Drawings in the Adirondack Museum - various artists

Magazine Antiques, July, 2000 by Brucia Witthoft

The American drawings collection in the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, spans a century from about 1840 to 1940. More than twenty artists documented the topography life of the region and the moods evoked by the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State. Topographers, surveyors, and illustrators are among those represented, as well as painters who seem to have made their Adirondack drawings for their own sake rather than as preparatory studies for, paintings.

The earliest drawing in the collection is a panorama of Lake George on four sheets attributed to Edward Seager (Pl. I). It dates to the early 1840s when the region was not well mapped and not often visited. The artists viewpoint seems to have been in the vicinity of what is known as Bolton's Landing, looking east. [1] A few houses and tree stumps show that human habitation has begun, and one large structure, on the third sheet from the left, appears to be a hotel. Although the artist seems to have had a primarily topographical intent, the drawing conveys a red feeling for the dramatic beauty of Lake George, while softening the effect of the wilderness by including signs of human activity.

Seager was born in England in 1809, immigrated with his family to Canada sometime after 1827, and settled in Boston. He became the drawing teacher at the English High School there in 1844, and the first professor of drawing at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1850. [2]

John Frederick Kensett was an early, visitor to the Adirondack region, [3] with documented trips in 1848 and many years thereafter. His destinations in the early years seem to, have been Elizabethtown Lake George which are close to the site of Fort Ticonderoga (see Pl. III) The fort is situated at the southern end of Lake Champlain where the narrows lead into Lake George. It played an important role in the French and Indian Wars of the mid-eighteenth century, when lakes and rivers were the armies' roads. During the American Revolution it changed hands several times between the English and the Americans, but afterwards its strategic value vanished. Settlers mined it for building stone, and the fort soon assumed the appearance of an ancient ruin. In Kensett's drawing, three piles of stones, aligned like the remains of a Roman aqueduct, are set against a view of the lake and mountains. Although the fort was only a century old, the drawing suggests a place of great antiquity left in ruins by the decline of a com plex social system. The same romantic tendency is evident in Thomas Cole's Course of Empire series of 1833-1836 (New-York Historical Society New York City).

Jervis McEntee drew the ramshackle cabin he shared with a guide and Joseph Tubby (1821-1896), another artist, during June and July 1851 while making his first recorded visit to the region (P1. IV). McEntee kept a diary of the trip, describing hunting, fishing, and climbing Mount Marcy as well as nights spent in tents or sheltered beneath their canoes. [4] The drawing highlights the construction of the cabin with its "porch" covered with bark and skins and baskets and other objects casually stored against the outside wall.

Another important early visitor to the region was Thomas Addison Richards, who made a drawing of the steel-rolling mill on the Ausable River (P1. II) in 1853. Born in England, he came to the United States with his family in 1831 and was living in New York City by 1844. He was a teacher and art administrator and the author and illustrator of books and articles, including two articles about the Adirondacks published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1859. [5] Perhaps with a view to claiming reimbursement, he kept track of his expenses on the back of the drawing, which was among a group of studies for illustrations in the articles. It is perfectly suited for reproduction because Richards has drawn the building with an architect's eye, emphasizing the precise shape of each element.

Seneca Ray Stoddard was a photographer who contributed to the design of the cameras he used. He also wrote popular guidebooks and chronicled American Indians as far away as Alaska. [6] Many of the wood engravings in The Adirondacks: illustrated, which he edited, are based on his own paintings, photographs, and drawings. [7] His pen drawing of Ausable Chasm shown in Plate VII emphasizes the wild grandeur of the gorge by the placement of two tiny figures at the base of the rock. The chasm is not a peaceful picturesque place, hut a reminder of nature's power, which is emphasized by the scratchy crosshatching of the drawing.

The museum has five of Stoddard's Adirondack sketchhooks, dated 1866, 1869, 1870, 1872, and 1873. Many of the drawings are the sources for the wood engravings in his guidebooks. However, others are not a record of a specific place but respond to a mood created by the harsh environment of the Adirondacks. Ducks Rising (Pl. VI) distorts the scale of objects as the marsh reeds loom over the lone skiff, creating angular reflections reminiscent of Oriental art.