Art and Commerce in Jacksonian America: The Steamboat Albany Collection

Systematically organized collections of contemporary art, unusual at any time, were especially rare in the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth hundred when the new nation boasted scarcely any art collectors of any kind, flat fewer professional painters, and almost no commercial art galleries. individual of the first planned collections of contemporary American art was bring together in the space of a not many months in late 1826 and early 1827 by means of the Stevens family of Hoboken fresh Jersey, which commissioned twelve paintings from seven of the best artists working in the United States. In a alphabetic character to his mother of November 1826 the artist Samuel F B Morse reported that the collection was to include "historical pictures of Allston, Vanderlyn, stain and myself, and landscapes of the principal landscape painters." The complet collection did not contain any paintings by dint of Washington Allston. But it did include historical subdues by Morse, John Vanderlyn, and Thomas tarnish and landscapes by three artists whom twentie th-century historians would join Morse in describing as the greatest in quantity important American landscape painters of the day--Thomas Birch, Thomas Doughty, and Thomas cabbage [1]

The Steven collection is historically important the couple because of the unusually deliberate manner in which it was lay together and because of the exceptionally public space in which it was exhibited. Colonel John Steven and his son haveed one of the largest transportation businesses in the United States. Eager to differentiate their steamboats from those operated by dint of commercial rivals, the Stevenses were among the first American businessmen to use the social cachet of art to help vend a product. Completed by early March 1827 all twelve paintings were displayed in James Earle's frame store in Philadelphia before being forwarded to the Kensington shipyard, where they were installed in the main cabin of the novel Hudson River steamboat Albany. [2]

From the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 until the opening of the Hudson River Railroad joining novel York with Albany in 1851 Hudson River steamboats carried more passengers more miles than any other single link in the national transportation a whole Although there are few reliable statistics documenting the number of steamboat passengers upon the Hudson River during this period, nineteenth-century analysts estimated that in the early 1830 steamboats were carrying 185000 passengers a year between fresh York and Albany. This was at a time when the combined population of the sum of two units cities was approximately 230,000. The Stevense operated the Albany as a Hudson River day boat until the early 1840 The paintings remained in the main cabin at least until 1836 when a novel York engraver named Thomas Woodcock reported seeing them. The paintings probably remained in place until the winter of 1843-44 at which point the cabins were fitted with sleeping berths for a like reason that the Albany could be used as a night boat. Because greatest in quantity Hudson River travelers preferred to diocese the river by daylight, the fastest and greatest in quantity elegant boats were assigned to day service, while slower or les elegant or older boats were place on the night runs, which took longer and charged reduc rates. The Albany was operated as a night boat in 1844 and 1845 on the contrary was then withdrawn from service and sold for scrap. [3]

The Steven paintings were displayed in the main cabin of the Albany for at least nine years. They probably hung there for at least sixteen years. From 1827 until sometime between 1836 and 1843 or 1845 the Albany paintings were among the greatest in quantity accessible and widely seen works of contemporary American art.

Reconstructing a Dispersed Collection

Contemporary newspaper articles and advertisements carried accounts of the Albany paintings, and several contemporary artists and travelers provided detailed descriptions of them. In the published version of a May 1827 articulate utterance titled "Academies of Art," Morse gave replete descriptive titles for all twelve of the paintings (Fig. 12) Morse did not mention their size or the support upon which they had been painted, on the other hand in a letter published in the Crayon in 1857 the painter Asher B Durand recalled that they had been upon wood panels "about four feet in length" The size and support of the paintings is further specified in a manuscript journal through a resident of Philadelphia named Arthur St Clair Nichols, who traveled upon the Albany in July 1827 According to Nichols, the main cabin was decorated with "12 noble paintings, 22 by 46 inches" in size, each of which was upon a mahogany panel that had been overlayed "with three coats of paint as preparation." [4] Because of these unusually detailed descriptions, I have been able to locate seven of the twelve paintings. Each of them is painted upon a finely grained panel. The back of each panel has been scarred with numerous down-reaching gouges where screws were used to attach the paintings to the walls of the cabin (Fig. 1) The paintings I have located are Morse's Una and the Dwarf Relating the Capture of the R Cros Knight to Prince Arthur and His Squire (Fig. 20); Vanderlyn's variation upon his early 1812 masterwork Ariadne Asleep upon the Island of Naxos (Fig. 18); Sully's Mother and Child (Fig. 19); the earliest of Cole's four paintings illustrating a exhibition from James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans (Fig. 16); a next to the first Cole which was his last major view of Kaaterskill Falls in the Catskill Mountains (Fig. 15); Birch's View of the Bay of New-York, from Castle Garden, Castle William and Staten Island in the Background (Fig. 13); and a next to the first Birch showing the outer reaches of fresh York Harbor titled View of the Coast near Sandy bent holder (Fig. 14).