Charles Codman: from limner to landscape painter

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2002 by Jessica Nicoll

In 1838, the first exhibition and fair of the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association in Portland included a fine arts display, the centerpiece of which was a group of thirty-six oils, the majority of them landscapes, by Charles Codman (Pl. II). Next to them were four copies after Codman by K. W. Davis, (1) "a common house-painter," according to the exhibition catalogue written by John Neal (1793-1876), a Portland based art critic. In the catalogue Neal cautioned the aspiring artist not to give up the certainty of his trade, even for the glorious uncertainty of a name. It is a thankless calling, and at best a precarious one, that of a landscape-painter in our day." (2)

This observation reveals a moment in history when artisan painters regularly aspired to and assumed the mantle of fine artist. Given the context of the remarks, the characterization of landscape painting as a "thankless calling" appears to be a commentary on the difficulties Codman, an ornamental painter by training, had encountered in embracing the new mode of landscape painting and endeavoring to create a market for it. Indeed, the story of Codman's artistic career illuminates the experiences of American artists in the early years of the new Republic and the precarious emergence 0f landscape painting, a genre that came to dominate nineteenth-century American art.

Codman's origins are obscure. Even his obituary in the Portland Tribune stared: "Codman was born--we know not where--in Boston, perhaps." (3) Based on the age of forty-one given on his gravestone in Portland's Eastern Cemetery, he was born in 1800 or 1801, but no birth record has been located for him. (4) Accounts of his artistic training place him in Boston by his mid-teens, when he entered into a painting apprenticeship. The most detailed discussion of the artist's background states:

Mr. Codman was formerly an apprentice to Mr. Penniman, the celebrated Boston painter of signs, fire buckets, militia standards, and the ten thousand other etceterns of 'Ornamental Painting,' in all its branches. (5)

A posthumous account by Neal noted that Codman "had been apprenticed to Willard, the clock-maker of Roxbury, where he did paint nothing but clock-faces; and that after this, he worked for Penniman, the sign-painter of Boston," (6) suggesting that he had first been apprenticed to the renowned clockmakers Simon (1753-1848) and Aaron Willard (1767-1844) and then to John Ritto Penniman (1782-1841), who operated a successful decorative painting business first in Roxbury and then Boston from 1804 to 1827. (7)

Penniman routinely employed apprentices to help meet the heavy demand for his painting services, while they learned the techniques of the trade. Among the artists who began their careers in Penniman's shop were the portraitist Thomas Badger (1792-1868) and Alvan Fisher (1792-1863), who, like Codman, became an important early landscape painter. Of his apprenticeship Fisher wrote:

I was placed with a Mr. Pennyman, who was an excellent ornamental painter...From him I acquired a style which required years to shake off-I mean a mechanical ornamental touch, and manner of colouring. (8)

Neal similarly observed of Codman's early works:

All he did smacked of looking-glass tablets, apothecary furniture and tea-trays--perfectly smooth--perfectly flat--exceedingly positive, and as unnatural as heart could desire. (9)

These commentaries implicitly distinguish between the kind of education Fisher and Codman received and more academic training, which was not widely available to aspiring American artists in the early nineteenth century. The first art academies were newly established--such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, founded in 1805--and were accessible only to a fortunate few. Rarer still was the opportunity to study at European academies, an experience chiefly enjoyed by the affluent and by artists who had already established their careers and enjoyed some success in the United States. An apprenticeship in a commercial branch of the arts remained a common way for an artist to receive his early training. Codman's contemporary, Thomas Cole (1801--1848), for example, began his artistic life as a wood engraver's assistant and designer of patterns for printing blocks, first for textiles and then for wallpaper.

While not a fine art academy, Penniman's shop was a place of opportunity for young artists of ambition, for the ornamental painting skills they learned there equipped them to earn a living as an artist Penniman was renowned for his versatility offering a full scope of decorative painting services, including business signs, military standards, clockfaces, reverse paintings on glass, and a specialization in painting Masonic paraphernalia. His shop provided ornamental painting for Boston's premier artisans, including Simon and Aaron Willard, the looking-glass and frame maker John Doggett (1780--1857), and the cabinetmaker Thomas Seymour (1771--1848). (10)

The memorandum book of Nathan Negus (1801--1825), an apprentice with Penniman from 1814 to 1820, notes a wide range of work for a distinguished clientele, including ornamenting "an organ board for Mr. Gilbert Stuart." (11) Negus's memorandum book covers the period from September 1819 to April 1822 and thus includes the last eight months of his six-year apprenticeship, before he embarked on a career as an itinerant portraitist and ornamental painter Negus writes of a "C. Codman" within his social circle, which was made up almost entirely of young artists. (12) Among the other artist-friends who appear frequently in the dairy are William P. Codman (w 1819--1831), who was beginning a career as an itinerant portraitist (and was probably Charles Codman's brother); John Samuel Blunt (1798--1835), who became a competitor of Penniman's in New Hampshire; and Moses Swett (w. 1823--1837), who ultimately left Boston for New York City and worked in the new medium of lithography. Of these, Negus places only Swett explicitl y in Penniman's shop as an apprentice when he notes that, before his indenture was up, "MOSES SWETT leaves Mr. Penniman being the fifth boy that, has been here since I have." (13) In October 1819, Negus and his companions conceived of a "Society for the instruction of young artists," which they archly named the "Pennimanic Society." (14) The nine members of the group initially met monthly and then quarterly for the delivery of discourses on art, (15) and they sought out opportunities to see artworks in galleries, private houses, and even went "to see a painting executed in ROME." (16) The tone of many of the entries in Negus's diary suggests that he resented the subordination of apprenticeship. The admonition from Negus's family to be "dutifull and obedient, to all [Mr. Penniman's] commands (if reasonable)" (17) further hints at the friction. Halfway through his indenture Negus learned that Penniman had mistaken his birth date. As he explained to his sister, "Mr. Penniman thinks I am eighteen... this is a com fortable thing for me to be free at the age of twenty." (18) His careful record of the fact that Swett was the fifth boy to leave Penniman's service during the course of his apprenticeship also suggests that there were tensions within the shop, perhaps because Penniman's taste for alcohol was already placing a burden on his am prentices. The artist William Dunlap (1766--1839) documented this problem when he wrote: