The Erie Canal and New York State folk art

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

Pecks portraits of Elizabeth and Andrews Preston (Pls. VI, VII), probably painted in Cato, New York, about 1830, illustrate the changes caused by increased patronage. By focusing on the sitters' faces and using a simple, half-length composition he kept sitting time to a minimum. Decorative touches are limited to the trefoil designs on the drapery and the lace collar in the portrait of Elizabeth, and the floral pattern on her sash. Andrews Preston was also part of the Yankee invasion, moving from Pomfret, Connecticut, to Chenango County, New York, before 1800. From 1820 to 1842 he operated a general store in Cato, a village seven miles north of the canal in Cayuga County.(6)

Pride in the growing towns and cities of upstate New York made urban views something of an artistic convention during this time. Joseph Hidley, a house painter, carpenter, taxidermist, and handyman, painted bird's-eye views of his thriving crossroads village of Poestenkill, a settlement situated east of Albany (see Pl. I). Although not on the canal, Poestenkill is emblematic of the growth of New York villages in the mid-nineteenth century and of the pride New Yorkers took in their economic progress.

John Wilson made the strikingly detailed rendering of a vibrant Albany shown in Plate VIII. Just a few miles south of the junction of the canal and the Hudson River, Albany had long since outgrown its Dutch roots to become a vital hub for commerce and transportation.

Wilson's painting shows State Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares, from Market Street (now Broadway) in the foreground to the capitol in the distance. The signs on the buildings indicate the diversity of enterprises that flourished there, and among the activities of the men and women on the street are speechmaking and peddling farm products and flowers.(7)

An unusual subject for folk painters was the canal itself, which was widely known through prints and was exploited both for its symbolic and its aesthetic value. The vignette of the canal shown in Plate II is painted on a large Whig campaign banner of about 1840. It carries a potent political message by juxtaposing a screaming eagle - the symbol of an aggressive and vibrant United States - and the tricolor shield of the Great Seal with images of commerce and industry. The artist clearly expresses the Whig belief that the development of coastal and internal transportation and the protection of home industries were vital interests to the Republic. This picture was probably based on a scene painted to celebrate the opening of the canal.(8) Thus the Erie Canal, which inspired a frenzy of canal construction in the northeastern United States, had come to symbolize American ingenuity and progress.

In a masterpiece of folk art, Mary Keys depicted the series of locks that raised and lowered barges seventy feet where the canal broke through the Niagara escarpment (Pl. IX).(9) She based her work on a lithograph published by Imbert and Company in 1825 after a drawing by George Catlin (1796-1872).(10) Keys significantly enlivened the scene by emphasizing the V-shape and crisscross patterns of the locks. In so doing she transformed the central engineering marvel of the canal into an abstraction in which the tension of the interlocking diagonals commands the viewer's attention. The same two-dimensional emphasis on patterns appears in the village buildings, canal boat, and team of horses on the towpath, all adapted from the prim. The church, with its dominating spire, is the only detail that Keys added to what she found in the prim. The watercolor was executed in 1832 and is evidence of the swift acceptance of the canal into the popular visual lexicon. It also reveals the startling artistic talent of its painter.