Mounts Paintings example essay topic

A narrative or genre tradition of depicting everyday experiences began in the Jacksonian era when artists like John Quid or matched imagery to Washington Irving's History of New York or when William Sidney Mount committed the rural life of Long Island to canvas or when Lilly Martin Spencer explored images of her own household. (Frisbee) An expanded audience for landscape, genre, and another relatively new Jacksonian subject, the still life, came with the mid-century explosion of magazines, newspapers, and journals, and with prints produced from original artwork, distributed through organizations like the American Art Union. Lush beautiful still life paintings by Severin Roes en, John Francis, and others celebrated the American harvest, offering little indication of a major civil war on the horizon. (Finly) Popularizing the common American as a hero worthy of art, Mount became something of an American hero himself. His fame grew as his paintings were reproduced in popular engravings and gift books, collections of short stories written by American authors and illustrated by American artists. Well-known writers would create stories around Mounts pictures, Johnson says.

So therefore, Mounts paintings influenced native literature and the storytelling of American life. (Finly) Born in Setauket in 1807, Mount got his start as apprentice to his brother Henry, a sign and ornamental painter in New York City. William Mount became a professional artist about 1830, achieving distinction for his genre paintings - scenes of everyday life that depicted his fellow ordinary Long Islanders at work and at play. At that time, depicting common folk engaged in the pursuit of happiness was unheard of in fine art; only figures out of history, myth, literature or the Bible were considered worthy of representation. Similarly, for the serious young American artist, it was considered a requirement to travel to Europe - the birthplace of civilization - to study painting. Not for William Sidney Mount; Long Island was his muse.

No Europe-worshipper, he spent most of his time at his Setauket birthplace, the Hawkins-Mount Homestead, where he painted the scenes of agrarian life he saw around him. The work widely regarded as his masterpiece, Farmers Noon ing (1836), depicts a languid, typically all-American scene of field hands breaking for lunch, yet the subjects are rendered with an attention to detail previously reserved for portraits of noble Europeans. In spirit, the painting is pure democracy. (Stephenson) At home, in the Setauket-Stony Brook area, Mount was a local hero as well. An accomplished violinist, he was often invited to play the popular jigs, waltzes and reels of the time for parties and dances. Everybody knew him, Johnson says.

He had a reputation, and people enjoyed being around him. They were very proud of him. Mount even patented an instrument called the cradle of harmony, a violin he designed to be more audible over the boisterous foot-stomping typical of hoedowns such as the one he depicted in his painting, Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride. (Frisbee) Though he only occasionally left the Island for brief forays to New York City, Mounts fame traveled far and wide.

Mount died in 1868, of pneumonia contracted on what would be his final trip to New York City. Toward the end of his life, another great American painter eclipsed him: Winslow Homer, whose favorite subject was the sea. But by the time of his death, William Sidney Mounts place in history was secure. For in his heyday - the quarter-century between 1830 and 1855 - he was our visual ambassador, painting scenes that proudly represented our country and its people, both at home and all over the world.

Bibliography

M. O edel, K. Genes, William Sidney Mounts Art, New York: Viking Press, 1989 Deborah Johnson, The Genre Paintings of William Sidney Mount, from The Guardian, Issue: August 1998 Joe Frisbee, American Life on Display at The Frick Art Museum, from Ottawas Statesman, April, 1999 Will Finly, 19th Century Representation of Rural Life, Birmingham: States Press, 1995 Joe Stephenson, American Canvas Masters, from Arts, Issue: October 1996 Deborah J.
Johnson, et al., William Sidney Mount: Painter of American Life, American Federation of Arts, 1998.