European pictures of merit, the best of which were burnt in the great fire of 1851. Many inferior pictures were sent here about the same time, but fortunately perished in the flames that twice consumed the city. J. C. Duncan was one of the earliest to introduce and encourage Art in a liberal and critical spirit. In 1851 he bought from the shippers a splendid Diana starting for the Chase, painted by Maes, in Holland, a hundred years ago. In 1852 he bought the celebrated Taking of Samson by the Philistines, from the masterly hand of Jacobs, of Dresden, which is still retained and well known in this city. He was subsequently the owner of a number of first class European paintings of the modern school, and at one time owned the largest private collection in this city. Among these was a fine Prometheus, ascribed to Andrea del Sarto. In 1854 he brought from Europe about four hundred paintings, mostly of the Flemish school, among them nearly one hundred fine originals, bought directly from the studios of artists, some of whom, like Calame and Verbeckhoven, have since become widely celebrated.
These pictures sold at a great loss. A Verbeeckhoven that cost $500 brought only $68. It is now worth thousands. There were no more good collections imported for sale until 1863, when Mr. Duncan had originals by members of the Peale family, by May, and by several New York painters of repute. But during this interval wealth and taste were increasing, society was becoming fixed, and many gentlemen imported paintings of decided merit. Many artists also, of more or less merit, who came here to dig gold remained to paint. Mining was a lottery and a hardship from which they soon turned in disgust, and there was much to encourage the hope of better success in their profession. Our cosmopolitan community has always embraced an unusually large proportion of intelligent persons of refined taste. Few of these however, at that early day, were inclined to accumulate art objects, as few of them expected to remain and build homes here. There was much in our scenery, in the picturesque mixture of races, and in the wild and exciting incidents of pioneer life, to suggest themes for the painter; but he was mainly obliged to rely upon portraiture and such hack work as the miscellaneous wants of trade and journalism demanded. There was no collection for public exhibition of the good pictures that gradually accumulated until many years had passed, and there were no art agencies to supply the place of galleries to the populace.
The few artists who had the courage to remain and practice here during this period deserve particular mention. The first of these, in point of time, according to our best information, was W. S. Jewett, who, early in 1850, painted a large oil picture which properly ought to begin the record of California art production. It is a landscape view from the summit of the Sierra Nevada, and represents an emigrant family who have just emerged from the wilderness and are catching their first delighted glimpse of the mountain slopes and valleys of El Dorado. The family is that of Captain Grayson, the portraits are from life, and the composition is characteristic. Without much merit as a piece of painting, it is yet natural and suggestive. Mr. Jewett has been chiefly known as a portrait painter, and has been steadily employed here in that capacity down to the present day. His most notable work in that line is a life size full length of John A. Sutter, which hangs in the Capitol at Sacramento, and for which the Legislature in 1855 appropriated $5,000. The Grayson picture is in the collection of the Mercantile Library of San Francisco. Gazing upon it and following its suggestions rather than criticising its execution, one can imagine the feelings of that pioneer family, who, after weeks of weary travel across the wide and desolate plains of the middle continent, and days of weary climbing up rocky steeps, through many dangers real or imaginary, have reached the Pisgah of their hopes, and are looking down upon the promised land lying in its still beauty like the sleeping Princess of the story, waiting but the kiss of Enterprise to spring into energetic life. There below them is not only the field for industry and enterprise, but a panorama of natural charms destined to inspire poets, to glow on the canvas of painters, and to take on the magic of human association and tradition. The piney slopes are musical with the gurgle of hidden waters tumbling from the rim of still lakes; the coniferous woods open like columned aisles; silver mists hide the wandering streams in abysmal cañons; purple ridges wall the bright sky in straight lines to left and right; below them imagination pictures the billowy foot-hills, tawny with dry stubble, and islanded with oaks of never-failing verdure; while still beneath and beyond, the broad valley of the Sacramento shimmers in its summer gold that spring will turn to a variegated parterre, and from its western verge rises the coast range, soft as cloud-land mountains, looking into the Pacific. Over this scene are spread those delicious tints of blue and purple and gold, those blending shades of violet, lilac and topaz, which give to the landscapes of California all the charm of fairy illusion. This is the Rasselas Valley of sober fact. Here beauty awaits the poet who shall praise and the limner who shall copy her manifold fascinations, though for some years she will wait in vain, or have for her votaries only those who come to look and learn.
Not quite first in time, but confessedly first in culture and ability, of all the early resident artists, was Charles Nahl, a native of Cassel, Germany, who belongs to a family of painters and sculptors, and who has had the thorough training of the best European schools. Before leaving Europe for America in 1849, he had acquired some reputation as a painter of historical and genre compositions. He has always been a careful student, and the elaborate drawings in detail which fill his portfolios attest the conscientious method by which he acquired his remarkable skill as a realistic painter. He has been in the steady practice of art in San Francisco for about eighteen years, devoted to it for its own sake always, though compelled for a long time to do much hack work. He is most versatile of all the artists who have resided here, being at home in portraiture, in still life, in genre, in fruit and flowers, and in object painting; equally facile and elaborate in sepia, in pencil, in crayon, in pen and ink, in water colors and oil; while he has also executed in fresco, engraved on copper, steel and wood, and has even invented a process of etching on glass with the aid of photography. He has been a fertile designer for various publications, and although in his most rapid work there is a mannerism which provokes criticism, no one has at all approached him as a popular delineator of California life and character, of some features of California scenery, of its aborigines, animals, birds and vegetation. During a brief stay in the mines he made numerous sketches illustrating the personal characteristics and industrial methods of the mining communities. These have been very useful to him since, have made his name a household word among us through engraved copies, and possess a real historic value. A list of all his labors here would be a record of the most picturesque and interesting incidents and objects in the annals of the. Golden State, with which he is peculiarly identified. He is distinguished for excellence of drawing, richness of finish, accuracy of detail, and brilliancy of color. Nothing that enters into his works is slightingly treated; indeed, the only objection to this fine artist is, that he is too exquisitely mechanical in some of his pieces. But we ought to be more thankful than critical over the conscientious and intelligent touch that has contributed so much to our pleasure and instruction during so many years of sordid struggle. Mr. Nahl has latterly devoted more attention to careful painting. Many works of permanent merit from his hand may be found in the private collections that are forming among our wealthy citizens, and some of these would be worthy of description if space allowed. They are fair examples of the thorough method of the French and German schools, which is not enough copied in America, where the self-culture in Art of which we hear so much is often no culture at all, and where the finest capacities often fail of the best results for lack of elementary knowledge to supply the tools of power.
One of the earliest California artists of whom we have any knowledge, after Jewett and Nahl, was Thomas S. Officer, a native of Pennsylvania, a pupil and friend of the venerable Sully, a member of the Philadelphia Academy, an associate of the Peales, an excellent miniature painter, and a man of much intelligence and enthusiasm in Art. He came here in 1849, resisted the gold mining rage, followed his profession with tolerable pecuniary success until 1859, and then died in a public hospital a melancholy victim to intemperate habits. .S. W. Shaw, a New England artist, came here also in 1849, after painting several excellent portraits of General Taylor, and one of Persifer F. Smith for which the City of New Orleans paid him $1,000. He was one of the discoverers of Humboldt Bay in 1850, and has had other adventurous and enterprising episodes in his life on the Pacific Coast; yet in the main San Francisco has been his home and Art his pursuit since the first year of his arrival, and he is now ranked among our best portrait painters., S. S. Osgood, of New York, husband of the poetess by that name, and a portrait painter of some repute formerly in that city, visited San Francisco in 1852, remaining here about six months. He painted the portrait of Gilbert, the editor of the Alta California newspaper who was killed in a duel with Gen. Denver. This picture now hangs in our City Hall. He also painted a portrait of Gen. Sutter, which is said to be in the possession of Alice Carey.
No other artistic name was prominent here until 1857. In that year, at the fifth annual Fair of the Mechanics' Institute, meritorious pictures were exhibited, in oil, pencil, India ink and water: colors, by Nahl, Jewett, Shaw and Officer, whom we have mentioned above; by Alexander Edouart, by H. Eastman, by D. D. Neal, and by several amateurs. Edouart, who is still here, but following the more lucrative business of photography, is an artist of culture and good taste, and has done some excellent portraits and landscapes. He is a Fleming, we believe. H. Eastman has produced some good water-color drawings of California scenery, and is well known as an engraver on wood. D. D. Neal, who was only eighteen years old when he exhibited a landscape in 1857, has since studied in Munich, where he married and now resides, and has made a fine reputation as an architectural painter. A picture by him attracted much attention at the exhibition of the National Academy of Design, New York, 1866. His mediaeval interiors bring good prices. Several have been brought to San Francisco, where also copies of a photographic album from his drawings were sold in 1865.
Half a dozen good pictures from abroad, and a few rude attempts at sculpture were exhibited in the Mechanics' Fair of 1857. The Art committee, in their report, expressed "their surprise and gratification at the rapid stride which the fine arts have made in our infant city," and believed that the State possessed "an abundant artistic talent, yearning to evolve itself, and fertile as our soil, which only awaits the cultivating hand of taste and wealth to foster and promote its growth." At the next annual Fair of the same Society, in 1858, the exhibit of pictures and other art objects was certainly very numerous. The names already mentioned are found in the catalogue, and we find besides those of Norton Bush, who had a view of Mount Diablo, in oil; Antoine Claveau, who exhibited views in oil of the Yosemite and Bridal Veil Falls; George H. Burgess, who had some original landscapes in water color; T. J. Donnelly, who had several oil portraits; and F. A. Butman. All these names but those of Claveau and Donnelly are well known. The latter had no real merit, and is no longer living. The name of Mr. Butman, who came here from Maine, is honorably identified with the first decided movement in the direction of what we may call native Art, for he undoubtedly gave the first strong impulse to landscape painting in California. Although a few landscapes had been produced here at intervals by Nahl, Jewett, and others, our resident painters had, up to 1858, been obliged to confine themselves mainly to portraiture, Nahl alone doing a variety of work. The diversified scenery of the State was full of inspiration, and had been the theme of many glowing eulogies; but no painter could afford to make exclusive studies of it, to risk his physical comfort on the reproduction of its beauties. Thomas A. Ayers, of New York, who was a man of much artistic promise, commenced a determined experiment in this line, but perished untimely by shipwreck. He was the first individual to explore Yosemite, pencil in hand, and to illustrate its wonders to the gaze of the world. As early as 1856 he rad taken a series of drawings in the valley, which were engraved for Hutchings' Magazine, a work that during several years of this period, published many clever illustrations of California scenery and curiosities. The first large general view of the Valley was drawn on stone by Charles Nahl from a pastil sketch by Ayers, and printed in lithography by L. Nagel, in 1857. A set of ten of Ayers' drawings was sold after his death, by his friend Shaw, for the benefit of his children, for three hundred dollars.
Butman was discursive and enterprising in the selection of his topics. He made many open air studies in color of the most notable mountain and valley scenes in this State and Oregon, traveling on one of his latest trips fully a thousand miles north of San Francicso, and sailing some distance up the Columbia River. Yosemite, the Mecca of all our artists, was of course included in his sketching journeys. He loved broad effects, great distances, and gaudy colors, and although he was sometimes faulty in drawing and perspective, and delighted in an excess of yellows, his pictures were fresh and showy, appealed strongly to local taste, and from 1860 to 1865 gave him a greater share of popularity and success than was enjoyed by any other painter. His best work was his Mount Hood, which is really a very striking picture. It measures seventy-eight by fifty-two inches, was originally sold to an Oregonian, but has been lately bought by parties in this city, and is valued at $2,000. This artist went to New York early in 1866, whence he has lately sailed for Europe. Another Mount Hood from his hand, is offered in Boston for $5,000. These commercial statements are of interest only because they form some criterion for judging the professional status of an artist, and relate to a success which is purely an outgrowth of California studies.
Mr. Bush, who is mentioned above, was a pupil of Cropsey, in New York, many years ago, but did not paint here except as an amateur and occasionally, until about two years ago. He has within that time sketched a great deal among our mountain scenery, and showed considerable capacity for treating distances. His most successful pictures have been a series of richly colored tropical views. Quite recently he has visited the Isthmus of Panama, and has brought back numerous pleasing sketches. More definiteness and care in drawing will add to the value of his work. Mr. Burgess, who was also one of the exhibitors in 1857–8, worked in water colors, and chiefly in portraiture; but it was not until his return from a studious visit to the east, within a twelvemonth past, that he attracted special attention. He now does work which, for nice manipulation and delicate evenness of color, is justly admired by connoisseurs. His female heads are particularly good.
With the year 1862 began a period of more activity and promise for Art on the Pacific, which we shall notice hereafter.