Born, Wolfgang: American landscape painting: an interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948)

ist showed Hawthorne some minutely de-
tailed drawings which served as studies
for his paintings. “We complimented
him,” Hawthorne continues, somewhat
pedantically, “on his patience; but he
said, Oh, it’s not patience,—it’s lovel In
fact it was a patient and most successful
wooing of a beloved object, which at
last rewarded him by yielding itself
wholly.”

To this report we may add Henry T
Tuckerman’s lengthy and warmhearted
appraisal of Brown in the Book of the
Artists of 1867—a kind of biographical
and critical sketch that contains a moving
story about Brown’s struggle to go to
Europe, the beloved land of his enthusi-
astic artist's dreams. After many lauda-
tory comments, however, Tuckerman
makes the surprising statement, drawn
from a current criticism, that the success-
ful paintings of Brown’s Italian period
did not represent the best the artist had
to give. Speaking of Brown’s post-Italian,
American period the critic, whose name
is not given, said: “His color is now
marked by a pearly-gray tone, which is
restful and quiet in comparison with the
lavish use of reds and yellows which
characterized his work in other years. At
the same time he elaborates his picture,


conscientious care.”

There is in the Isaak Delgado Mu-
seum in New Orleans a view of the Tiber
River in Rome by George, or, as his
contemporaries called him in friendly
malice, Claude Loring Brown, that con-
firms the verdict of the critic—a very
brownish “prospect” with an all too rosy
evening sky, summarily brushed on the
canvas to recall the effect of darkened
gallery pieces. In 1860 this painting ad-
dict of Baedeker exchanged his abode
in the city of the Medici for his native

New England. And here, on the wind-
swept coast, under a less halcyonic sky,
he developed a style of his own: sober,
meticulous, and honest. Paintings such as
View of Norwalk Island in 1864 (Fig. 67),
and Medford Marshes, now in the Bos-
ton Museum, are most impressive ex-
amples of authentic American landscape
painting.

The change of Brown’s style suggests
two things: first, that he found himself
when he began to paint the landscape
that was familiar to him and did not con-
tain overtones which he was not suffi-
ciently sensitive to catch; secondly, that
he was influenced by the American art
form of the panoramic landscape. In his
post-Ttalian work he took over the narrow
shape and the “additive” arrangement of
motifs fused together in a horizontal row
which was characteristic of the pano-
ramic painters.

There are points of contact between
Brown’s literal portrayal of details and
panoramic composition and the late
landscapes by Heade (Fig. 68). Stray
works such as Lars Gustav Sellstedt’s
(1819-1911) Buffalo Harbor from the
Foot of Porter Avenue,* dated 1871 and
now in the Albright Gallery of Buffalo,
belong to the same group. But the real
heyday of the panoramic landscape was
already under way when Albert Bier-
stadt 2 set out in 1859 with the expedi-
tion of General Lander for the Rocky
Mountains. A year earlier he had re-
turned from a four years stay in Diissel-
dorf trained to cope in a virtuoso manner
with every difficulty nature could offer.
This manner included unfailing formulas
for all types of trees, mountains, clouds,
waters, stones, and so forth. It also in-
cluded the tricks of a stage designer
translated into the smooth taste of the
Victorian parlor. And it included, as its