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Paint for the Many? Rereading William Sidney Mount's The Painter's Triumph

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Elisabeth L. Roark
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The Painter's Triumph, created by William Sidney Mount in 1838, has long been interpreted as an icon of the democratization of American art (Figure 1). Nearly every scholarly analysis of the painting frames it in the context of Mount's well-known charge to himself, “Paint pictures that will take with the public, in other words, never paint for the few, but for the many.” The farmer's enthusiastic involvement in the artist's work is viewed as emblematic of Mount's commitment to promoting the visual arts among ordinary folk. The painter's “triumph,” most assert, is his ability to reach the common man. This is certainly an appealing message and consistent with the desire to see mid-19th-century American artists as resolute democrats in tune with Jacksonian cultural reforms. Yet, Mount never called it The Painter's Triumph, referring to it only as “artist showing his work,” and there is no evidence that viewers in the late 1830s and early 1840s recognized a particularly democratic message. The current title first appeared in a catalogue in 1847, long after Mount sold the painting and two years after the death of Edward L. Carey, the man who commissioned it. Despite the 1847 title change, in his later autobiographical sketch Mount referred to the painting as “Artist showing his own work.”

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Research Article
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Prospects , Volume 28 , October 2004 , pp. 155 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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References

NOTES

Many thanks to Joy Sperling and Alan Wallach who read and commented on earlier drafts of this essay.

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22. Mount's diary (October 28, 1859), in Frankenstein, (Mount, 344)Google Scholar, states, “Mr Leutze said I should stand up while painting — better for health.”

23. Regional types first appeared in New York City during the 1820s, when Mount lived there and was involved in theater. Mount's uncle, Micah Hawkins, with whom he lived in New York, was the composer of the first successful American opera, The Saw Mill; or, a Yankee Trick, and was instrumental in defining Yankee theatrical types. For Mount's interest in types, see Buckley, Peter G., “‘The Place to Make an Artist Work’: Micah Hawkins and William Sidney Mount in New York City,” in Catching the Tune: Music and William Sidney Mount, exh. cat., ed. Armstrong, Janice Gray (Stony Brook, N.Y: Museums at Stony Brook, 1984), 24Google Scholar; Johns, Elizabeth, “The Farmer in the Works of William Sidney Mount,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (Summer 1986): 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burns, Sarah, “Yankee Romance: The Comic Courtship Scene in Nineteenth-Century American Art,” American Art Journal 18, no. 4 (Autumn 1986): 57–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burns, Pastoral Inventions; and Johns, American Genre Painting. Johnson stated that Mount's neighbor, William S. Williamson, modeled for the farmer, based on a Williamson family account book entry that she dates to June 1838 (William Sidney Mount, 100 n. 106Google Scholar). However, Laurence W. Ehrhardt dated the entry to June 7, 1839, and believes it was for “militia sketches” that Mount was working on that year (“Colonel William Satterly Williamson and Family: Neighbors of William Sidney Mount,” in William Sidney Mount: Family, Friends, and Ideas, ed. Kaplan, Elizabeth Kahn [Setauket, N.Y.: Three Villages Historical Society, 1999], 36Google Scholar), although he noted that Williamson and Mount spent much time together in 1838 (35–36).

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35. Much of the following is indebted to Christine Stansell and Sean Wilentz, “Cole's America: An Introduction,” and Wallach, Alan, “Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire,” from Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, exh. cat., ed. Truettner, William H. and Wallach, Alan (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1994), 3–21 and 23–111Google Scholar.

36. The quote on “these motley crowds” is from “American Art-Union,” Bulletin of the American Art-Union 15 (11 25, 1848): 19Google Scholar. Briggs's quote is from H. F., , “National Academy,” New World 6 (06 17, 1843): 727Google Scholar. “Let the aim” is from [Minot, W. Jr], “Review of The Builder's Guide, Illustrated by Sixty-six Engravings by Asher Benjamin,” North American Review 52 (04 1841): 309Google Scholar. See also Daniel Huntington, introduction to Ludlow, , A General View of the Fine Arts, Critical and Historical (New York: G. R Putnam, 1851)Google Scholar. This idea registered in fiction as well (see Willis, Nathaniel Parker, Paul Fane; or Parts of a Life Else Untold, a Novel [New York: Scribner's, 1857], 38Google Scholar). The comment on Mount's “superior talents” is from “The Fine Arts,” New York Mirror, 06 13, 1835, 395Google Scholar.

37. “Life in America” is from “The Fine Arts in America,” 4th ser. Christian Examiner 39, no. 4 (11 1845): 329Google Scholar. The second quote is from W., , “Development of Nationality in American Art,” Bulletin of the American Art-Union 4, no. 9 (12 1851): 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This was a pervasive theme in midcentury critical writing. Articles that address this issue include “Fine Arts,” Putnam's Monthly Magazine 1 (06 1853): 703Google Scholar; “American Arts and American Arms,” Graham's American Monthly Magazine 44 (01 1854): 93–95Google Scholar; “The Representative Art,” Atlantic Monthly 5 (06 1860): 687Google Scholar; and Sturgis, Russell, “The Conditions of Art in America,” North American Review 102 (01 1866): 16–23Google Scholar. A contrasting point of view is “Something About Our Painters,” American Review: A Whig Journal 4 (07 1846): 181Google Scholar.

38. Mount's diary, February 1848, 17, and August 29, 1846, and February 1, 1847, in Frankenstein, , Mount, 9, 143, 172Google Scholar; and Brooklyn Museum of Art, Catalogue, 8Google Scholar.

39. Frankenstein, , Mount, 119, 187–88, 234Google Scholar; and William Sidney Mount to George P. Morris, in Frankenstein, , Painter of Rural America, 38Google Scholar.

40. Wallach, , “Thomas Cole,” 33–34Google Scholar. Williams's “The Romantic Artist,” regarding the radical changes in the ideas of art, the artist, and their place in society, informed my conclusions here, although Williams addressed English writers of a slightly earlier period.

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43. Kelly, Franklin, “Mount's Patrons,” in Johnson, , William Sidney Mount, 109–128Google Scholar. Also see Johns, American Genre Painting (passim) on the implications of typing in genre painting, which she argued is a vehicle to negotiate differences in class, race, and gender, usually reinforcing an urban viewers' sense of superiority over the “other.”

44. Kelly, “Mount's Patrons,” 109; and Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel with Schnapper, Dominique, The Love of Art: European Museums and Their Public, trans. Beattie, Caroline and Merriman, Neil (Les Editions de Minuit, 1969: rept. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

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46. Exodus 21:6 states that when a Hebrew slave declines to leave his master at the end of his six-year term of indenture, his master “shall bring him to the door, unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.” See also Pfeiffer, Charles, Vos, Howard F., and Rea, John, eds., Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia (Chicago: Moody Press, 1975), 1: 484Google Scholar.

47. H. F., , “National Academy,” New World 6 (06 17, 1843): 728Google Scholar.

48. Johnson, , William Sidney Mount, 24, 33Google Scholar. Moffat, (“Barnburning and Hunkerism”) also bases some of his conclusions about The Power of Music on a tiny detail in the paintingGoogle Scholar.

49. Harwood, Andrew Allen, “The Painter's Study,” in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1840, ed. Leslie, Miss (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1839), 218Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., 217, 219.

51. Ibid., 219.

52. Ibid., 217.

53. Burns, , Pastoral Inventions, 170–73, 161Google Scholar.

54. See Moffat, “Barnburning and Hunkerism”; Colbert, “Fair Exchange No Robbery”; Colbert, A Measure of Perfection; and Wunderlich, Roger, “William Sidney Mount's Split Personality: Artistically Forward, Politically Backward,” in Kaplan, , William Sidney Mount, 41—43Google Scholar.

55. Frankenstein, , Mount, 9Google Scholar.