ASU Research E-Magazine: Excavating McEntee

A Jervis McEntee landscape is a window to a simpler era. The artist’s intimate portrayals of northeastern America evoke a sense of nostalgia, heightened by the melancholy cast of his dusky, autumnal scenes.

As a painter in the mid-19th century, McEntee may well have understood this nostalgia. The Civil War and its aftermath was a time of great disruption and dislocation in America. As the nation transformed into an industrial society, McEntee’s paintings “satisfied a need among an urban, educated public for vicarious visual escape,” says J. Gray Sweeney, a professor of art history at ASU.

Sweeney describes the historical and social context of McEntee’s work in his lavish full-color catalogue for the exhibition, “McEntee and Company,” which was displayed earlier this year at the Beacon Hill Fine Arts Gallery in New York. The catalogue is the first scholarly study of this Hudson River School painter.

Autumn landscape with tall trees to the right, body of water in the left background, and cloudy skies

Autumn Landscape, c. 1868, oil on canvas, 30 x 54 inches. CIGNA Museum and Art Collection. Images courtesy J. Gray Sweeney, Ph.D. and Beacon Hill Fine Arts Gallery

Beacon Hill Gallery sought out Sweeney for his expertise on 19th century American painters, which includes a study of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. Sweeney says that the collaboration was an excellent opportunity for him.

“This is the first time a major New York art dealer has come as far as Arizona for scholarly expertise,” says Sweeney. “They are one of the top galleries in New York that deal in historic American paintings. I knew their reputation and that previous publications they’d done were impeccable.”

For the exhibition, Sweeney dug up information on McEntee that he had collected since the mid-1980s. He describes the study as an example of the “new” art history, a “synthesis of biographical, institutional, cultural, political and economic readings of the artist.”

A man walks down a path during autumn. There are tall trees to the left of the man. The painting is framed in a copper arch.

Autumn, c. 1862, oil on canvas, 18 x 15 1/8 inches. Century Association. Images courtesy J. Gray Sweeney, Ph.D. and Beacon Hill Fine Arts Gallery

McEntee’s diary, an important document in American art history, provides critical information in the catalogue. According to Sweeney, the diary offers “a rare psychological insight into the mind of the artist.” For example, McEntee writes:

“I look upon a landscape as I look upon a human being—its thoughts, its feelings, its moods, are what interest me; and to these I try to give expression. What it says, and thinks, and experiences, this is the matter that concerns the landscape painter.”

Sweeney says that Beacon Hill’s excellent reputation helped the gallery amass its impressive collection. Upon hearing about the exhibition, many collectors brought forth long unseen works for study. “It would have taken me years to find all the pictures that Beacon Hill produced in less than a year,” Sweeney says. —Diane Boudreau

Editor's note: Sweeney traveled to New York in late May, 1999 to admire another Hudson River School artist's painting before it was auctioned by Sotheby's. Sweeney discovered Frederic Edwin Church's “To the Memory of Cole”, which had been lost for 150 years.