New Haven’s Sentinels: The Art and Science of East Rock and West Rock

Appendix Two: Further Notes on the Artists and Their Art

140 | New Haven’s Sentinels Appendix Two FURTHER NOTES ON THE ARTISTS AND THEIR ART • About 40 years ago . . . the main peak was then, as now, the favorite point of view. From here the eye takes in the elm-embowered city, [and] the harbor, with the hills and plains that bound it. Edward Atwater, 1881 John W. Barber (1798–1885). John W. Barber was an artist and historian who owned a print shop in New Haven. He traveled throughout Connecticut by horse and buggy gathering geographic and historical information on nearly every village, town and city. Throughout his travels he made rough pencil sketches that he ink washed and transferred onto woodblocks and steel plates during the winter months. Barber illustrated and published Connecticut Historical Collections (1836), the first popular history book in the nation. This book came upon the state’s citizens like a work of magic. At the time few people had traveled beyond the boundaries of their villages and towns. Image 8. George E. Candee (1837–1907). Candee was born in New Haven and spent much of his life in that city. As a teenager he painted advertising signs, carriages and a few portraits. In 1860 he went to New York where he took lessons with Joseph Kyle and five years later exhibited at the National Academy of Design. He spent the next five years traveling extensively in Pennsylvania, New York State and northern New England. Encouraged by John Ferguson Weir, Candee exhibited several of his landscapes at the Yale School of Fine Arts. In 1870, he went to Europe. After two years in Italy he became ill and returned home. Candee spent the remaining decades painting scenes around New Haven, including eight watercolors of East Rock and West Rock (most in private hands). He completed a beautiful oil of the Sleeping Giant in 1875. An anonymous reviewer of his oil West River, Westville, Connecticut (1868) wrote “he has given us that touch of Impressionism which brings glowing warmth.” Image 44. Frederick E. Church (1826–1900). Church, one of the most renowned of the nineteenth century American landscape painters, was born and raised in Hartford. Daniel Wadsworth, a leading art collector and founder of Hartford’s Wadsworth Athenaeum arranged for Church to become a pupil of Thomas Cole. Observing Cole at work in the Catskills, Church quickly learned the mantra “paint things as you see them and make your brush your only walking stick.” Early in his career Church decided to put Connecticut’s most important historic sites on Appendix Two | 141 canvas and painted Hooker and Company, two people arriving at the promised land, signifying Hartford’s foundation. Church found his second historic subject in West Rock, celebrated for its association with the British regicides. Kelly (1988) described Church’s painting as “a quiet, restrained vision of the pastoral beauty of the American present painted in straightforward, realistic style” and that it “satisfied the requirements of truthfulness to nature.” The painstaking realism of West Rock is in striking contrast to the imaginary scenery of Hooker and Company. Somehow in the years between 1846 and 1848, Church became more intent on a truthful representation of nature than on imposing allegorical spirits. Image 38. Benjamin H. Coe (1799–1883). Coe was best known as a drawing teacher in Hartford and published popular text books titled Easy Lessons in Landscape Drawing (1840) and A New Drawing Book of American Scenery (1845). He possessed a remarkable faculty for imparting the basics of art to his students. E. Bartholomew, Frederick Church, Charles Moore and Harry Thompson were among the many luminaries who came to him for their first instruction. Coe was born in Hartford and settled permanently in New Haven in 1854. In 1864 he dedicated himself to the temperance movement and gave up painting. Image 39. Thomas Cole (1801–1848). Cole was born in Bolton-le-Moor, England, in 1801. At age 17 he went to Liverpool to learn the trade of wood engraver. A traveling portrait painter gave him a book with the first rules of art and although he was obliged to make his own brushes and borrow paint from a chair maker, he was soon at work as an itinerant painter. He was unsuccessful in making a living. It is rumored that one day Cole picked up two pebbles and said to himself, “I will set one of these on a stick and throw the other at it. If I knock it off I will go on...