A nineteenth-century art patron and collector - Elias Lyman Magoon - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2000 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

As early as 1864, the Reverend Elias Lyman Magoon (1810-1886) foresaw the potential benefits of creating an art museum on a university campus. To this end he convinced Matthew Vassar, the founder of the college in Poughkeepsie, New York, that still bears his name, to purchase his enormous and important collection of American and English art. By that date Magoon had commissioned or purchased some three hundred paintings, most of them American landscape and genre scenes, as well as more than thirty-seven hundred works on paper, the vast majority by English artists. A selection of seventy works, including paintings, watercolors, drawings, engravings, and woodcuts comprise an exhibition entitled Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture and the Magoon Collection, which is on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar until December20.

As described in the catalogue of the exhibition, the show takes a three-part approach to landscape painting in England and the United States. The first, entitled "Encompassing Space," examines the ways artists selected and arranged their compositions, from tightly framed scenes to expansive panoramas. "Defining Place" explores intimate views that depend on the use of light or minute detail; and the third, "Cultivating Nature," examines the human presence in landscape views, either through the incorporation of figures or the inclusion of manmade features such as buildings, railroads, aqueducts, and dams.

Some artists considered the American landscape a contemporary Eden; others criticized it for being so very primeval. Thomas Cole commented that the "most impressive characteristic of American scenery is its wildness," and he eschewed such things as the encroachment of settlers, industry, and the milroads. Others, particularly foreign visitors, lamented the absence of the human hand responsible for transforming and taming the unruly wilderness.

As the nineteenth century progressed, English and American artists were drawn to the enormously influential theories of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite painters, who favored minutely detailed landscapes. In paintings such as Down the Hudson to West Point (illustrated above) the artist Charles Herbert Moore took artistic license by substituting a cart path for what actually was the railroad track by the time he painted it in 1861.

Many of Magoon's English works of art depict well-known travel destinations--natural wonders, romantic ruins, churches, and other landmarks in the landscape. At mid-century the writings of the American architect Andrew Jackson Downing promoting the picturesque landscape were extremely influential on artists, architects, and landscape architects like Frederick Law Olmsted. Tourism grew apace with the railroad, and while throngs of visitors, hotel builders, and navel promoters greatly altered what was formerly an unspoiled landscape, their efforts enabled artists to take more frequent trips into the countryside in search of landscape subjects. Toward the end of the century, less densely populated locales such as the Adirondack Mountains became destinations for artists seeking to paint the natural beauty of the United States.

The catalogue of the exhibition contains contributions by Harvey K. Flad, David Lowenthal, and Karen Lucic. It may be obtained by telephoning 845-437-5237.