The Erie Canal and New York State folk art

Magazine Antiques, April, 1999 by Paul S. D'Ambrosio

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 had a profound impact on many aspects of life in New York State, not the least on a wide range of rural artists and artisans who provided artwork and consumer goods deemed essential in any proper middle-class home. A flood of settlers came from eastern New York, New England, and Europe, creating an expanded market and encouraging a new freedom of expression.

Although from disparate backgrounds, the settlers created a new culture, drawing on their common American experience and on the spirit of experimentation expressed in many publications that appeared after 1830.

The canal solved logistical problems for some industries, such as stoneware and textiles. By facilitating the distribution of fine European goods, the canal contributed to a competitive atmosphere in which folk artists had to be innovative in order to thrive.(1) Increasing numbers of tourists traveling via the canal to Niagara Falls and the other scenic sites in the region greatly enhanced the development of Indian arts as well.

The opening of what had been Iroquois land in western New York after the Revolution brought a large influx of New Englanders in what became known as the Yankee invasion, but it was the Erie Canal that transformed the whole state. The 363-mile-long waterway connected the Hudson River (and by extension, New York City) with the Great Lakes. Because of it, cities like Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse grew instantly out of the wilderness. The canal linked New York City to what was a two-thousand-mile waterway that extended from the western shore of Lake Superior to the gulf of the Saint Lawrence River. Shipping time from Buffalo to New York City was cut from twenty to eight days, and freight rates fell dramatically. By 1840 New York City had become the financial and trading center of the United States thanks to the canal, which became the catalyst for the economic and cultural development of the state and its western markets.(2)

Itinerant artists did a thriving business in the towns that sprang up along the canal, and their art evolved, becoming less idiosyncratic and incorporating the solutions of more conventional academic art.(3) An example of this phenomenon is the life and career of Milton William Hopkins. He was born in Litchfield County, Connecticut, in 1789, moved with his family to the central New York village of Clinton in 1800, then, in 1802, to Pompey Hill in Onondaga County. He returned to Connecticut about 1807, and in 1817 moved with his second wife and child to the village of Evans Mills, New York, north of Syracuse. In 1823, Hopkins was enticed by economic opportunity to move with his family (now numbering six) to the Erie Canal town of Albion, twenty-five miles west of Rochester, where, for the next thirteen years, he worked as a house, sign, and portrait painter, chair-maker, auctioneer, and canal boat captain. He also became involved in the Anti-Masonic and temperance movements.

Hopkins drew on a number of artistic influences. From his ten years in northwestern Connecticut he was probably familiar with the work of Reuben Moulthrop (1763-1814), Samuel Broadbent (1759-1828), and Ralph Earl (1751-1801). However, the most direct influence was probably Ammi Phillips (1788-1865), who worked along the Massachusetts-Connecticut-New York borders and whose painting most closely resembles Hopkins's.(4) The Hopkins portrait in Plate III, painted in 1833, is characteristic of his work in western New York. The well-modeled facial features, muted brown background, aim draped over an ornamental chair back, and half-length, seated pose are all attributes ascribed to Hopkins. The arm and hand, seemingly independent of the body, comprise a prominent feature of Phillips's portraits as well.

Noah North was another painter who came to the state with the Yankee invasion and the Erie Canal commercial boom. His portraits (see Pls. IV, V) are closely related to those of Hopkins.(5) North was born into a Connecticut family that moved to Marcellus, New York, southwest of Syracuse in 1806, and farther west, to the region of Batavia, New York, two years later. There is evidence to suggest that North lived with the Hopkins family in Albion and studied portrait painting with Milton Hopkins in the early 1830s. The portraits illustrated are his earliest documented works and clearly show Hopkins's influence in their muted colors and simplified compositions. They were painted in 1833 probably in Pembroke, New York, near Batavia, where Abijah Stoddard, one of the sitters, had a thriving medical practice. North successfully painted portraits in the western New York counties of Genesee, Orleans, and Monroe, all of which were in the path of the canal. In 1836 he followed Hopkins to Ohio, where new markets were flourishing along the waterways connecting them to New York.

Sheldon Peck is an example of a portrait painter who had an established practice in New England before migrating to New York as a direct result of the canal. He became a portrait painter in his hometown of Corn-wall, Vermont, working in a characteristic style that included stiff, frontal poses and sharp-edged, dour facial expressions. In 1828 Peck and his wife moved to the prosperous village of Jordan by the canal in Onondaga County. His exposure to the work of other portrait painters resulted in his increased use of conventional poses and props, but he continued to maintain his smooth, linear manner of painting.