The Lambdins of Philadelphia (Schwarz Gallery

Transcription

THE LAMBDINS OF PHILADELPHIA
N E W LY D I S C O V E R E D W O R K S
THE LAMBDINS OF PHILADELPHIA
NEWLY DISCOVERED WORKS
❀
❀
❀
the
LAMBDIN FAMILY COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS
by
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
and
GEORGE COCHRAN LAMBDIN
Adapted from
AN ESSAY
by
Ruth Irwin Weidner
❀
F I N E
P A I N T I N G S
SCHWARZ
P
1806 Chestnut Street
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Philadelphia PA 19103
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Fax 215 561 5621
F O U N D E D
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Tel 215 563 4887
Art Dealers Association of America; Art and Antique Dealers League of America; CINOA
Please direct inquiries to Robert Schwarz
1 9 3 0
Foreword
The rare opportunity to purchase a group of works that
has come down in the family of the artist offers unusual possibilities for study and for understanding the creative process. When the Gallery acquired some twenty
watercolors and oils by James Reid Lambdin and his son
George Cochran Lambdin from a descendant of the
artists in 1987, I knew that Ruth Irwin Weidner was the
art historian to work with us on a catalogue. Dr.Weidner,
who was then on the faculty of West Chester University
and is now professor emerita at the University, had just
published an essay for the catalogue of the exhibition
George Cochran Lambdin at the Brandywine River
Museum (September 6–November 23, 1986). In the
intervening years Dr. Weidner has assembled extensive
files regarding George Lambdin’s genre pictures, which
have allowed her to discuss the genre paintings in this
catalogue in unusual depth and in the context of
George Lambdin’s other work, the art of his time and
the art of his father, James Lambdin. The landscapes of
upstate New York, by the elder Lambdin, a welcome
addition to the iconography of that picturesque region,
receive scholarly attention in print for the first time in
this catalogue. In addition, the wealth of information
about James Lambdin’s museums places him in the tradition of the Peale family, long a major interest of the
Schwarz Gallery. I thank Dr. Weidner for her thorough
scholarship and her perseverence over the years, when
both she and the Gallery have had numerous other projects. This catalogue has been adapted from a longer
essay with complete notes that for the first time make
available to other scholars references and sources that
Dr. Weidner has unearthed in many places over many
years.The Gallery is releasing the essay in a companion
volume to be sent to appropriate libraries and made
available to others upon request.
During the last two years, Dr. Weidner has been ably
assisted by Christine Schultz Magda; I join Dr. Weidner
in commending her efforts. From the Gallery’s staff I
also thank Renee Gross; Christine Poole; Nathan
Rutkowski; David Cassedy, who oversaw the editorial
process; and Matthew North, who designed the catalogue.
—Robert D. Schwarz
Cover: George Cochran Lambdin, Two Girls Picking Fruit, detail (plate 19)
Back cover: James Reid Lambdin, Shawangunk Mountains from Artist’s Rock (plate 8)
Philadelphia Collection LXX
September 2002
Copyright © 2002 The Schwarz Gallery
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Control Number: 2002111948
Editing: Alison Rooney, Kate Royer Schubert
Photography: Rick Echelmeyer
Printing: Piccari Press
Paintings are offered subject to prior sale.
For complete essay and endnotes, see Ruth Irwin Weidner, The Lambdin Family Collection of
Paintings by James Reid Lambdin and George Cochran Lambdin (Philadelphia: Schwarz Gallery,
2002), Library of Congress Control Number 2002111949.
For archival purposes only.This PDF differs from the originally published version: text has reflowed due to legacy font replacement.
Preface and Acknowledgements
The nucleus of the present exhibition of oil paintings,
watercolor studies, and drawings is a collection of
works by the nineteenth-century American artists
James Reid Lambdin and his son George Cochran
Lambdin that remained in the Lambdin family and were
unknown to the larger art world until 1987. Such a
cache of works held in an artist’s family has particular
meaning to art historians and collectors, as such works
are often imbued with sentimental value, and the family provenance virtually assures their authenticity. Such
works as James Lambdin’s landscapes, created during
summer visits to New York State, may also evince the
artist’s simple delight in painting, rather than the more
formal constrictions of fulfilling commissions or
preparing for the competition and scrutiny of exhibitions, and some of George Lambdin’s early works in the
collection shed light on the artist’s working methods
and his use of photography. This exhibition and its
accompanying essay provide an overview of the
careers of the Lambdin artists. The group of portraits,
landscapes, genre subjects, and still lifes, treasured and
kept together by the family for more than one hundred
years, is a tribute to the Lambdins’ contributions to
American art.
Most of my research has taken place in the following
libraries, where staff members have been extraordinarily helpful in providing materials: Historical Society of
Pennsylvania; Morris Library, University of Delaware;
Archives of American Art; Library of Congress; Watson
Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sterling Library,
Yale University; Winterthur Library; and Francis Harvey
Green Library, West Chester University. I am especially
grateful to the Interlibrary Loan Department, West
Chester University.
James Duff, Director, Brandywine River Museum, has
kindly authorized the use in this publication of certain ideas and information first published in my essay
for the exhibition catalogue George Cochran
Lambdin (Chadds Ford, Pa.: Brandywine River
Museum, 1986); see various credits in the notes at the
end of this volume.
The following individuals have kindly contributed information and ideas or have otherwise facilitated my
research: Henry Adams, J. Curtiss Ayres, Ann Barnett,
Mary Anne Burns-Duffy, Kirsten Carlson, Margaret
Colahan, Sara Eugenia Lambdin (Baack) Curley, David
Dearinger, James Duff, Laura Fiorenza, Virginia Lee
Wagner Foster,Al Frane,William Gerdts, Kimberly Klaus,
Joan Lachance, Cheryl Leibold, Rachael Morehouse,
Jerry Pepper, James Pitcher, Sue Ann Prince, Marion
Ryan, Elizabeth Kennedy Sargent, Susan P. Schreiber, Paul
Schweizer, Willis L. Shirk, Jr., Sister Barbara Jean, Linda
Stanley, Mary Sweeney, Neville Thompson, Sarah
Weatherwax, David Weidner, WIlliam H. Whiteley, John
Wilmerding, and Ann Lambdin Young. Many thanks go to
the Schwarz Gallery staff: David Cassedy, Matthew
North, and especially to Christine Schultz Magda, who
worked with me every step of the way.
—Ruth Irwin Weidner
1
The Lambdin Family Collection of Paintings
by James Reid Lambdin and George Cochran Lambdin
Few cities can boast so many
families of artists as Philadelphia.1
These include the Peale clan, many
of whom followed patriarch
Charles Willson Peale into artistic
professions; three generations of
John Sartain’s family, artistic
leaders in Philadelphia for a century; two generations of the Smith
family, active for more than
seventy years; William Trost
Richards and his daughter Anna
Richards Brewster; two generations of Morans; the Webers; and
the Gilmans.2
George Cochran Lambdin, under
the tutelage of his father, began
exhibiting at an early age and
chose as his first subjects
portraits of children as well as
religious and literary themes.
Soon, however, George, following or, often, leading American
taste, moved into sentimental
and anecdotal genre, Civil War
subjects, and, later, portraits of
young women and the floral
studies for which he became so
well known.
Fig. 1. James Reid Lambdin in His Studio (c. 1878)
Such a list would scarcely be complete without James
Reid Lambdin (1807–1889) and his son George Cochran
Lambdin (1830–1896), for these two nineteenth-century
Pennsylvania artists enjoyed long and
highly successful painting careers
and were also important contributors—culturally, educationally, and
politically—to the progress of art in
this country. 3 The two Lambdins
lived and worked in close proximity,
but their career paths had certain
differences. James Reid Lambdin
specialized in portraits, especially
state portraiture, and was an
outstanding American portraitist of
his time. Although a few landscapes
by James have long been known,
until now the art world has not been
acquainted with his landscape views
of remote areas in New York State.
This exhibition, built around a
previously unknown collection of Lambdin paintings,
provides an opportunity not only to examine little-known
aspects of the Lambdins’ work but also to survey their rich
contributions to American art. In the
early nineteenth century, when James
was young, this country could boast
numerous outstanding artists but was
virtually lacking in the educational and
cultural institutions that supported and
encouraged the arts. Throughout their
careers both Lambdins avidly participated in the founding and leadership of
Pennsylvania’s artistic organizations.
Both were involved in artistic instruction, and George, well versed in aesthetics and criticism, published numerous
essays and gave many lectures on such
topics as style, the human form, and the
history of oil painting.
Fig. 2. George Cochran Lambdin in His Studio
(c. 1884–86)
Fig. 1. W. L. Shoemaker, James Lambdin in His Studio (c. 1878). Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Here, the aging artist is surrounded with portraits and at least one landscape in his studio at 1224 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, where he painted from 1869 to 1887.
Fig. 2. Unknown photographer, George Cochran Lambdin in His Studio (c. 1884–86). Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
George Cochran Lambdin is shown here in his elegant Baker Building studio at 1520 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, with a rose painting
and a portrait of a young woman. This same large rose painting, entitled Roses, was published in Poetic Thoughts with Pictures: Paintings
by Members of the Artists’ Fund Society of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1886).
2
James Reid Lambdin (1807–1889)
At the time of James Reid Lambdin’s birth on May 10, 1807,
his native Pittsburgh was a flourishing manufacturing town
where affluent residents eagerly sought cultural
diversions.4 His father, James Lambdin, was a carpenter
from Kent County, Maryland. His mother, Prudence
Harrison Lambdin, was from a plantation family on
Maryland’s Eastern Shore: she was related to Benjamin
Harrison (1726?–1791), a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and to William Henry Harrison
(1773–1841), ninth President of the United States. James
and Prudence Lambdin had settled in Pittsburgh by chance
in about 1806. Six years later Prudence was widowed and
left with her three young sons: Jonathan Harrison (known
as Harrison), then about twelve to fourteen years old; James
Reid, age five; and Samuel Hopkins, an infant. A few years
later, after James had attended several Pittsburgh schools, it
was decided that he should terminate formal education and
seek employment.5
James Lambdin’s Early Career
In early nineteenth-century Pittsburgh, James was
surrounded by the work of artists and artisans—advertising
engravings, painted signs and coaches, theater scenery, and
likenesses by itinerant portraitists. Captivated, he aspired to
an artistic career. In December 1822, eager for instruction,
fifteen-year-old James left Pittsburgh and traveled to
Philadelphia, where he first studied with the English
miniature painter Edward Miles (1752–1828) and then with
the distinguished portraitist Thomas Sully (1783–1872).
After this period of study, James asked Sully to paint his
portrait, which provided the younger man a first
opportunity to watch an artist at work.The finished portrait
(fig. 3), now in the Baltimore Museum of Art, became one of
James’s most treasured possessions.6
James continued to enjoy Miles’s and Sully’s
congeniality, and throughout his life James’s
sociability would bring him many valuable
new friendships and acquaintances. In his
early years his connections also included the
painter and art historian William Dunlap
(1766–1839); the artist and naturalist John
James Audubon (1785–1851); and Samuel F. B.
Morse (1791–1872), artist, inventor, and first
president of the National Academy of Design
in New York City. Sometime before James left
Philadelphia, he had joined The Painter’s [sic]
Club of Philadelphia, which met each
Thursday evening. In 1824 its fourteen
members included James R. Lambdin, John Neagle
(1796–1865), John Sartain (1808–1897), Bass Otis
(1784–1861), and Thomas Birch (1779–1851).7
Returning to Pittsburgh in July 1824, James advertised
drawing lessons and sought portrait commissions. By
December he had decided to make a “professional visit” to
Wheeling, West Virginia, his first of many painting trips.8
American artists at this time often traveled from city to city,
staying a few weeks or a season. James’s excursions then, and
for many years following, took him from Pittsburgh, along the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to southern cities, including
Wheeling; Louisville, Kentucky; Mobile, Alabama; and
especially Natchez, Mississippi, where, after 1830, the
Lambdins had family connections.9 From time to time he also
visited Steubenville, Ohio; Lexington, Kentucky; and New
Orleans, Louisiana, as well as countless other southern
destinations. James met with ever-greater success on these
portrait-painting excursions, and he quickly developed a fine
reputation as a portraitist. Even so, the cultural opportunities
of New York and Philadelphia continually beckoned the
young artist, and he found the prospects of traveling to
Europe even more intriguing.
In early 1827 a Pittsburgh gentleman, Judge (later Secretary of
War) William Wilkins (1779–1865), offered James funding for
two years of travel and study abroad. James was eager to
accept the opportunity and planned to sail from New York in
May. For several months that winter and early spring, James
worked his way towards New York City, first traveling north
through Meadville and Erie in Pennsylvania, and then north
and east through such New York towns as Buffalo,
Canandaigua, Geneva, Auburn, Utica, and Albany, soliciting
portrait business en route. During his stay in Buffalo, he
“executed numerous small heads in water colors.”10 Eager to
leave for Europe, James pressed on to New York City.Yet upon
his arrival there, where funding for his
European trip was to await him, he learned that
Wilkins had postponed his offer.11 Crestfallen,
the artist settled temporarily in Philadelphia,
where he sought portrait commissions.12 He
vowed that when the next opportunity arose
for travel abroad, he would finance it himself.13
Fig. 3. Thomas Sully
(American,
1783–1872),
James
Reid
Lambdin
(1824), oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x
7
24 /8 inches. Baltimore
Museum of Art, Friends of
Art Fund.
Since May of 1826, James had been
betrothed to Mary O’Hara Cochran (c.
1810–1866), a former pupil in one of his
Pittsburgh drawing classes. Looking
forward to marriage, he was thinking about
steady income and settled domesticity.14
James Reid Lambdin
3
That year he happened upon an attractive opportunity,
one that both appealed to the intellectually curious and
enterprising young artist and was deemed appropriate
by his future father-in-law, Pittsburgh merchant George
Cochran. James had visited the museum of Rubens Peale
(1784–1865) in New York City and was encouraged by
Peale to establish such a museum in Pittsburgh.15
Charles Willson Peale’s (1741–1827) Philadelphia
museum in the State House (now known as
Independence Hall) had been the prototype for his son
Rubens’s museum and it would be for James Lambdin’s
as well.16 James’s close familiarity with C. W. Peale’s
Philadelphia museum is evinced by his detailed
recollection of the rooms and their contents even
decades after the closing of that vanguard institution. In
October 1872 James wrote to Philadelphian Frank M.
Etting, describing and charting the museum’s layout and
contents and attributing his knowledge to his having
been a “very constant visitor for many years.”17
James Lambdin’s Museum in Pittsburgh
James Lambdin was twenty-one years old when he
opened his Museum of Natural History and Gallery of
Painting in Pittsburgh on September 8, 1828, and he
married Mary Cochran three days later. The museum
was one of the earliest American museums and the first
public art gallery west of the Alleghenies.18 Like the
Peale museums, James Lambdin’s Pittsburgh museum
displayed both natural history specimens and paintings.
The collections included stuffed (and live!) European
and American birds and mammals, fossils, and seashells.
Mrs. Anne Royall, a visitor to the Museum sometime
between December 1828 and February 1829, called it
“the only specimen of taste or amusement in the city.”
One display that she singled out was “flowers of all
sorts, pinks, roses, & made out of seashells, the most
extraordinary piece of labor I ever saw.” She proclaimed
that “these flowers are of all sizes and colors, and are
said to be the work of Mrs. Peale, of Philadelphia.”
Although Mrs. Royall apparently did not meet James, his
“neatness” and “skill” led her to believe that he was a
“man of great taste” as well as “genteel” and “amiable.”
She praised the glass cases enclosing white display
shelves and informed the readers of her travel journal
that the collection included two hundred foreign birds,
twenty quadrupeds, five hundred mineral specimens,
and three hundred fossils.19 A combination of art and
natural history was typical of the nineteenth century,
when there were strong connections between art and
the sciences, especially natural history.
Paintings in the museum were originals by and copies after
old and modern masters. American paintings were plentiful
and included portraits by Charles Willson Peale and James
Lambdin as well as a landscape by Thomas Doughty
(1793–1856). A local newspaper deemed “Miss Peale’s” copy
of George Washington after Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) “a
proof that the gift of genius and taste in the fine arts is not
bestowed upon man alone, but that the gentler sex are
capable of entering the lists, even in painting, with their
monopolizing rivals.”20
Monumental paintings, such as William Dunlap’s Calvary; or,
The Moment Before the Crucifixion, painted on 250 square
feet of canvas and containing more than one hundred lifesize
figures, were often featured as temporary attractions.21
Sometimes, scholarly lectures on subjects like “The Chemical
Nature of Water” were offered.22 There were also the
frequently advertised sensational “curiosities” and
“entertainments,” such as a so-called “mermaid”23 and
“artificial fireworks.”24 The name of the museum changed
from time to time; aside from its original title, it was variously
called “James Lambdin’s Museum,” “The Athenaeum,” and
“Pennsylvania Museum.”
James Lambdin went to great lengths to gather natural history
specimens for his museum. Two extant letters from him to
John Adamson (a founder of the Newcastle Antiquarian
Society, Newcastle upon Tyne, England) discuss shipments of
shells and birds and mention James’s friend John James
Audubon.25 Despite these herculean efforts for the museum,
which a local newspaper called “the boast and the pride of
Pittsburgh,”26 it was not financially viable. James often left the
museum in the capable hands of his pupil William Thompson
Russell Smith (known as Russell; 1812–1896), while he
traveled to seek commissions for formal oil paintings,
miniatures, and India-ink sketches. In his early years James’s
fees for such likenesses were generally $25 for an oil portrait
and $5 for a smaller ink sketch;27 this income enabled him to
meet the expenses of his museum and family.
Southern Connections
Mary and James’s first child, George Cochran Lambdin, was
born in Pittsburgh on January 6, 1830. Finding the
competition too keen in Pittsburgh, James again set out that
June on a painting trip. This time, with his wife and infant
child, he went to Steubenville. There the family was warmly
welcomed, and James received numerous commissions.
4
While enjoying the hospitality of that beautiful Ohio town,
James and his family received an invitation that ultimately
would greatly enhance his career and family life. One of two
letters extending an invitation to Natchez came from Anne
Dunbar (Mrs. Samuel) Postlethwaite, the mother of a fellow
student of James’s in the Philadelphia studio of Edward Miles.
A second, echoing, invitation came from the young widow
Mrs. Celeste McGowen, governess to the Postlethwaite family
and a former school roommate of Mary Lambdin. Happy to
accept this offer to winter at Clifton, the Postlethwaites’
Natchez residence, the young Lambdin family returned to
Pittsburgh before departing for Natchez in November
1830.28
and his wife eventually settled at Edgewood Plantation at
Pine Ridge, near Natchez.
The Museum Relocated to Louisville
In 1832, having received promise of substantial financial
support in Louisville, James moved his family and the
Pittsburgh museum collection to that city.31 A May 1834
art exhibition in this new location was an ambitious
undertaking, including works by or copies after Italian,
Dutch, and Flemish masters like Annibale Carracci
(1560–1609), Caravaggio (1573–1610), Rembrandt
(1606–1669), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640).
Americans were represented by Charles Willson Peale,
Charles Bird King (1785–1862), and James’s invaluable
museum assistant Russell Smith. Smith, who was
understandably anxious to develop his own career, first
as a portraitist and then as a landscape artist (see fig. 4),
did not remain James’s assistant once the museum
moved to Louisville.
It was December 28 before the family arrived at the
Postlethwaite home, due to the sometimes arduous nature of
river travel in the early nineteenth century. Their journey
along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was broken up by stops
at such ports as Wheeling and Louisville.The Lambdins’ boat
was also delayed at various points along the way by a raging
storm, low water, ice, and even a fire aboard. Yet the alwaysAt the 1834 Louisville exhibition, James showed his own
amiable James met at least one fellow passenger, Mr. Alban
prized likeness painted by Thomas Sully in 1824, as well
Smith (who later took the name Goldsmith), an eminent
as a few of his earlier paintings: Portrait of Chief Justice
surgeon and professor, who would in the future be of help to
Marshall, Portrait of the Honorable Henry Clay, and
the artist in Louisville. In Natchez Mrs. Postlethwaite’s warm
Portrait of George Catlin (Artist and Traveller, in the
hospitality and many introductions brought James into
Costume of a Sioux Warrior). Another much-advertised
southern social circles that would later foster his career. The
James Lambdin contribution was The Interior of a
beautiful Postlethwaite plantation and its gardens occupied
Nunnery—With the Ceremony of
the highest point in Natchez,
a Young Lady Preparing to Take
overlooking the city and the
the Veil, after the French artist
Mississippi River. The comforts and
François
Marius
Granet
pleasures of the memorable visit
(1775–1849). Granet had been a
notwithstanding, perhaps the most
student of the illustrious Jacqueslasting benefit of the Natchez sojourn
Louis David (1748–1825) and was
was an unexpected visit from Mary
known for his depictions of church
Lambdin’s brother Alfred Cochran.
interiors.32
Alfred made a business trip to Natchez
in the spring of 1831 and soon after
his arrival became engaged to Mrs.
Later, James described his two early
Postlethwaite’s daughter Eliza, whom
museum ventures as “years of
Fig. 4. William Thompson Russell Smith (American,
he married in the autumn of 1831.29 born Scotland, 1812–1896), View Near Bedford, trouble, vexation, and pecuniary
Little is known about Alfred and Eliza Pennsylvania (1848), oil on canvas, 14 x 20 inch- loss.”33 Still, the museums were
Cochran. Some years later, James’s es. Collection of Severin Fayerman, Douglassville, important to the history of art in
Pennsylvania, sold by the Schwarz Gallery.
In
younger brother Samuel Hopkins 1835 James Lambdin’s invaluable museum assistant America. James had continued to
Lambdin (1811/1812–1902) moved to Russell Smith moved east to Philadelphia, where he paint portraits throughout these
Mississippi, where he married Jane M. began specializing in Delaware Valley landscapes, years, so when he traveled east in
although he continued to exhibit views of western
Bisland.30 Both newly wed couples Pennsylvania like his View Near Bedford, 1837 to settle permanently in
settled in Mississippi, where James Pennsylvania.This painting was exhibited in 1849 Philadelphia, he left a rich legacy of
visited them again and again. Samuel at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, likenesses of luminaries local to
Philadelphia, (no. 173, lent by Mrs. James Lambdin)
and descended in the Lambdin family collection.
James Reid Lambdin
5
Pittsburgh and Louisville, as well as countless portraits of
citizens in the Deep South.34
frequently required trips to Washington, D.C., and family
ties drew him back to Mississippi.
Success in Portraiture
James Lambdin continued as a portraitist for most of his
life, after 1869 commuting regularly from his home in the
“suburb” of Germantown to his studio at 1224 Chestnut
Street, Philadelphia (fig. 1), until finally vacating the studio
in the summer of 1887 when he was eighty years old.38
One of his portraits of the 1860s (fig. 5) was a likeness of
the Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), who
would become President in 1869. James was probably
among the many American artists who facilitated his
portraiture with the use of photographs.
James Lambdin was determined to extricate himself from
his oppressive museum responsibilities without financial
loss. He arranged for the Cincinnati artist Samuel M. Lee
(1809–1841) and a board of managers to take over the
supervision of his Louisville museum, sold his financial
interests to new shareholders, and made a myriad of other
arrangements. His skill in copying paintings also helped
liberate him from this venture. An 1835 commission from
the museum to copy Old Master paintings in Philadelphia
for display in Louisville35 laid the groundwork for James’s
portrait-painting career in Philadelphia. Original works by
the Old Masters were not then plentiful in the United
States; and American citizens, with their new taste for
culture, were anxious to acquaint themselves with
European art.
James made a trip to Natchez, a family visit and a portraitpainting excursion, before leaving the West.36 Then,
business concluded, the Lambdin family set out for
Philadelphia in the spring of 1837. The first months there
were difficult, as James attempted, seemingly fruitlessly, to
establish a reputation during a summer of nationwide
financial problems caused by a stoppage of specie
payments by U.S. banks. This left inaccessible his savings
from recent months of painting in the South, and he was
distraught enough to consider returning to Pittsburgh.
Just in time, however, James recovered his investments
and received two important commissions, one from a
Montgomery, Alabama, gentleman, who desired a portrait
of his daughter then at school in Philadelphia, and another
from a St. Louis lawyer. Soon thereafter, more Philadelphia
commissions materialized.37 This brought James’s
itinerant days virtually to a close, although his
growing reputation for state portraiture
Fig. 5. James Reid Lambdin, Ulysses S. Grant (1860s),
oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 29 3/16 inches. Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
James
Lambdin may have relied on photographic images
when preparing portraits. This is not to suggest that
his subjects did not sit for him, but rather that the
artist may have referred to photographs for poses and
details. (See Van Deren Coke,“Camera and Canvas,” Art
in America 49, no. 3 [1961]: 69.) This is only one of
hundreds of portraits by James Lambdin, who was
commissioned to paint presidents, military leaders,
and government officials. His sitters also included
such luminaries as William Makepeace Thackeray,
Daniel Webster, Lucretia Mott, and George Peabody.
Advocating for American Art
In light of his future leadership in American art, it seems
prophetic that James Lambdin, by happenstance, had been
one of a small group of American artists present at a meeting
preceding the founding of the Artists’ Fund Society of
Philadelphia. James also had been with Samuel F. B. Morse at
the time Morse first discussed the founding of the National
Academy of Design with fellow artist Asher Brown Durand
(1796–1886).39 Once finally settled in the city of his choice,
James, always an advocate for American artists, immediately
became active in (and eventually an officer of) the Artists’
Fund Society.
James exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
in Philadelphia and served there as a director from 1845 to
1864.40 Active also in New York, from 1840 to 1860 James
was an honorary member of the National Academy of
Design, where he first exhibited in 1845; he was also an
honorary member of the Albany Gallery of the Fine Arts.41
Within a few years James had become so esteemed for both
his portraits and his amiable disposition that in about 1841
U.S. President John Tyler (1790–1862), well pleased by the
“handsome” presidential portrait James
had recently completed for him, offered
the artist “any consulate in Italy.” Had it not
been for the protests of James’s mother
(who then lived with her son and family in
Philadelphia), James would have accepted
this presidential appointment, and the
family would have moved to Italy.42
Amidst his increasingly successful
painting career, his teaching, and his
leadership in artistic associations, James
found an opportunity to visit Europe in
1856, a trip he had anticipated since his disappointment
6
twenty-nine years previous. James sailed on June 26 and
was reported to have returned in December of that year,
having visited “all the principal cities . . . giving special
attention to their schools and museums of Art.”43 In Berlin,
James made studies from life for a portrait of German
naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt
(1769–1859), who was held in great esteem in this
country.The painting had been intended for Philadelphia’s
American Philosophical Society. Although not yet finished
when the artist returned from abroad, it was exhibited at
the Pennsylvania Academy the following year. Nonetheless,
the portrait did not adorn the walls of the American
Philosophical Society until after May 23, 1887.44
James Lambdin’s reputation and abilities are perhaps
best reflected in his leadership in the National
Convention of Artists, a group of one hundred artists that
first met in Washington, D.C., in March 1858. Incensed
that the French academic painter Horace Vernet
(1789–1863) had been considered for a commission to
decorate the enlarged buildings of the U.S. Capitol, this
group believed that only American artists should
ornament American buildings, or that at least they
should have influence in such matters. James presided
over the convention, which would resolve “with a view
to secure the recognition by the Government, of the
claims and interests of Art, . . . the appointment of an Art
Commissioner, which shall be recognized as the
exponent of the authority and influence of Art in the
country, and shall secure to Artists an intelligent and
Fig. 6. Attributed to George Bacon Wood, Jr.
(American, 1832–1910), Photograph of Members of
the Artists’ Fund Society (1888): (left to right) Isaac L.
Williams (1815–1895), John Sartain (1808–1897),
Frederick DeBourg Richards (1822–1903), and James
Reid Lambdin. Library Company of Philadelphia.
James Lambdin was corresponding secretary of the
Artists’ Fund Society in 1838 and 1844, vice-president
from 1840 to 1843, and president from 1845 to 1867.
This photograph, probably taken at the Lambdin
home in Germantown, shows four of the members
of this longstanding Philadelphia association after
they had worked together for many years.
unbiassed [sic] adjudication upon the works they may
present for the adornment and completion of the
National buildings.”45
Shortly thereafter, President James Buchanan named
James Lambdin, landscape painter John Frederick
Kensett (1816–1872), and sculptor Henry Kirke Brown
(1814–1886) members of the United States Art
Commission.46 Thwarted by Congress, the Commission
was short-lived, but American artists had at least been
given a voice in a state-sanctioned capacity.
In that same year, 1858, James was reported to have opened
an art school in Philadelphia. He was praised by a writer in
America’s mid-nineteenth century art magazine The Crayon
as:“admirably qualified for this undertaking . . . well versed in
the technical requirements of his profession and . . . able by his
long experience to adapt them to the age and character of his
pupils. Mr. Lambdin is furthermore well qualified as a teacher
by an intimate acquaintance of the progress of our native Art,
having labored earnestly, patiently, and effectively in its behalf;
we do not know of a wiser and more faithful friend of the
cause in this country.”47 How long that school endured is not
clear, but by the early 1860s James was a professor of fine arts
at the University of Pennsylvania, a position he held from
1861 to 1866.48
7
James Reid Lambdin
Lambdin Family Tree
M
James Lambdin
Rachel Wilbur
(1800?–1882?)
M
1818
Prudence Harrison
1795
(1773–1812)
(1772–1846)
Jonathan Harrison Lambdin
Samuel Hopkins Lambdin
(1798/99–1825)
(1811/12–1902)
M
1842
Jane M. Bisland
(1822–1894)
Mary Lambdin
(b. 1821)
Sarah Lambdin Coffin
Catherine Lambdin
(1819–1867)
(b. 1823)
James Reid Lambdin
(1807–1889)
M
Mary O’Hara Cochran
1828
(c. 1810–1866)
Mary Lambdin
James Harrison Lambdin
Alice Lambdin
(1835–1836)
(1840–1870)
(7/1848–8/1848)
Eleanor Prudence Lambdin
Emma Connor Lambdin
(1832–1888)
(1843–1923)
Agnes Mary (or Marie)
Lambdin
(1853–1927)
(after 1893, Sister Agnes Maria)
George Cochran Lambdin
(1830–1896)
Augustus Biers Snyder
(1836–1883)
M
1861
Annie Eliza Lambdin
Alfred Cochran Lambdin
(1838–1911)
(1846–1911)
M
1873
Katherine McIlwaine
John Oldmixon Lambdin
(1874–1923)
Augustus Biers Snyder
George Cochran Snyder
(c. 1864–1865)
(1868–after 1884)
James Lambdin Snyder
(1862–1921)
Annie Lambdin
Snyder
Mary Snyder
(1869–?)
(1866–1867)
Henry David Hamilton Snyder
William McDaniel Snyder
(1863–?)
(1871–after 4/1941)
Fig. 7. Lambdin Family Tree
Dates of birth, marriage, and death for members of the Lambdin family have been compiled from such
sources as census records; obituaries; newspaper memorial articles; burial records; gravestones, St. Luke’s churchyard, Germantown, Pa.;
James R. Lambdin’s journal; and Mary Cochran Lambdin and James Lambdin’s Family Bible.Two comprehensive Lambdin family genealogies,
located as this study was nearing completion, are Sara Eugenia Lambdin Baack (Curley), The Lambdin Files (Kenbridge, Va.: Sara Eugenia
Lambdin Baack, 2000); and Gaylord M. Lambdin and Paris L. Lambdin, The Lambdin Chronicles (Alcoa, Tenn.: Gaylord M. Lambdin, 1991).
When no other sources have been available, various online genealogical compilations were consulted. All names and dates given here have
been researched and evaluated; however, there are a few perplexing discrepancies in the available sources. The Lambdin family collection
was acquired from a descendant of Augustus Biers Snyder.
8
The Lambdin Family
By the time James and Mary Lambdin had departed
Pittsburgh for Philadelphia in 1837, their first three
children were born: George Lambdin, Mary Lambdin (who
died in 1836 at two years or under and, like James’s father
and brother Harrison, was buried at Trinity Church in
Pittsburgh), and Eleanor Prudence Lambdin (1832–1888).
The family grew quickly in the Philadelphia years, when
six more children were born: Annie Eliza Lambdin
(1838–1911); James Harrison Lambdin (1840–1870);
Emma Connor Lambdin (1843–1923); Alfred Cochran
Lambdin (1846–1911); Alice Lambdin, who died at about
one month in 1848; and Agnes Mary (Maria) Lambdin
(1853–1927).49 In all probability Agnes was the only child
born in Germantown, where the Lambdins settled in the
early 1850s.
In May 1861,Annie Eliza Lambdin wed Augustus Biers Snyder
(1836–1883) in St. Luke’s Church in Germantown. Snyder
was a native of Prattsville, Greene County, New York.While it
is not known how Annie met Augustus, James had in-laws in
northern New Jersey and family connections in nearby
southeastern New York. His brother Harrison Lambdin’s
wife, Rachel Wilbur Lambdin, was from Lyons Farms in the
Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth) and Newark area. James often
visited the Wilbur family there before and after Rachel was
widowed and, with her three daughters, returned home to
Lyons Farms. Sarah Lambdin Coffin (1819–1867), Rachel’s
oldest daughter, died in Irvington, New York.50 In fall 1860
George Cochran Lambdin was in Ulster County, New York,
where he had gone to make sketches51 and might have had
contacts.
Annie’s first child, James Lambdin Snyder (1862–1921),
was born in Clovesville in Delaware County, New York,
and baptized at Woodland in Ulster County, New York, in
1862. In September of the following year, Annie’s second
child, Henry David Hamilton Snyder, was also baptized at
Woodland.52
Figs. 8 & 9. James Reid Lambdin: (left) Henry David
Hamilton Snyder (c.1865), oil on academy board, 12 3/4 x 10
1
/4 inches; (right) Augustus Biers Snyder (c.1865), oil on
academy board, 12 5/8 x 10 3/4 inches. Collection of Dr. and
Mrs. Joseph H. Schneider, Houston,Texas, sold by the Schwarz
Gallery.
A writer in the Round Table recorded that in
1865 James was “traveling . . . in Northern New York . . . during the entire summer” (“Philadelphia Art Notes,” Round
Table [September 30, 1865]: 60). At about this time James
must have painted two of his daughter Annie’s children,
Henry David Hamilton Snyder (born in Clovesville, New
York, in 1863) and Augustus (Gussie) Biers Snyder (born c.
1864), who probably died soon after James painted him.
Notations in the Lambdin Family Bible indicate that by
1864 James Lambdin’s daughter and son-in-law had
moved north to Port Leyden in Lewis County, New
York. It seems reasonable that James would have
painted scenes from this area while making family
visits. While living at Port Leyden, Annie Eliza Lambdin
Snyder gave birth to Augustus (Gussie) Biers Snyder
(1864?–1865), Annie Lambdin Snyder (1866–1867),
George Cochran Snyder (1868–after 1884), and Mary
Snyder (1869–?).
The mid-1860s, when James apparently spent so much time
in New York near his daughter Annie, could not have been
easy years. His second son, Harry (James Harrison), was
seriously wounded in the Civil War in June 1864, and
James’s beloved wife Mary died in March of 1866. Mary’s
poetic and heartfelt obituary, so unusual a tribute to a
woman of her time, reveals the esteem and affection in
which her family held her: “The record of her calm and
peaceful life is like a placid river shining in the sunlight and
reflecting nothing but gentle lights and shades.”Yet we also
learn from the obituary that Mary suffered “years of terrible
disease.”53
James must also have shared the sorrows of the Snyder family
during the mid-1860s, when Annie lost her very young
children, Gussie and Annie. The period following these
tragedies, 1866 to 1867, may have marked a turning point for
the widowed artist—a time when he sought solace with
children and grandchildren far away from the cares of the
city. He left his teaching post at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1866 and soon after began to write his
autobiographical journal. The journal text was addressed to
his children who, James wrote,“have always manifested such
an interest in every circumstance connected with my early
life and professional experience.”54
James Reid Lambdin
9
Plate 1
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
The Old Cedar on the Squan River, New Jersey
Watercolor on paper, 8 7/8 x 13 1/4 inches
Inscribed in pencil on verso: “The Old Cedar/Squan River, N.J.”
This watercolor of a quiet sandy beach along the Matasquan inlet is the
only New Jersey scene in the Lambdin family collection. Perhaps the
Lambdins chose to paint scenes in northern New Jersey because
James’s sister-in-law’s family, the Wilburs, had lived at Lyons Farms,
New Jersey. In his Journal (pt. 1, p. 51), James described Lyons Farms
as “equally distant between Elizabeth and Newark.” Since James had
visited the Wilbur family and their neighbors even before he settled in
eastern Pennsylvania, if family members and acquaintances had
remained in the vicinity, the Lambdin family might have returned to
the area as late as the 1870s, as suggested by a reviewer’s commentary
on George Lambdin’s work in 1877 (“Spring Exhibition of the
Philadelphia Academy of Arts,” Art Journal, n.s. 3 [1877]: 190).
Plate 2
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Water Running over Rocks
Watercolor on paper, 13 x 9 inches
Like Muddy Brook, Woodland, Ulster
County, New York (plate 6) and Beach’s
Dam, Woodland, Ulster County, New York
(plate 7), Water Running over Rocks may
also have been painted in the Woodland
area of Ulster County, New York.
Plate 3
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
River View with Mountains
Oil on canvas, 14 x 22 inches
James Lambdin’s landscape subjects include scenes from
the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and New Jersey, locales
also visited by many other American artists in the
nineteenth century. Thomas Cole (1801–1848) had spent
a great deal of time in the Catskills, and James’s
Germantown neighbor William Trost Richards
(1833–1905) painted in the Adirondacks as early as the
1850s. Lambdin’s landscapes probably represent his
personal connection to these remote New York State
locales near where his daughter Annie lived in the 1860s
(see fig. 10).
10
Elizabethtown
●
●
Port Leyden
●
●
●
Bolton’s Landing,
Lake George
Trenton Falls
Niagra
●
Buffalo
Painting Landscapes in Water
Colours, first published by
Fielding Lucas in 1815).56 James
also recorded an excursion to
Niagara Falls in the late winter of
1827. While working in the
Buffalo area, he made pencil
sketches at the falls, and back in
Buffalo he created a large
painting of the grand, icy scene
(location unknown).57
James Lambdin’s landscapes in
the family collection have a
sense of intimacy. For the most
Woodland
part they are small watercolors,
Lake Mohonk
lacking the breathtaking grandeur
of monumental oil landscapes by
American artists like Frederic
Edwin Church (1826–1900),
Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), and
Thomas Moran (1837–1926). The
fact that James’s landscapes remained
with the family suggests that they had special meaning
for his relatives.
●
Fig. 10. Map of Upstate New York Showing Locations Where
James Painted Landscapes
Landscapes in the Lambdin Family Collection
After the War of 1812 Americans began to pay increasing
attention to the visual qualities of the American terrain,
which was then still a largely unspoiled wilderness. By
mid-century more and more artists traveled, especially in
the summer months. They drew their attention to
America’s natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls, the
Natural Bridge of Virginia, and, increasingly, popular
vacation sites like the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and
coastal locales in New Jersey and New England. During the
second half of the century, hotels and railroad lines grew
in number to accommodate such travel, and vacationers
traveled in droves. City artists rushed to the woods,
mountains, countryside, and seashore to create the
landscape images then so much in demand. Even the Civil
War did not seem to stem America’s enthusiasm for
landscape paintings. James Lambdin not only was a muchsought-after painter of portraits but also painted significant
landscapes such as Delaware Water Gap (1874; La Salle
University Art Museum, Philadelphia) and Below High
Falls (1868; private collection), a spectacular view of
Trenton Falls in Oneida County, New York.55 James had an
early interest in landscape painting; his journal reveals that
as a youth he had already begun assiduously copying
landscapes from a drawing book published in Baltimore
(almost certainly the popular Art of Colouring and
●
Just as landscape painting grew in popularity during the
nineteenth century, so also did the use of watercolor paints
for plein air subjects. This medium had become popular in
England by the late eighteenth century and was associated
there, for very practical reasons, with landscape painting. First,
watercolor paraphernalia is somewhat easier to carry
outdoors than are heavy stretched canvasses and substances
like linseed oil and turpentine. Second, watercolor, done on
heavy white paper with water-based washes, has a pristine,
sometimes sparkling quality that makes it ideal for depicting
reflections, atmosphere, bodies of water, and nature’s soft
natural effects. Not deterred by the difficulty of its execution,
which requires a sure and quick hand, American artists used
watercolor frequently and with great skill. The nineteenthcentury popularity and importance of the watercolor
medium in this country is apparent from such events as the
Philadelphia Society of Artists’ Second Annual National
Water-Color Exhibition in 1883, a show of three hundred
entries, to which James Lambdin contributed four.58
James Reid Lambdin
11
Plate 4
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Dewey’s Grist Mill on the Black River, Port
Leyden, Lewis County, New York
Oil on canvas, 12 1/8 x 16 3/8 inches
Inscribed on verso: “Dewey’s Grist Mill/on Black River/Port
Leyden, Lewis Co., N.Y.”
To reach Port Leyden, James Lambdin would have had to
travel in the vicinity of Trenton Falls, situated just north of
Utica, New York, and at that time a mecca for artists.
James’s several views of Trenton Falls and that area were
dated or exhibited between 1866 and 1868. They are View
Near Trenton Falls (exhibited 1866 at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, then owned by J.
S. Whitney; location unknown); Trenton Falls (exhibited
1867 at the Artists’ Fund Society, Philadelphia; location
unknown); and Below High Falls (1868; private collection).
James’s son-in-law, Augustus Snyder, and Augustus’s
brother, always known as H. D. H. Snyder, became very
successful entrepreneurs in the Port Leyden area. Among
other pursuits, in the 1860s the brothers owned the
Tanning Manufactory and the Telegraph Service and
resided in two of the village’s most “beautiful residences.”
Augustus and Annie’s home was described as a “mansion.”
(See Matthew J. Conway, Port Leyden,”The Iron City”: A
Passing Glance [Woodgate, N.Y.: Tug Hill Books, 1989], pp.
15–16 and passim.) Dewey’s Grist Mill on the Black River is
the only Port Leyden view by Lambdin that is known. During
the 1860s the Black River was becoming increasingly
industrialized. This painting probably shows the flouring mill
owned by Charles D. Dewey, located below the Hellgate
flume and seen here before surging flood waters tore the
structure from its site in April 1869. (See Conway, Port
Leyden, pp. 15, 17, 74–77.)
Plate 5
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Lake George from Bolton’s Landing, 1886
Signed and dated at lower left: “JR Lambdin/86”
Inscribed in pencil on former mount: “Lake George from Boltons”
James Lambdin painted at least two views of popular Lake
George. One view was exhibited in December 1867 at the
Artists’ Fund Society of Philadelphia. The work illustrated here,
from the Lambdin family collection, is identified as Lake George
from Bolton’s Landing and is dated 1886. As in most of his
landscapes, Lambdin did not represent people in this watercolor.
12
The Catskills
The Catskills area is naturally rocky, and landscape artists
were likely to be attracted to its craggy outcroppings and
boulders.59 James Lambdin’s heightened interest in rocky
terrain in his views of the Catskills and other New York
State sites was surely related to the widespread popular
interest in geological discoveries and theories in the middle
decades of the nineteenth century. Americans took notice
of the ideas and writings of German naturalist and
geographer Alexander von Humboldt, Swiss naturalist and
Harvard professor Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), and Sir
Charles Lyell (1797–1875), a British scientist who authored
several popular treatises on geology and lectured widely.
Humboldt had even written about landscape painting and
the study of nature in his widely read Cosmos (Kosmos; 5
vols., 1845–62; Eng. trans. 1849–58). Connections existed
between all these scientists and contemporary artists.
Frederic Church owned a copy of Cosmos and greatly
admired Humboldt. Germantown artist William Trost
Richards (1833–1905) was quite interested in Agassiz’s
theories.60 Russell Smith, James’s colleague and former
pupil, produced illustrative material for Lyell’s lectures and
publications and developed a close acquaintance with the
scientist.61 James had an opportunity to know Humboldt
when the German scientist, so greatly admired in the U.S.,
sat for him in Berlin in 1856. Furthermore, John Ruskin
(1819–1900), the versatile and influential English critic,
artist, poet, philosopher, and aesthete, had studied geology
in his youth and later disseminated geological ideas in his
prolific writings.62
Plate 6
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Muddy Brook, Woodland, Ulster County, New
York
Inscribed in pencil on verso: “Muddy Brook Woodland/Ulster Co
NY”
Since neither this work nor Beach’s Dam, Woodland, Ulster
County, New York (plate 7) is dated, it is not clear whether
they were created while the family was living in the area;
however, it seems reasonable to assume a connection
between James Lambdin’s subjects and his daughter Annie’s
residences. In the spring of 1883, at the Philadelphia Society
of Artists’ Second Annual National Water-Color Exhibition,
James exhibited a landscape entitled Woodland Valley.
Whether this work was painted earlier is not known—
apparently it was not for sale when exhibited. (See Catalogue
of the Second Annual National Water-Color Exhibition, p. 16,
no. 97.) Since James painted at least two views known to be
from Woodland, and these views stayed in the family, it is
likely that the area had particular significance for the
Lambdins. Woodland, even today, is a remote and unspoiled
hamlet in Ulster county, hardly a locale heavily frequented by
artists and tourists. It is not far from the birthplace of James
Lambdin’s son-in-law, Augustus Snyder, who may have had
relatives there.
Plate 7
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Beach’s Dam, Woodland, Ulster County, New York
Inscribed in pencil on mount verso: “Beach’s Dam, Woodland/Ulster
Co N.Y.”
Interestingly, this work seems to conform to the instructions for
watercolor landscapes from The Art of Colouring and Painting
Landscapes in Water Colours, which James Lambdin had studied so
many years before. The manual urges capturing a mood of “rural
simplicity” and showing “the lone cottage, partly obscured in the
recesses of a few old trees” (The Art of Colouring and Painting
Landscapes in Water Colours [Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, 1815], p.
45).
13
James Reid Lambdin
Lake Mohonk
Just south of Woodland is Lake Mohonk, known to vacationers
today as the location of Mohonk Mountain House, a famed
resort nestled in the Shawangunk Mountains beside a
picturesque lake. The mountain hotel was built on land
purchased in 1869 by the Smiley brothers, Albert and Alfred,
and has been in continuous operation, although much
enlarged, since June of 1870. It is unclear how James came to
visit there, but he was a registered guest in 1873, 1881, and
1883. In 1880, 1881, and 1882, he was listed as a reference in
Mohonk’s circulars. A guidebook of 1875 refers to “Lambdin’s
Glen,” named for the artist and accessible via a short path
through woodlands leading to a glade above the lake, marked
to this day by a handsome carved wooden sign pointing to
“Lambdin’s Path” (fig. 11).63
At the Second Annual National Water-Color Exhibition of
the Philadelphia Society of Artists in 1883, James exhibited
two paintings that relate to the Lake Mohonk site. One was
(probably erroneously) titled Lake Mohawk and was
almost certainly intended to read Lake Mohonk. The other
work was titled Lake Minnewaska, a sister resort to the
Mohonk Mountain House and one that James is known to
have visited in August of 1883.64
Fig. 11. Sign Pointing to
Lambdin’s Path, Mohonk
Mountain
House, Lake
Mohonk, New Paltz, New
Plate 8
Plate 9
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Shawangunk Mountains from Artist’s Rock,
Eagle Cliff, Lake Mohonk, Ulster County, New
York
1880
Oil on academy board, 12 x 16 /8 inches
Label fragment (supplier, printed) on verso: “ACADEMY
BOA[RD]/Prepared/FOR OIL PAINTI[NG]/BY/GEO.ROWNEY/
52, Rathbone Place, and 29, Oxf[ord, missing]/London.”
5
While some of James Lambdin’s watercolors of the area may
not be exact images of the lake and mountains from
identifiable vantage points, this view from Artist’s Rock on
Lake Mohonk offers a genuine image of specific mountains
in the Shawangunk range; they are called the Trapps, the
Near Trapps, and Millbrook Mountain.
Lake View with a Summerhouse, Lake Mohonk,
Signed and dated at lower left: “JR Lambdin, 80”
Three of the landscapes in the Lambdin family collection
were painted at or near Lake Mohonk. This view is certainly
from the area of the Mohonk Mountain House. As many as
150 rustic summerhouses (today called gazebos) were
constructed in the vicinity of the hotel by 1920. (See
Benjamin H. Matteson and Joan Lachance, “The
Summerhouses of Mohonk” [paper written for the Mohonk
Archives, 1996].) Lake View is probably not an exact
representation of the lake and mountains from a specific
vantage point.
14
The Mohonk Mountain House owns three 1881 prints of
Mohonk views painted by James Lambdin and phototyped
by Philadelphia photographer Frederick Gutekunst
(1831–1917). These are titled Catskill [sic] Mountains
from Sky Top, Lake Mohonk, Ulster County, New York;
Lake Mohonk, Ulster County, New York; and Shawangunk
Mountains from Sky Top, Lake Mohonk, Ulster County,
New York.65 It is not known how these particular
Gutekunst phototypes were marketed or by whom.
Elizabethtown, Essex County, and Lake George
Elizabethtown, Essex County, and popular Lake George
lie near the northeastern border of New York, northeast
of Lake Mohonk and Woodland and west of the Hudson
River. Whether or not the Lambdins or Snyders had
family or other connections in this area of New York is
not known. Scholar Linda Ferber has called
Elizabethtown, Essex County, “a kind of crossroads for
artists.”66 Perhaps the gregarious James traveled there in
hopes of meeting cronies or followed the
recommendations of his colleagues and Germantown
neighbors William Trost Richards and George Bacon
Wood, Jr., both of whom had spent time in Essex County,
where Pleasant Valley and the Bouquet (or Boquet) River
area offered interesting landscape views. In the
nineteenth century the Elizabethtown-area scenery and
several commodious hostelries attracted hoards of
visitors, among them not only artists but also prominent
literary figures, including James Fenimore Cooper
(1789–1851), Alfred B. Street (1811?–1881), and Horace
Greeley (1811–1872).67
Plate 10
Plate 11
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
JAMES REID LAMBDIN
Near Elizabethtown, Essex County, New York
Lake View with Rocks: Near Elizabethtown,
Essex County, New York, 1878
Inscribed in pencil on stretcher verso: “Near Elizabethtown
Essex Co. N.Y.”
This oil may be presumed to be based on James Lambdin’s
watercolor Lake View with Rocks: Near Elizabethtown, Essex
County, New York (1878; plate 11), also in the Lambdin
family collection. The artist also exhibited a view of a nearby
scene, Ford on the Bouquet River: Adirondacks, at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, in
1879.
Watercolor on board; 13 1/8 x 8 1/2 inches
Signed and dated in pencil at lower right: “JRL 1878.”
Inscribed in pencil on verso: “75c/3/8 [illegible] Gildred/Snyder”
Label (supplier, printed) on former backing verso: “Evans Bros. &
Myers,/Everything in Art Goods,/Picture Frames Made to Order,/
Undertaking in all its Branches,/Wellesboro, Pa.”
15
George Cochran Lambdin (1830–1896)
George Cochran Lambdin was born while his parents were
still in Pittsburgh and was about seven years old when the
family settled in Philadelphia. Like his father, George
gravitated early to an artistic life; but unlike his father, he had
ample opportunities to watch an artist at work. George must
have closely observed James, who was also his principal
teacher, and of course George also enjoyed contact with
James’s many associates and with the institutions in the midnineteenth century American art world.
George Lambdin’s Early Career
Following a modicum of general schooling in
Philadelphia,68 George began to exhibit early at the
Pennsylvania Academy. His first exhibited works included
religious and literary subjects: Dorcas Distributing
Garments to the Poor, The Presentation in the Temple,
The Lady of Shallot, and Queen Margaret and the Robber.
These and many other early works are unlocated today but
give us an idea of George’s penchant for literary themes,
especially scenes from Tennyson and Shelley. His works
between 1848 and 1855 also include numerous crayon
heads, especially of children. During a painting trip to
Savannah, Georgia, in 1851, George was praised in a local
paper: “The style in which these pictures are executed is
new to us, and is, we believe, original with [the talented
young artist] Mr. Lambdin. It is peculiarly adopted to
delineation of youthful faces.”69
Genre Paintings
By the early 1860s, George was specializing in genre
themes, both sentimental and anecdotal. These images
reveal everyday life at its most human and commonplace
and take the viewer behind the scenes into situations that
might otherwise be private. Genre subjects, which so
frequently illustrate childhood and domestic life, often
share an element of universality and are understood
regardless of cultural differences. The nineteenth-century
sensibility was particularly oriented to sentimental
subjects, such as the intimacy of courtship, the sorrow of
parting, the tenderness of a mother, and the pathos of
death. As John Ruskin proclaimed in 1858: “The rage is for
sentiment, and everybody is encouraged to tell us all that is
in or near their hearts.”70
Fig. 12. PIERRE-EDOUARD FRÈRE
(FRENCH, 1819–1886)
The Young Knitter, 1883
Oil on panel, 17 x 13 1/2 inches
Signed and dated at lower left: “Edouard Frère 1883”
Schwarz Gallery
Although George Lambdin was only one of many
American artists to paint genre subjects, critics called
him “the American Frère.” This was quite a complimentary comparison. The French genre painter PierreEdouard Frère was so admired in the United States that
a popular American journal, Harper’s New Monthly
Magazine, published a lengthy article about Frère and
related genre painting in France (W. D. Conway,
“Edouard Frère and Sympathetic Art in France,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 43 [November
1871]: 801–14). (I thank William Gerdts for informing
me of the comparison with Frère. Also see “Art Items,”
New-York Daily Tribune, November 7, 1860, p. 7, and
January 31, 1861, p. 7.) Like Lambdin, Frère often pictured children engaged in adult activities. The Young
Knitter addresses the popular Victorian topic of age
versus youth and dignifies the timeless domestic work
of women and girls. One of Lambdin’s best-known
paintings, The Pruner (1868; Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston), shows a small boy absorbed in watching a middle-aged man trimming trees.
16
Artist Models and the Use of Photographs
There has been a question of where George Lambdin
found his youthful models, though since he had many
younger siblings, he probably did not have to look far.
Between 1857 and 1869, when George created most of his
important figure studies and genre works involving
children and youthful figures, his siblings ranged in age
from four to thirty-seven. If George (or another
photographer) was photographing his models, he could
have captured the likeness of a sibling at a particular age
(and in various poses) and then could have drawn on
these images again and again. Close comparison of his
genre scenes reveals the same model, in similar poses, in
more than one of his paintings. For example, the small boy
in Boy and Girl in a Barn (plate 15) is almost identical to
the seated child in The New Knife (fig. 17).
Plate 12
Crocheting, 1860
Oil on canvas, 16 5/8 x 13 inches
Signed and dated at lower right: “Geo.C. Lambdin.60.”
Inscribed in ink on stretcher verso: “Crocheting/Geo.
C.Lambdin/Nov.1860 Philadelphia”
George Lambdin’s works often capture stillness and related
concepts of reverie, contemplation, waiting, watching, and
resting. Even his child subjects pause for moments of
reflection or are quietly absorbed in a task, as in this work,
in which a girl of about six is completely absorbed in her
handwork; only her cat looks on. Light streams from a
window barely seen at left. As in most Dutch Baroque genre
paintings, the window light illuminates the child but the
window does not offer a view. George created another,
slightly different, version of this scene, also titled Crocheting
and dated 1860. (See Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia
Collection XLVI [1991], no. 3.)
American artists were preoccupied with the development
of photography, at first because it seemed to threaten their
commissions for portraiture, but also because it offered
them many new visual possibilities. Painting from
photographs worked especially well for capturing still
poses of active small children. A handful of albumin prints,
annotated “made of the Lambdin family about 1863–5,” was
unearthed in the collections of a Philadelphia research
library,71 and there is no doubt that George Lambdin used
these or related photographs for such paintings as The
Bashful Model (1862; location unknown), The
Consecration, 1861 (1865; Indianapolis Museum of Art);
Rosy Reverie (1865; Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve System, Washington, D.C.), and The Pruner (1868;
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).72
17
Plate 13
In a Window, 1856
Signed at lower right: “Geo. C. Lambdin”
Inscribed on verso (copied on lining canvas): “In a window/painted by/Geo. C. Lambdin/Germantown/1856”
EXHIBITED: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Thirty-Third Annual Exhibition (1856), no. 139
In a Window was painted in Germantown in 1856 and exhibited that year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Here,
a young woman sits at a window, absorbed in intricate handwork. Sunlight from the window creates light effects that play over
the colors and textures of her needlework, the salmon drapery behind her, and her delicately rendered dress and sash. The pose
by a window is dictated by the subject’s need for light in her exacting work. In other paintings, such as Reverie: Sunset Musing
(apparently exhibited as Reverie in 1858; private collection), George Lambdin portrayed a young woman in silent thought as
she gazes out the window and into the distance, a theme popular in nineteenth-century German art. In both Reverie and In a
Window, the landscapes are verdant vistas, though not entirely wild. Through the landscapes run winding rivers—major paths
of transport and travel in the nineteenth century and thus perhaps evocative of distance, a journey, even absence of a loved one.
18
An undated letter from New York artist William Holbrook
Beard (1824–1900) to “Mr. Lambden” requested “two
photographs of cats.” Beard first denied that he would use
them in his painting, but then he contradicted himself,
writing: “If I had a photograph which was what I wanted
or could get one that would help me in my picture, I
should not hesitate to use it. Nor would I care to conceal
it . . . I do not wish the Photographer to destroy the
negative on my account.”73 Beard’s letter makes clear that
artists of the time, though conflicted, were using
photographs, sometimes obtained by mail, and that they
sometimes wanted the negatives of photographs they had
used destroyed.
One of George Lambdin’s most popular paintings was
Golden Summer, painted for George Whitney. It shows a
young man and a young woman gazing into the fields as they
lean on a rustic country fence or stile.Although the painting’s
present location is not known, the work survives in an
engraving published in Peterson’s Magazine (fig. 14). A
memorial tribute published in a Philadelphia paper a few
days after George’s death, likely written by George’s brother
Alfred Cochran Lambdin, describes the painting. It explains
that the woman is clad in lavender accentuated by the
complementary color of the golden grain fields. The author
describes the subject as “Tennysonian” and claims that it was
a plein air subject rather than a studio work.74 It is quite
possible, however, that the female figure was based on a
photograph. Amateur photographers in Philadelphia were
capable of making adequate photographs as early as 1857, or
Fig.
13.
George
Cochran Lambdin,
Clasping a Bracelet
(1857), oil on canvas,
26 x 22 inches.
Collection of Joseph
A.
Hardy,
III,
N e m a c o l i n
Woodlands Resort
and Spa, Farmington,
Pennsylvania.
In
the
mid-1850s
George
Lambdin
made an extended
trip to Europe, spending most of his time
in Paris and Munich,
where he apparently
became acquainted with not only with French genre
paintings but also the rich color, eye-pleasing textures, and
glowing light of Dutch Baroque genre painting, such as
the works of Johannes Vermeer of Delft (1632–1675).
Some of Lambdin’s most beautiful images from the late
1850s, like Clasping a Bracelet, show what he gained
from his study of Dutch, German, and French paintings,
which may have included mid-century female portraits
by the French academic
painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique
perhaps
earlier.75 Thus Golden Summer, and possibly
Ingreseven
(1780–1867).
even others like Clasping a Bracelet (fig. 13) and Our
Sweetest Songs Are Those That Tell of Saddest Thoughts
(1857; National Academy of Design, New York), might be
based on a posed photograph, such as one of a series found
in Philadelphia of the same model in three poses (fig. 15).76
The exact photographs used as the basis for paintings may
not have survived; small and ephemeral photographs of this
type may have been easily lost or discarded in artists’ studios,
even if they were not purposefully destroyed.
Fig. 14. (left) George Cochran Lambdin, Golden Summer, frontispiece for Peterson’s Magazine
(January 1866), engraved and printed by Illman Brothers. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Fig. 15. (above) Unknown photographer, Model in Three Poses, possibly a member of
the Lambdin family (c.1863–65). Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
19
It is tempting to identify a child in a few George Lambdin
paintings as the artist’s youngest sister, Agnes Mary (or
Marie) Lambdin. She would have been no more than six or
seven years old when George painted (and possibly
photographed) her in both The Nursery (undated; plate
14), and Three Little Mothers, apparently also called The
Three Mothers (1860; location unknown; fig. 16). Both girls
in the rocking chairs are clearly based on the same model,
and, very likely, photographs—perhaps two from the same
series. This image is not, however, found in the batch of
photographs discovered in Philadelphia. The facial features
and hair of the child in the rocking chair are very similar to
those of the older subject in Portrait of a
Young Woman, dated 1865 (see plate 30).
George exhibited a painting titled Agnes in
1868 and 1869, but whether or not it is the
same painting is unknown. A biography of
Agnes Maria Lambdin confirms, however,
that she did serve as a model for her
77
brother.
In the 1860s George benefitted from the
patronage of several of America’s premier art
collectors, including George Whitney, John
Taylor Johnston, Samuel Putnam Avery, and Robert M.
Olyphant. It appears that The Nursery and Three Little
Mothers were once the property of the noted American
landscape painter John Frederick Kensett (1818–1872),
who had just a year or two before served with James
Lambdin on the Art Commission. In November 1859 The
Crayon reported that “Lambdin has painted a picture for
Kensett.” Two George Lambdin paintings later offered at
auction as part of Kensett’s estate were titled The Nursery
and Three Little Mothers. These paintings had the same
78
dimensions as the works illustrated in this catalogue.
Fig. 16. George Cochran
Lambdin, Three Little Mothers
(1860), oil on panel, 12 3/4 x 16
inches. Photograph courtesy of
Schutz & Company Fine Art,
New York.
George modeled the Union officer in five
Civil War paintings on likenesses of his
younger brother, Union volunteer officer
James Harrison (Harry) Lambdin, who
enlisted in the 121st Pennsylvania
Regiment, Army of the Potomac, in August
of 1862. These paintings, all showing
sentimental and psychological aspects of
warfare rather than battle scenes or military
actions, are Consecration, 1861 (1865;
Indianapolis Museum of Art); Weary,
Tiresome Winter Quarters—Culpeper
Plate 14
The Nursery
Signed in pencil on stretcher verso: “Geo. C. Lam[bdin]”
PROVENANCE (probable): John Frederick Kensett, New York
EXHIBITED: Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland,
The Victorian Child (July 1–August 29, 1993) [exhibition label on frame verso]
One of the children in several George Lambdin paintings may be the artist’s
youngest sister, Agnes Mary Lambdin. She would have been only six or seven
years old when George painted her in both The Nursery (undated) and Three
Little Mothers (1860, location unknown). Two George Lambdin paintings
later offered at auction as part of John Frederick Kensett’s estate were titled
The Nursery and Three Little Mothers. These paintings had the same
dimensions as those illustrated here and were probably the same works.
20
County, Virginia (1864; private collection); Winter
Quarters in Virginia—Army of the Potomac, 1864 (1866;
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, New Haven, Connecticut); At the Front (1866;
Detroit Institute of Arts); and Compensation (exhibited
1866; Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware).The
scenes of the brooding officer in camp were reportedly
Fig. 17. George Cochran Lambdin, The New
Knife, oil on canvas, 13 x 10 inches. Private
collection, sold by the Schwarz Gallery.
The same little boy who is in Boy and Girl in
a Barn (plate 15) appears in this undated
painting. George Lambdin exhibited The New
Knife at the Artists’ Fund Society of
Philadelphia in 1866, and it was once in the
Wilstach Collection of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. The catalogue W.P. Wilstach
Collection (Philadelphia: Commissioners of
Fairmont Park, 1913), no. 233, records that the
painting was “dated 1866” and gives dimensions as 13 by 10 inches whereas the auction
catalogue Valuable Oil Paintings from the
W.P. Wilstach Collection . . . (Philadelphia:
Samuel T. Freeman & Co., 1954), lot 224, gives
a date of 1868 and dimensions as 13 by 10 1/2
inches. Another painting of the 1860s,
Lambdin’s The Pruner (1868; Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston), was exhibited in 1864 and
1867 but later dated 1868. Possibly there
were two paintings of the same title or
George Lambdin wanted to take newly dated
paintings to New York’s Tenth Street Studio
Building, where he resided for a time in late
painted from studies made by George in Virginia. One was
later reproduced photographically, and these images
“continued to be in demand for many years after the war
79
closed.” Used one way or another, photography was a
powerful force, influence, and aid in the visual arts from
shortly after its advent throughout the nineteenth century
80
and even into the twentieth.
Plate 15
Boy and Girl in a Barn
Oil on academy board, 8 x 10 inches
Label (supplier, printed) on verso: “MILL-BOARDS./Prepared by/H. KAUSZ./
SIZE.10X14/Manufacturer of/ARTIST’S COLORS AND MATERIA[LS]/First
Premium for Pastel & Oil Colors, Franklin Institute 1858/804Sansom Street,/
PHILADELPHIA.”
Anecdotal genre offers a view into another’s world, often that of a child.
Frequently it contains a note of humor, if only because the viewer is an
uninvited witness, as in the painting illustrated here, one of at least four
barn subjects painted by George Lambdin. This small painting offers a
charming view of two youngsters tucked away, out of the view of adults.
Lambdin’s other known barn subjects are White Heifer Calf (1869;
location unknown); Music and Refreshments (1875; New York State
Historical Association, Cooperstown); and Little White Heifer (formerly
Feeding Time, 1876; location unknown).
21
Plate 16
Blowing Bubbles, probably 1863–64
Oil on prepared board, 5 x 7 inches
EXHIBITED (probably): Great Central Fair, Philadelphia
(June 1864)
Philadelphia’s Great Central Fair, held in Logan
Square, was among the most successful volunteer
fund-raising efforts staged during the Civil War, and
the generous contributions of many Philadelphia
artists, including James and George Lambdin, helped
assure its success. George Lambdin’s diminutive
Blowing Bubbles, an oil sketch probably executed in
1863 or 1864 and showing a young girl in a domestic
interior, was almost certainly displayed at the Fair. The
Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Statuary, Etc. of the
Art Department in the Great Central Fair, 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia, 1864), lists the title (no. 761) in a group
(p. 24) of forty-nine “sketches” exhibited by “Artists of
Philadelphia”—one of more than a thousand art works
donated for the cause.
Quite alone, the young girl sits on the edge of her chair gazing at a large soap bubble that has floated from her pipe. The seventeenthcentury chair was also used in several other of Lambdin’s genre paintings (Small Pets [1867; private collection]; Boy [1877; Hickory
Museum of Art, North Carolina]; My Favorite Rose [1884; Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania]; and Waiting [published in Art
Union 1 (August–September 1884): 156]). The chair is discussed by Lambdin’s contemporary Anne Wharton in “Some Philadelphia
Studios: First Paper,” (Decorator and Furnisher 7 [December 1885]: 78).
Lambdin had created an earlier version of Blowing Bubbles in 1858 (oil on canvas, 29 x 23 inches; location unknown). The
earlier version is very different from this painting: it is much larger and lighter and is beautifully finished in the seventeenthcentury Dutch manner, with great attention to detail, textures, and light reflections. It shows a girl of five or six blowing a bubble
in a doorway; outside is a vine-covered porch with a landscape view beyond. The subject of a child blowing bubbles was not
new to the nineteenth century, having been used historically to signify themes of Vanitas, idleness, and impermanence. In his
two versions of Blowing Bubbles, George Lambdin probably only intended to convey the short-lived innocence of childhood.
22
Plate 17
Goldfish, 1859
Signed and dated at lower left:
“Geo.C.Lambdin/‘59”
PROVENANCE (possible): John Frederick
Kennsett, New York
The Chinese practice of keeping fish had
been adopted by the French in the
eighteenth century. In England and
America, the popularity of decorative fish
was later fostered by such writings as
British naturalist Philip Henry Grosse’s The
Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of
the Deep Sea, published in London in
1854. The displaying of ornamental fish by
middle-class
Americans
became
something of a status symbol.
Throughout the nineteenth century,
American artists created and exhibited
portraits, still lifes, and genre paintings that included goldfish. In 1812 James Warrell (c. 1780–before 1854) exhibited Full
Length of a Child with Gold-Fish (location unknown); in about 1835 Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872) painted The Goldfish
Bowl: Mrs. Richard Cary Morse and Family (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.); in 1856 Lilly Martin
Spencer (1822–1902) painted Child Playing with Fish Bowl (Newark Museum); and in 1874 James Wells Champney
(1843–1903) painted Girl Feeding Goldfish (location unknown).
Records show that George Cochran Lambdin exhibited one or more paintings titled Gold Fish or Gold Fishes in Troy, New York,
and New York City in 1860 and 1862. One of these paintings (if indeed the titles refer to more than one) was then owned by
the prominent American landscape painter John Frederick Kensett; however, the Kensett painting is thought to have had slightly
larger dimensions than the one in the Schwarz collection. Lambdin’s painting shown here depicts a domestic interior in which
a young girl contemplates two goldfish as they swim in a prominently displayed glass pedestal bowl. The child has seemingly
flung aside her toys to study this lesson in nature and Asian aesthetics.
23
Plate 18
Sketch Related to “Among the Roses,” 1879
Signed and dated at lower right: “Geo. C. Lambdin./79.”
Even as late as 1879, George Lambdin was relying on photographic models. His Among the Roses (1877; location unknown)
shows a floral landscape surrounding a maiden in white, her arms uplifted as she pins a rose to her hair. George’s 1879 sketch
from the Lambdin family collection (shown here) is very similar to the earlier Among the Roses and is clearly a related work.
Perhaps this is another image of the artist’s sister Agnes, based on a photograph taken in about 1862–65, when she was
between nine and twelve years old, and reproduced on canvas much later.
24
Plate 19
Two Girls Picking Fruit, 1867
Signed and dated at lower left: “Geo C. LAMBDIN.1867.”
RECORDED (possibly): Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists: American Artist Life (New York: Putnam, 1867; reprint, New York: James F.
Carr, 1966), p. 450, as Gathering Cherries
The figures in this painting are similar to girls in other George Lambdin paintings of the 1860s and 1870s: The Vineyard (fig.
19) and Playmates (1868; location unknown). In some instances, it seems that a model used by Lambdin may also appear
in genre works by other American painters. The dark-clad girl in Two Girls Picking Fruit seems strikingly similar in certain
ways to the central figure—a young girl reaching upward—in the Seymour Joseph Guy (1824–1910) work Contest for
the Bouquet (1866; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Figures in all of these paintings, as well as in Guy’s The
Pick of the Orchard (c. 1870; collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Los Angeles), might well be related to a darkclothed girl in profile whose photograph can be found in the cache of photographs apparently once owned by the
Lambdins and now in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The connection seems especially strong
because the girl, surrounded by a landscape in the photograph, seems to pose as though picking fruit from a tree or
holding and admiring an object.
25
Plate 20
Attributed to GEORGE COCHRAN LAMBDIN
Girl in a Yellow Dress with Fresh Cut Flowers
26
Floral Studies
George Lambdin had been in New York at the
Tenth Street Studio Building, where so many of
America’s leading artists had ateliers in the late
sixties, but he left before Christmas 1869 to
return to Germantown for reasons of poor
health—“the fatigue of constant toil in his
profession.” His illness continued into April, and
his physician forbade him to “touch his pencils
for the present.” Early in May, George and his
brother Harry (also needing to restore health)
sailed for Europe. The Franco-Prussian War
forced them to England, but Harry’s worsening
condition hastened their return to Germantown.
There, Harry died in November 1870.81
Back in Germantown, George pursued new
directions in his oeuvre of the 1870s.
Throughout his career he depicted flowers in
his work. Such genre scenes as Girls and
Flowers (1855; Smithsonian American Art
Museum, Washington, D.C.); The Consecration,
1861 (1865; Indianapolis Museum of Art); and
Lazy Bones (1867; location unknown)
incorporate flowers in one way or another,
even if only in a small nosegay.82 In the 1870s,
however, George began concentrating on
floral still lifes. This is not surprising. At New
York’s Tenth Street Studio Building, he might
have been influenced by the flower studies of
John La Farge (1835–1910), or he might even
have seen some early examples of what was
to be a growing and very popular genre of
floral still life in France.83 But Philadelphia
had its own long tradition of still-life
painting,84 and the area was renowned for its
flower gardens. The Germantown section of
the city, where George’s family had settled,
was the site of internationally known
nurseries and home to noted horticulturists
like Thomas Meehan (1826–1901).85 George
Plate 21
Pink Rose Bud
Signed in monogram at lower right: “L.”
27
Plate 22
Pink and Yellow Roses
Signed at lower right: “Geo. C. Lambdin”
EXHIBITED: Louisville, Kentucky, Southern Exposition (1884) [exhibition label on frame verso]
REFERENCE: Ruth Irwin Weidner in Robert Devlin Schwarz, 150 Years of Philadelphia Still-Life Painting, Philadelphia Collection LXII
(Schwarz Gallery, 1997), pp. 62–64 (repro. p. 63)
Of the several rose paintings in this exhibition, all feature outdoor settings, and two or three show the blossoms in various stages of
opening, a detail that may derive from the innovative scientific thought of Charles Darwin. Although pointing out that Lambdin did
not paint in the manner prescribed by John Ruskin, William H. Gerdts discusses Ruskin’s and Darwin’s impact on George Lambdin
in Down Garden Paths: The Floral Environment in American Art (Cranberry, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1983; esp. pp.
19–22).
28
Plate 23
Yellow and Pink Roses
Signed at lower right: “Geo.C.Lambdin—”
plate 22 continued
Pink and Yellow Roses, a painting that shows roses out of doors against blue sky and with several opening buds as well as fullblown blooms, was exhibited by Lambdin at the 1884 Southern Exposition in Louisville, for which Charles M. Kurtz was art
director. Although it is uncertain whether the two artists met, George enthusiastically participated in Kurtz’s plans for exhibitions
in Louisville and New York City, among other Kurtz projects of the 1880s.
29
maintained his own gardens and a greenhouse at the
Lambdin home at 211 Price Street. Over the years he
painted apple blossoms, azaleas, calla lilies, carnations,
chrysanthemums, cyclamen, goldenrod, hollyhocks,
lilacs, magnolias, snapdragons, tiger lilies, tulips, water
lilies, wisteria, and various other cultivated plants and
wildflowers.
Attitudes towards flowers changed in the course of the
nineteenth century. In the early decades, flowers were seen
as precious and symbolic, representing the obvious
emotions like ardor and envy.86 In this early period, living
flowers were something of a luxury, and perhaps flowers
were more typically viewed as color illustrations in gift
books and catalogues than as living plants. In the middle
decades of the century, flowers were associated with
goodness, morality, and even reform.A Maine resident wrote
that the “cultivation of flowers tends to improve health,
purify the heart, elevate the affections, and ennoble man’s
nature. He who has a love for the culture of flowers cannot
but be a person of refined feelings, religious nature and a
generous life.”87 A Massachusetts author instructed:“Learn of
the flowers what they teach. They will mirror the different
elements of moral character,—some of modesty and purity,
others of beauty, taste, loveliness, and many, also, of their
opposites.”88 Gardener’s Monthly proclaimed that “Many of
our best men and wisest philanthropists are now beginning
to appreciate the fact, that to cultivate a love for flowers and
gardens, is to raise up one of the most powerful agents in
moral reform.”89 In time, increasing affluence and leisure
allowed more and more middle-class Americans to establish
home gardens. Nursery personnel, gardeners, and artists
promoted the sheer beauty of flowers—ravishing or
delicate colors, exotic types and forms, subtleties of
textures, and profusion of blooms. Scientific propagation
and import of new varieties kept the public interest:
Between 1870 and 1873 the Miller & Hayes nursery in
Germantown imported over three hundred new Tea and
Hybrid Perpetual roses from Europe.90 George was aware of
varietal differences. In 1882 at the National Academy of
Design he exhibited a painting he described as “the climbing
yellow Pactole rose reaching down to meet La France—
bright pink in color.”91
Roses were the flowers that George Lambdin preferred to
paint and those for which he would become best known. He
grew roses, wrote about them, and painted more versions of
them than any other subject in his oeuvre. During the
seventies he popularized roses on dark, usually black,
backgrounds. Many of these were chromolithographed by
Louis Prang (1824–1909) in Boston, and the reproductions
were widely marketed. Brought within the means of the
average pocketbook, “Lambdin’s roses” became household
words.92
In the 1870s and especially in the 1880s, George’s rose
studies typically showed the plants growing out of doors,
displaying both mature blooms and buds in progressive
stages of opening, and seen against the sky or occasionally a
plaster wall. Scholarly George had undoubtedly paid close
attention to some of John Ruskin’s mandates to artists,
which included the English author’s preference for showing
flowers just as they grow in nature. Ruskin had wanted to
dispel the artificiality of previous still-life conventions,
which showed cut flowers indoors and carefully arranged in
decorative vases; very often flowers with entirely different
blooming seasons were displayed together in artists’ still
lifes. George Lambdin, both gardener and artist, was
perfectly suited to carry out Ruskin’s strong suggestions,
although he apparently never adopted the author’s
instructions about meticulous drawing and exactitude of
portrayal.
These rose studies also suggest possible connections with
photography. In both New York and Philadelphia, George had
ample opportunity to see large photographic studies by
French photographer Adolphe Braun (1811–1877), showing
flowers arranged vertically, filling the image but lacking
visible containers.93 Although George’s compositions might
have been informed by many different influences, his artistic
success with roses can be largely attributed to his patience
and dedication in studying rose textures and hues. He
devoted countless hours to painstaking studies of individual
rose blossoms, of which one long-stemmed example is
included in this collection—Pink Rose Bud (plate 21). The
artist believed that the rose holds the “secret of color,” and he
allowed the color-tones of rose petals to inspire his
painting.94 A critic of the day wrote that, in spite of a “great
boldness” in handling, George’s “freedom of execution that
comes with knowledge” leaves “not the least thing lacking in
definition.”95 It seems that George came to understand
intuitively the shape, texture, and colors of each petal he
painted; his roses seem natural and yet artful. The verve and
energy of his paintings resulted in depictions of flowers
seeming even more natural and alive than they might have
appeared if created according to John Ruskin’s exacting
formulas for painstaking drawing.
30
Plate 24
Yellow and Pink Roses Growing Against a Wall
Inscribed in pencil on frame verso: “Levison”
31
Plate 25
Two Blossoming Pink Roses and Vines
Signed at lower right: “Geo.C.Lambdin”
Label (supplier, printed) on stretcher verso: “H.KAUSZ./Manufacturer and Importer of/Artist’s
Colors and Materials/First Premium for Pastels and colors, Franklin Institute, 1858/No.804
SAMSON STREET,/PHILADELPHIA.”
32
Plate 26
Pink Rose Vines
33
Plate 27
Goldenrod in the Sand
EXHIBITED (possibly): Brooklyn Art Association (1881), no. 200, as Golden Rod by the Lake
Not all of George Lambdin’s flower studies were of elegant or exotic cultivated plants. His watercolor of a wild and unpretentious
goldenrod, its autumn bloom seen before a body of water, sharply contrasts with what the artist called the rose’s “delicacy,”
“translucency,” and “hidden yet half revealed” charm (Geo[rge] C. Lambdin, “The Charm of the Rose,” Art Union 1 [June–July
1884]: 137; republished in Weidner, “Pink and Yellow Roses,” in Robert D. Schwarz, 150 Years of Philadelphia Still-Life Painting, p.
64). George’s choice of a virtual weed as a subject fulfilled Ruskin’s mandates to look at common wildflowers “as Nature arranges
them in the woods and fields” (John Ruskin, “Letter III: On Colour and Composition,” Elements of Drawing in Three Letters to
Beginners, 1st ed. [London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1857], p. 234). His choice also elucidates how long Ruskin’s pervasive influence,
first felt in the 1850s, lingered in this country.
The watercolor illustrated here may be Golden Rod by the Lake, exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association in 1881, or more likely
one of two paintings, titled Goldenrod and Goldenrod by the Shore that were offered for sale in 1887 (Catalogue of Valuable
Paintings: The Collection of George C. Lambdin . . . [Philadelphia: Davis & Harvey’s Galleries, April 6–7, 1887], p. 5, lot 7, and
p. 15, lot 90). It is possible, of course, that the painting exhibited in Brooklyn was one of these.
34
Portraits of Women in the 1880s
Plate 28
GEORGE
COCHRAN LAMBDIN
Viva (after the artist’s painting of that title, exhibited at the National Academy of Design,
1884)
Crayon on paper, 8 x 5 7/16 inches
Signed at lower left: “Geo. C. Lambdin”
Inscribed: (in pencil at lower center) “Viva”; (in ink at lower center) “1884. p 89”; (in crayon at
upper left) “89”; (in pencil at lower right) “9384 m 6 [?]”
Inscribed in ink on verso: “1884 p 89/Geo. C. Lambdin—’Viva’—”
PROVENANCE: Charles M. Kurtz, New York [collector’s stamp on verso]
ILLUSTRATED: National Academy Notes, Including the Complete Catalogue of the Fifty-Ninth
Spring Exhibition, ed. Charles M. Kurtz (New York: Cassell & Co., 1884), p. 89, no. 140
George Lambdin’s studies of the hues of rose blooms and the textures of delicate petals
enhanced his ability to create the visual and tactile qualities and subtle colorations necessary in his portraits of women, which were an extraordinary success. The two line drawings of young women shown here were illustrations created especially for Charles M.
Kurtz’s illustrated catalogues of the National Academy of Design Annuals of 1884 and
1885, respectively. Viva, shown at the Academy in 1884, had been enthusiastically
reviewed by an anonymous writer when previously shown in Philadelphia:
The studies of maidenly beauty [George Lambdin] has contributed to recent exhibitions
have marked a new departure in his artistic career. His latest work in this genre, shown on
Saturday, is an ideal figure . . . It is the loveliest of his creations and will undoubtedly prove
a center of interest in the New York exhibition. The figure is that of a young lady in full dress
in pale pink material, her fair arms raised above her head, holding in both hands a pink
fan, which half shades her winsome face. This is of the red-gold type of blonde beauty, and
these characteristics have been idealized by the artist with poetic refinement and delicacy.
The roseate glow of the flesh tints, luminous even in shadow, yet cool as the petals of a
flower drenched with dew, justify the enthusiastic expression heard more than once before
the easel, ‘What a glorious picture!’ (Unidentified newspaper clipping enclosed in a letter
from Lambdin to Kurtz, February 28, 1884. Charles M. Kurtz Papers. Archives of American
Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm roll 4819, frame 1219)
Plate 29
GEORGE
COCHRAN LAMBDIN
A Portrait (after the artist’s painting of that title, exhibited at the National Academy of Design,
1885)
Ink on paper, 10 1/16 x 7 inches
Signed at lower left: “Geo. C. Lambdin”
Inscribed in ink on verso: “1885 p 80 Geo C. Lambdin A Portrait/(Woman holds three roses)”
PROVENANCE: Charles M. Kurtz, New York [collector’s stamp on verso]
ILLUSTRATED: National Academy Notes and Complete Catalogue, Sixtieth Spring Exhibition,
National Academy of Design, ed. Charles M. Kurtz (New York: Cassell & Co., 1885), p. 16, no.
62
The oil A Portrait that Lambdin reproduced in this drawing was not for sale when exhibited in 1885; it was owned by F. D.
Marikwald, so perhaps its subject was a member of that family. In 1884 Leslie W. Miller wrote that George was doing studies in
which roses inspired the skin tones, explaining: “Mr. Ruskin advises his pupils to paint peaches and plums, if they would learn
how to paint the more delicate bloom of cheeks and lips. Mr. Lambdin has gone to the roses for the same lesson.” (L[eslie] W.
M[iller], “The Artists’ Exhibition: Second Paper,” American 7 [February 9, 1884]: 281) In 1885 George Lambdin pointed out to
Anne Wharton “how exactly this picture of the girl, pink, white and flesh color, corresponds with the picture of the roses, every
tint and tone in one may be matched with a tint or tone in the other.” (Wharton, “Some Philadelphia Studios: First Paper,”
Decorator and Furnisher 7 [December 1885]: 78) In Charles Kurtz’s National Academy of Design exhibition catalogue, Lambdin
described the color missing in his black-and-white drawing of A Portrait, explaining that her hair and eyes are dark and her dress
is a “pale pink covered with white muslin and lace.” Deep green foliage fills the background, and she holds yellow and pink
35
The 1880s: Writing, Lecturing, and Leading Artistic Organizations
Even if George Lambdin had devoted the mid-1880s solely to
painting rose studies and creating portraits of lovely young
women, his reputation would have been solid. In those years,
however, George was also a figure much in demand on the
lecture circuit. He published frequently in art journals and
was quoted often in newspapers.
Throughout his career, George stayed abreast of the latest
trends in the art world and was active in several of the
major East Coast art societies. He had been a longtime
member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,
Philadelphia, where he became an Academician in 1863. He
had held elected offices and even served as president of the
Artists’ Fund Society of Philadelphia. In the late 1870s he
became a member of the newly formed Philadelphia
Society of Artists, a lively and ambitious group active from
1879 to the mid-1880s. Not content to limit his involvement
to the Philadelphia art world, in 1868 George had obtained
residence in New York’s Tenth Street Studio Building, where
so many of America’s leading artists
had studios. While in New York, he
became an Academician in the
National Academy of Design, where he
had exhibited frequently between
1856 and 1886.
It was not at all out of character for
George to participate avidly in several
of Charles M. Kurtz’s endeavors of the
1880s. Director of the Art Department
of the Southern Exposition in
Louisville from 1883 to 1886, Kurtz
was also editor of the National
Academy Notes for the National
Academy of Design from 1881 to 1889.
In addition, Kurtz was a key figure in
New York’s revived Art Union and its
publication of the same name. The
Fig. 18. George Cochran Lambdin, Autumn Sunshine
(1880), oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 20 1/2 inches.
Smithsonian American Art Museum,Washington, D.C.,
sold by the Schwarz Gallery.
The chrysanthemum is an ancient flower from Asia, where, greatly
prized, it became the emblem of Japan’s imperial
family. In the nineteenth century, as America’s interest in Japanese and Chinese culture waxed, and as
new Asian varieties of flowers and plants were
imported into the United States, the chrysanthemum became a favorite, second only to the rose.
Kurtz papers contain numerous letters from George that
elucidate the artist’s interest in Kurtz’s projects. For the
catalogues of the Art Department of the Southern
Exposition and the annual catalogues of the National
Academy of Design, artists were asked to send line drawings
and written descriptions of works accepted for exhibition.
George’s correspondence with Kurtz centered around his
drawings and illustrations, as described below with Viva
(plate 28) and A Portrait (plate 29).96
For the Art Union, George also contributed quite a few articles
and comments, including “Further Words on the Tariff”
(January 1884),97 “Primitive Colors” (May 1884),98 “The Charm
of the Rose” (June–July 1884),99 and “Style” (January–March
1885).100 To a Philadelphia newspaper, George sent two
scholarly communications in 1885–86, one regarding nudity in
art (presumably in response to the 1885 controversy that
swirled around Thomas Eakins [1844–1916]), the other an
argument regarding “The Picturesque.”101
George was very visible in
Philadelphia in 1885. He lectured in
May of that year on “What We Mean by
a Work of Art” at the Philadelphia
School of Design for Women (now
Moore College of Art and Design)102
and on “The Invention of Oil Painting
and Its Development” at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts.103 George also gave the
commencement address at the
Philadelphia School of Design for
Women in 1885,104 certainly a year in
which his activities and successes
proved his erudition and his influence
in the art world. In the period from
1885 to 1887, George was a member
of the faculty of the Philadelphia
This work shows yellow and pink potted chrysanthemums in a greenhouse, a variation on the outdoor still life. During the 1880s this flowering plant
became so popular that in 1890, Louis Prang &
Company published F. Schuyler Mathews’s gift
book of poetry and full-page chromolithographs by
Anglo-American
artists
James
Callowhill
(1838–1917) and Sidney T. Callowhill (1867–1939).
The artists featured many large, elaborate, and beautifully colored mums.
36
School of Design for Women; the school’s mission was “to
give women thorough and systematic training in the
principles and practices of the art of design.”105
George Lambdin’s familiarity with artists, writers, and
philosophers was wide ranging; his writings and speeches
drew on the works, ideas, and accomplishments of such
figures as the ancient Greek poet Pindar, fifteenth-century
Italian artist Antonello da Messina, sixteenth-century Italian
artist and historian Giorgio Vasari, and nineteenth-century
English artist John Flaxman. The Lambdin household had
been a cultured one. James’s brother Harrison Lambdin was
a bookseller, printer, and papermaker, and had become a
partner in the Pittsburgh firm Patterson & Lambdin before
his untimely death in 1825.Although a physician by training,
George’s brother Alfred Cochran Lambdin worked as an art
and music critic in Philadelphia and belonged to many local
cultural groups. George’s sister Agnes recalled that a
dramatic club met at the Lambdins’ Germantown home.The
family owned a large collection of books and engravings,
which James willed to his sons.106 James had the
sensibilities of a historian and carefully chronicled
incidents, biographies, additions, and corrections in his
personal copy of William Dunlap’s A History of the Rise
and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States,107
as well as in his own journal—a rich repository of first-hand
information.
Plate 30
Portrait of a Young Woman, 1865
Oil on academy board, 10 1/8 x 8 1/4 inches
Signed and dated at lower right: “Geo C Lambdin. 65”
The facial features and hair of this young woman resemble
those of the younger girl in The Nursery (plate 14). The
model for this painting may have been the artist’s youngest
sister, Agnes Mary Lambdin. Lambdin exhibited a painting
titled Agnes in 1868 and 1869, but whether it was the
painting illustrated here is not known.
Fig. 19. George Cochran Lambdin, The
Vineyard, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches.
Collection of J. M. Smucker Company,
Orrville, Ohio, sold by the Schwarz Gallery.
37
The Lambdins’ Careers and Their Contributions to American Art
The careers of James Lambdin and his son George Lambdin
ended at about the same time. On the afternoon of January
31, 1889, James, then in his early eighties, was riding a train
home from an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts when he died quietly of heart failure as the train
approached his Germantown stop.108 George, on the other
hand, suffered from an illness of many years, a decline
reported in spring 1887 when the contents of the ailing
artist’s studio were sold at auction.109 He was hospitalized for
at least part of the decade before his death in 1896. There
have been differing explanations of what caused George’s
illness, but the Lambdins’ Germantown friend and neighbor
Edwin C. Jellett, also a local historian, took pains to explain
that its onset followed George’s disappointment at not being
named president of the Philadelphia School of Design for
Women.110
James Lambdin and George Lambdin both left splendid
legacies. James painted likenesses of jurists, writers,
scientists, generals, governors, senators, clergymen, and
women of all ages. He painted every president from John
Quincy Adams to James A. Garfield, and he himself wrote
that “he was thought to have painted more portraits than
any other living artist.”111 George, too, was a prolific and
highly regarded portrait painter even in the early years of
his career, but he became most famous for “Lambdin’s
roses,” which were widely exhibited and reproduced as
chromolithographs that hung in many American homes.
Together, the careers of the two artists illustrate
fundamental developments in nineteenth-century art.
James’s experiences and contributions exemplify the life of
the itinerant portraitist and the continuing importance of
portraiture through the first three-quarters of the century;
he also contributed to the tentative foundations of museum
work. Both father and son were informed, even erudite,
artists. In spite of a lack of formal education, James led in the
founding and governance of distinguished societies
intended to support the interests of artists and to facilitate
the exhibition of art, and George enthusiastically wrote and
lectured about art history and artistic theories. George was
among the American artists who turned away from religious
and literary subjects to genre and still life. James became
interested in landscape painting, joining the hundreds of
Americans who created images of their growing nation’s
varied terrain. George explored the uses of photography and
was cognizant of foreign artists, theorists, and critics. Both
artists benefitted from travel and study in Europe; yet, both
Lambdins steadfastly supported uniquely American causes
and artistic expressions. Although their contributions to
America’s cultural heritage were centered in Pennsylvania,
their influence spread much farther.The hundreds of images
that survive them and their record of support for American
art reveal much about the history of art in nineteenthcentury America.
Fig. 20. (above left) George Cochran Lambdin, Morning
Walk (1868), chromolithograph published by Bencke and
Scott, New York (copyright 1874). Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.
This is yet another example of
George Lambdin’s use of family members as models. It
may be the painting entitled Sunday Morning, which
Lambdin showed in New York in 1868 (described in
Putnam’s Magazine, n.s. 1 [March 1868]: 388).
Fig. 21. (above right) Unknown photographer, James
Reid Lambdin (probably 1860s). Library Company of
Philadelphia.
The clothing and pose in this photograph strongly suggest that James Lambdin is the man
in Morning Walk.
38
List of Plates
James Reid Lambdin
Plate Page Title
Plate Page Title
1
2
3
4
9
9
9
11
5
6
7
8
11
12
12
13
9
10
11
13
14
14
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
The Old Cedar on the Squan River, New Jersey
Water Running over Rocks
River View with Mountains
Dewey’s Grist Mill on the Black River, Port Leyden,
Lewis County, New York
Lake George from Bolton’s Landing
Muddy Brook, Woodland, Ulster County, New York
Beach’s Dam, Woodland, Ulster County, New York
Shawangunk Mountains from Artist’s Rock, Eagle
Cliff, Lake Mohonk, Ulster County, New York
Lake View with a Summerhouse, Lake Mohonk
Near Elizabethtown, Essex County, New York
Lake View with Rocks: Near Elizabethtown, Essex
County, New York
16
17
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
30
31
32
33
34
34
36
Crocheting
In a Window
The Nursery
Boy and Girl in a Barn
Blowing Bubbles
Goldfish
Sketch Related to “Among the Roses”
Two Girls Picking Fruit
Girl in a Yellow Dress with Fresh Cut Flowers
Pink Rose Bud
Pink and Yellow Roses
Yellow and Pink Roses
Yellow and Pink Roses Growing Against a Wall
Two Blossoming Pink Roses and Vines
Pink Rose Vines
Goldenrod in the Sand
Viva
A Portrait
Portrait of a Young Woman
Notes
The George Cochran Lambdin paintings from the Lambdin family collection and the three works once in the hands of Charles M. Kurtz, along
with seven others now with the Schwarz Gallery, virtually represent the course of George Lambdin’s mature career.All but the following works
by George Lambdin were acquired from the Lambdin family: plates 13, 14, 16, 20, 22, 29, 30. Works reproduced in color, including The Young
Knitter by Pierre-Edouard Frère, are for sale. George Lambdin’s black-and-white drawings A Portrait and Viva (not from the Lambdin family
collection) are also for sale.
Information about works exhibited in the nineteenth century has not been provided in the notes if that information has come from standard
sources: e.g., The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1876–1913, ed. Peter H. Falk, 3 vols. (Madison,
Conn.: Sound View Press, 1989); The National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1861–1900, ed. Maria Naylor, 2 vols. (New York: Kennedy
Galleries, 1973); Inventory of American Paintings, Artist Listings (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, computerized
and routinely updated); and National Museum of American Art’s Index to American Art Exhibition Catalogues, from the Beginning through
the 1876 Centennial Year, comp. James L.Yarnall and William H. Gerdts, 6 vols. (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986).
1. In winter 1996–97 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts presented an installation of the works of Philadelphia’s artistic families. I thank Christine Schultz
Magda for obtaining the checklist of this exhibition and for her many contributions to the research for this catalogue.
2. The Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia,
has published exhibition catalogues for members of several of these Philadelphia families: Philadelphia Artists: The Weber Family, Philadelphia Collection XXIX
(1985); A Gallery Collects Peales, Philadelphia Collection XXXV (1987); Anna Richards Brewster, Philadelphia Collection L (1990); Robert Wilson Torchia, The
Gilmans, Philadelphia Collection LXI (1996); and Robert Wilson Torchia, The Smiths: A Family of Philadelphia Artists, Philadelphia Collection LXIV (1999). See
also Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy, ed. Katharine Martinez and Page Talbott (Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 2000); Linda
S. Ferber, William Trost Richards (1833–1905): American Landscape and Marine Painter (New York: Garland, 1980); and Nancy K. Anderson, Thomas Moran
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997).
3. The primary source for information about James Lambdin is the “Journal of James R. Lambdin,” an autobi-
ographical account written from about 1867 and covering roughly the years from his parents’ marriage in 1795 until James and family made Philadelphia their
permanent home in 1837. James’s son Alfred Cochran Lambdin probably typed a manuscript written or dictated by James, who then edited the typescript.
Division of Archives and Manuscripts, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pa., MG–6, GM–190, box 2 (hereafter cited as J. R. Lambdin
Journal). Although rich in details that might otherwise have been lost, the journal includes dates, sequences of events, and place names that are sometimes
ambiguous and require careful study. Accompanying the journal and also in the Division of Archives and Manuscripts, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum
Commission, MG–6, GM–190, is a five-page “Brief Sketch of Jas. R. Lambdin’s Career as Painter,” handwritten by the artist, apparently for publication (hereafter
cited as J. R. Lambdin, “Brief Sketch”). Other useful sources for James Lambdin are John O’Connor, Jr., “Reviving a Forgotten Artist: A Sketch of James Reid
Lambdin, The Pittsburgh Painter of American Statesmen,” Carnegie Magazine 12 (September 1938): 115–18; and Dictionary of American Biography, s.v.
“Lambdin, James Reid.” The spelling of James’s middle name has caused confusion because both James himself and his son Alfred spelled it “Read.” See J. R.
39
Notes
Lambdin Journal, pt. 1, p. 5; Alfred C. Lambdin to J. D. Woodward [1892] advises the Pennsylvania Academy that the correct spelling is “Read” (Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts Archives, Philadelphia). J. R. Lambdin’s Journal, pt. 1, p. 5, explains that he was named for a traveling Methodist minister, the Rev. James
Read. However, James seems most likely to have been the namesake of the Rev. James Reid (1780–1850 or 1860). For George C. Lambdin, see Ruth Irwin Weidner,
George Cochran Lambdin (Chadds Ford, Pa.: Brandywine River Museum, 1986). 4. For cultural life in early Pittsburgh, see Edward Park Anderson,“The Intellectual Life
of Pittsburgh, 1786–1836,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 14 (1931): 9–27, 92–114, 225–36, 288–309. Part 8,“Painting” (October 1931): 288–309,
includes material on James Lambdin. 5. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 1, pp. 1–23. Gaylord M. Lambdin and Paris L. Lambdin, Lambdin Chronicles (Alcoa, Tenn.:
Gaylord M. Lambdin, 1991), pp. 47–48, have published an 1897 letter from Samuel Hopkins Lambdin to an unknown recipient stating that Samuel was one of
eight children, the fourth male child born. In his journal James repeatedly mentioned his two brothers Samuel and Harrison, but never other siblings.
6. J. R.
Lambdin Journal, pt. 1, p. 33. 7.“Notes and Queries:The Painter’s Club of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 40 (1916): 122–23.
8. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 1, pp. 46–47. 9. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 3, pp. 4, 8, 9–11, and passim. For James’s brother-in-law Alfred Cochran’s marriage into the
Postlethwaite family of Natchez, see pt. 3, p. 17.
10. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 2, pp. 9–13.
11. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 2, p. 13. According to Dictionary of
American Biography, s.v. “Wilkins, William,” the judge experienced financial problems in about 1828.
Lambdin Journal, pt. 2, p. 13.
14. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 2, p. 20.
Coleman Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980).
13. J. R.
16. For C. W. Peale’s museum see Charles
17. J. R. Lambdin to F. M. Etting, October 12, 1872, Etting Papers, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania. Published in Gaylord M. Lambdin and Paris L. Lambdin, Lambdin Chronicles, pp. 36–37.
18. An invaluable source for information about
Lambdin’s museum is Elizabeth Kennedy Sargent,“Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum of Natural History and Gallery of the Fine Arts, 1828–1832” (tutorial research
paper, Chatham College, 1984; hereafter cited as “Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum”). I am indebted to Henry Adams for sending me a copy of this extremely useful work.
19. Anne Royall, Mrs. Royall’s Pennsylvania; or, Travels Continued in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Anne Royall, 1829), 2:64–65. Cited in
Sargent,“James Reid Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 51. It is unclear which Mrs. Peale created the floral display. 20.“A Friend to Merit” [pseud.],“From the
Club—No. 10,” Hesperus, November 8, 1828; reproduced in Sargent, “Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 108. “Miss Peale” can probably be identified as either
Anna Claypoole Peale (1791–1828) or Sarah Miriam Peale (1800–1885), both daughters of James Peale and associates of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts by 1824.Although Sarah Miriam Peale was well known for state portraiture, by 1828 Anna Claypoole Peale had painted at least one portrait of Washington
(after a work by her cousin Rembrandt Peale [1778–1860]). Rembrandt had made copies after Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), John Trumbull (1756–1843), and
others. See John Hill Morgan and Mantle Fielding, The Life Portraits of Washington and Their Replicas (Philadelphia: Printed for the Subscribers, 1931), pp.
339, 384.
21. Advertisement, Pittsburgh Gazette, September 24, 1830; reproduced in Sargent, “Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 113. Other paintings by
Dunlap exhibited in Lambdin’s Museum were The Bearing of the Cross and Christ Rejected; reproduced in Sargent, “Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” pp. 110,
115.
22. Advertisement, Pittsburgh Gazette, February 19, 1830; reproduced in Sargent,“Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 112.
Gazette, December 24, 1831; reproduced in Sargent, “Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 115.
23. Advertisement, Pittsburgh
24. Advertisement, Pittsburgh Gazette, September 2, 1831; repro-
duced in Sargent,“Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 118. 25. James Reid Lambdin to John Adamson, undated letter; James Reid Lambdin to John Adamson, March
16, 1832. Records, 1682–1953. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, N.Y. Microfilmed by the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm roll N68–12,
frames 241–47. 26.“A Friend to Merit” [pseud.],“From the Club—No. 10.”
27. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 2, p. 3. 28. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 3, pp. 3–5. 29. J.
R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 3, pp. 3–8, 11–12, 14–17. Clifton was destroyed during the Civil War.
30. It has not been possible to confirm dates for Samuel Hopkins
Lambdin and his wife Jane Bisland Lambdin.They probably wed in 1842. Although Samuel’s date of death is often given as 1892, an autobiographical letter detailing facts of his life is said to be dated in 1897, giving credence to the 1902 date. See Gaylord M. Lambdin and Paris L. Lambdin, The Lambdin Chronicles, pp.
47–48. 31. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 3, pp. 25–28. 32. Catalogue of the First Annual Exhibition of Paintings (Louisville, Ky.: Louisville Museum and Gallery
of the Fine Arts, 1834). J. R. Lambdin Collection, Catalogues and Pamphlets on Art. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Microfilmed by the
Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm roll P40, frames 901–9; transcript in Sargent, “Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” pp. 93–100. Lambdin’s
painting after Granet was apparently exhibited in a special room and without a catalogue number. This work, like many in the Louisville exhibition, was previously shown in Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Gallery.The Granet work (present location unknown) is reproduced in Sargent,“Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 135.
For Russell Smith, see Torchia, The Smiths, pp. 10–33; and Virginia Lewis, Russell Smith, Romantic Realist (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1957).
34. For luminaries painted by J. R. Lambdin, see O’Connor, “Reviving a Forgotten Artist.” Scholarship on Southern por-
traiture includes Mississippi Portraiture, comp. Vera Jacobs Speakes with Estill Curtis Pennington (Laurel, Miss.: National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America in the State of Mississippi/Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, 1987), which illustrates thirteen portraits by James Lambdin, including Lambdin family
portraits.
35. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 3, pp. 27–28, 54.
38. J. R.
Lambdin to Philip C. Garret, May 17, 1887, in A Catalogue of Portraits, p. 50. James occupied the studio at 1224 Chestnut Street from 1869 to 1887.
J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 3, p. 54; pt. 1, p. 52.
40. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Lambdin, James Reid.”
39.
41. Catalogue of the Third Exhibition
(Albany, N.Y.: Albany Gallery of the Fine Arts, 1848). J. R. Lambdin Collection, Catalogues and Pamphlets on Art. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,
Philadelphia. Microfilmed by the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm roll P40, frame 553.
43.
J. R. Lambdin,“Brief Sketch,” p. 4; text transcribed in Sargent,“Lambdin’s Pittsburgh Museum,” p. 90. 44.“Sketchings,” Crayon 4 (January 1857): 28; James Reid
Lambdin to The American Philosophical Society, June 12, 1856; J. R. Lambdin to Philip C. Garret, May 17, 1887; Philip C. Garret to Frederick Fraley, May 23,
1887. Collection of The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Published in A Catalogue of Portraits and Other Works of Art in the Possession of the
American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951), pp. 49–51. Courtesy of Sue Ann Prince. The portrait might have been
completed by early 1857 but remained in Lambdin’s Philadelphia studio until 1887. Another Lambdin portrait of Humboldt hangs in the Academy of Natural
Sciences, Philadelphia. 45. Proceedings of the National Convention of Artists, Held March 20, 22, and 23, 1858, at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington,
D.C. (Washington, D.C., 1858). J. R. Lambdin Collection, Catalogues and Pamphlets on Art. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Microfilmed by
the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm roll P40, frames 625–33. Resolution 4 is on pp. 8–9.
46. “Report of the United States Art
Commission.” House Doc. no. 43, 36th Congress, 1st session, March 1860. Also published in Henry K. Brown, James R. Lambdin, and John F. Kensett,“Report of
40
the U.S. Art Commissioners” [To the President of the United States] Crayon 7 (April 1860): 106–9. See also “Sketchings: Art of the Capitol, Washington,” Crayon
5 (October 1858): 295–96. 47.“Domestic Art Gossip,” Crayon 5 (March 1858): 88. 48. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v.“Lambdin, James Reid.” 49.
Lambdin Family Bible (given “To Mrs Mary C. Lambdin From her affectionate Brother, Alfred Cochran, Natchez March 9th 1837”), private collection. 50. J. R.
Lambdin Journal, pt. 1, p. 50; pt. 3, p. 12a (page numbered pt. 3, 12a is out of sequence in the copy consulted and appears between pt. 3, p. 30, and pt. 3, p.
31).
51. “Art Items,” New-York Daily Tribune, November 7, 1860, p. 7.
52. Lambdin Family Bible. Annie’s second son is entered here under “Henry David
Hamilton,” giving him the same initials as his uncle, whose full name was apparently Henry Daniel Hyers Snyder. See Matthew J. Conway, Port Leyden,”The
Iron City”: A Passing Glance (Woodgate, N.Y.:Tug Hill Books, 1989), p. 34. 53. E. C. W. [possibly James Lambdin’s nephew Ernest C. Wallace],“Obituary: Mary
Cochran Lambdin,” Daily Evening Bulletin, (Philadelphia) March 24, 1866, p. 1.
55. Illustrated in Paul D. Schweizer,
Art of Trenton Falls, 1825–1900 (Utica, N.Y.: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art, 1989), no. 46, pp. 63–64.
56. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 1,
p. 15; Art of Colouring and Painting Landscapes in Water Colours (Baltimore: Fielding Lucas, 1815). 57. J. R. Lambdin Journal, pt. 2, p. 12. 58. Catalogue
of the Second Annual National Water-Color Exhibition of the Philadelphia Society of Artists (Philadelphia: McCalls & Stavely, 1883). For James Lambdin’s
contributions, see p. 16, no. 97; p. 17, no. 106; p. 26, no. 224; p. 28, no. 259. 59.Two brief Crayon articles elucidate an interest in landscape painting and geology in the 1850s: E. B. M., “Trees and Rocks at the Catskill Mountains,” Crayon 4 (September 1857): 280–82; and N. P. C., “Relation Between Geology and
Landscape Painting,” Crayon 6 (August 1859): 255–56.
60. For interrelationships between earth scientists, American artists, and landscape paintings, see
Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825–1875 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), pp. 44–77, 130–34.
61. Lewis,
Russell Smith, pp. 82, 131–32, 229. 62. Virginia L. Wagner,“John Ruskin and Artistical Geology in America,” Winterthur Portfolio 23 (summer/autumn 1988):
151–67. For a more general study of Ruskin’s influence in the U.S., see Linda S. Ferber and William H. Gerdts, The New Path: Ruskin and the American PreRaphaelites, exh. cat. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum, 1985). 63. Joan Lachance, archivist for the Mohonk Mountain House, kindly provided materials and
information. When I visited the Mohonk archives in summer 1997, the hotel’s register books from 1875 to 1880 were not yet available for research (they have
since become available). See Benjamin H. Matteson and Joan Lachance, “The Summerhouses of Mohonk” (paper written for the Mohonk Archives, 1996). I
thank Joan Lachance for her comments on the topography of the Mohonk Lake area and Ann Barnett, Al Frane, and Rachael Matteson for identifying the exact
spot from which James Lambdin viewed the mountains. The site, Artist’s Rock, is now marked by a summerhouse.
Mountain House.
65. The dimensions of the phototypes are approximately 9 by 12 1/2 inches.
64. Guest register. Archives, Mohonk
66. Linda S. Ferber, “William Trost Richards (1833–1905):
American Landscape and Marine Painter” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1980), p. 118. 67. George Levi Brown, Pleasant Valley: A History of Elizabethtown,
Essex County, New York (Elizabethtown, N.Y.: George Levi Brown, 1905), pp. 419–20.
68. Charles J. Cohen, Memoir of Rev. John Wiley Faires, M.M., D.D.,
Founder and Principal of the Classical Institute, Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Charles J. Cohen, 1926), p. 834. 69. Unknown newspaper dated May 16, 1851,
in Annals of Savannah, 1850–1937: A Digest and Index of the Newspaper Record of Events and Opinions (Savannah: Works Progress Administration of
Georgia, 1937). I thank William Gerdts for this reference.
70. John Ruskin, “Notes on Some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal
Academy, 1858,” The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn (London: G. Allen, 1904), 14:152–53. Ruskin wrote about the sentimental subjects popular at the time. Genre painters offered a view into another’s world, often that of a child. For nostalgic views of American country children, see Sarah
Burns, “Barefoot Boys and Other Country Children: Sentiment and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century American Art,” American Art Journal 20, no. 1 (1988):
24–50; and idem., Pastoral Inventions: Rural Life in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), esp. pp.
297–332. A scholarly study of images of childhood in the nineteenth century is Marilyn Brown, ed., Picturing Children: Constructions of Childhood Between
Rousseau and Freud (Burlington,Vt.:Ashgate, 2002). German Romantic painting is one likely source for some of the imagery in George Lambdin’s genre paintings, including several that feature a young woman at a window (e.g. plate 13). An important motif of German Romantic painting is a prominently placed window through which a woman gazes; a classic study is Lorenz Eitner, “The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of
Romanticism,” Art Bulletin 37 (December 1955): 281–90, esp. 283–86. 71.This group of twenty-two albumin prints was discovered in the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania and labeled “Price St. Germantown Photographs.” A selection of these
photographs was first published by the Brandywine River Museum in 1986; see
Weidner, George Cochran Lambdin, pp. 34, 38, 40–43, and related illustrations and
endnotes. I am indebted to the Historical Society’s former president, the late Susan
Stitt, for pointing out that Lambdin’s inspiration for In the Greenhouse, Lily Fairy, and
The Stolen Lily (fig. 22) might have been a photograph of General Patterson’s daughter in the Patterson greenhouse at 1300 Locust St., Philadelphia. See Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, Society Photo Collection, box 51, folder 1.
72. Some of the related
paintings were published by the Brandywine River Museum in 1986. See Weidner,
George Cochran Lambdin, p. 15, no. 5; p. 20, no. 10; p. 57, no. 9; p. 23, fig. 5.
73.
W[illiam] H[olbrook] Beard to Mr. Lambden [sic], June 5, 1862. Dreer Collection,
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. First published by the Brandywine River Museum
in 1986. See Weidner, George Cochran Lambdin, p. 38. 74.“The Lambdin Pictures:
Representative Pictures by the Late George Lambdin,” Times (Philadelphia),
February 2, 1896, p. 21.
75. This information was kindly provided by Sarah
Weatherwax. 76.These posed photographs were first published by the Brandywine
River Museum in 1986. See Weidner, George Cochran Lambdin, p. 43, figs. 16–18.
77. Sister Eliza Monica and Sister Florence Teresa, “Sister Agnes Maria,” biographical
typescript written between 1926 and 1933, p. 1. Convent of St. John Baptist
(Episcopalian), Mendham, N.J. Kindly provided by Sister Barbara Jean. Agnes Mary (or
Fig. 22. George Cochran
Lambdin, The Stolen Lily
(1864), oil on paper, 8 x 5 1/2
inches. Collection of Mrs.
Christine M. Glazer, Cranford,
New Jersey, sold by the
Schwarz Gallery.
From
time to time George Lambdin
painted two or more similar
works on the same theme,
although sometimes he used
different titles. This is exemplified by his paintings (all
dated or exhibited in 1864)
In the Greenhouse, Lily
Fairy, and The Stolen Lily; the
first two are unlocated today. Each depicts a little girl holding
a large white calla lily while standing in a greenhouse filled
with lush tropical plants. This work was once a part of an
album donated to the Great Central Fair held in Philadelphia
in the summer of 1864, a venue where it would have had
wide exposure. A description of Lily Fairy may be found in
“Philadelphia Art Notes,” Round Table (May 7, 1864): 327. A
description of In the Greenhouse appears in an unidentified
auction catalogue (lot 23; 13 3/4 by 10 inches).
41
Notes
Marie) Lambdin entered the convent as a postulant June 16, 1893, and became a novice later that year. She took her final vows February 1, 1896.
78.
“Sketchings,” Crayon 6 (November 1859): 350. Catalogue of the Entire Collection of Paintings Belonging to the Late Thomas Kensett, Esq., Baltimore,
Comprising Examples by American and Foreign Artists, Selected by the Late John F. Kensett, Esq., and Formerly Loaned to the Metropolitan Museum (New
York: Leavitt, 1877), nos. 19 and 79. Both paintings are listed in the previous sale of Kensett’s estate in 1873. 79.“Philadelphia Art Notes,” Round Table (March
26, 1864) p. 234; and Round Table (September 30, 1865) p. 60. [Alfred Cochran Lambdin?],“The Lambdin Pictures: Representative Pictures by the Late George
Lambdin,” Times (Philadelphia), February 2, 1896, p. 21. A likeness of Harry and three of George’s war paintings are reproduced in Weidner, George Cochran
Lambdin, p. 19, cat. B and fig. 2; p. 20, no. 10; p. 35. no. 8.
80. Two current essays shed much light on how Thomas Eakins incorporated photographic
sources into his work and on photographic activity in Philadelphia: Mark Tucker and Nica Gutman, “Photographs and the Making of Paintings,” and W.
Douglass Paschall, “The Camera Artist,” both in Thomas Eakins (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), pp. 225–238 and 239–255.
81. “The
Fine Arts,” Daily Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia), April 14, 1870, p. 2; and “Art Items,” Daily Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia), May 18, 1870, p. 3.
Illustrated in Weidner, George Cochran Lambdin, p. 36, no. 2; p. 20, no. 10; p. 17, no. 13.
82.
83. Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier and Etienne Grafe, The Flower
Painters: An Illustrated Dictionary (North Dighton, Mass.: JG Press, 1989). This resource documents the burgeoning interest in floral still-life painting in
France in the second half of the nineteenth century, the movement towards naturalism, and flower painting’s popularity in the French provinces and in
England.
84. See Robert Devlin Schwarz, 150 Years of Philadelphia Still-Life Painting, Philadelphia Collection LXII (Philadelphia: Schwarz Gallery, 1997).
85.Weidner, George Cochran Lambdin, pp. 27–30. For a detailed account of the horticultural history of Germantown, see Edwin C. Jellett,“Germantown
Gardens and Gardeners,” Germantown Site and Relic Society Historical Address, no. 10 (Germantown, Pa.: The Society, 1914).
86. For a recent
overview, see Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1995). 87. S. L. B.,“Influence of Flowers,”
Gardener’s Monthly 3 (March 1861): 68.
88. G. D., “Lessons from the Flowers,” Gardener’s Monthly 3 (July 1861): 202.
Horticulture,” Gardener’s Monthly 1 (April 1, 1859): 56.
89. “Conservative Influence of
90. C. P. Hayes, “New Roses,” Horticulturist 29 (January 1874): 3–4.
91. Illustrated Art Notes,
ed. Charles M. Kurtz (New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1882). George Lambdin supplied the description and drawing for his La Pactole and La
France, p. 96, no. 660.
92. For studies of floral painting in the United States and George Lambdin’s place within an American context, see William H.
Gerdts, Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life, 1801–1939, exh. cat. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1981); idem.,
Down Garden Paths: The Floral Environment in American Art, exh. cat. (Cranberry, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1983); and Bruce Weber, American
Beauty: The Rose in American Art (New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1997). Gerdts discusses Ruskin’s and Darwin’s impact on George Lambdin in Down Garden
Paths, esp. pp. 19–22. See also idem.,“The Influence of Ruskin and Pre-Raphaelitism on American Still-Life Painting,” American Art Journal 1 (fall 1969): 80–97,
esp. p. 81. See also Ferber and Gerdts, The New Path, esp. p. 271; and Ella M. Foshay, “Charles Darwin and the Development of American Flower Imagery,”
Winterthur Portfolio 15 (winter 1980): 299–314.
Weidner, George Cochran Lambdin, p. 38, fig. 7.
(December 17, 1881): 153.
93. First published by the Brandywine River Museum in 1986. Adolphe Braun’s Flowers is illustrated in
94. “Notes,” American 10 (June 13, 1885): 91.
95. “Art: The Philadelphia Artists’ Exhibition,” American 3
96. Charles M. Kurtz papers. Microfilm rolls 4804, 4806, and 4820, passim. Kurtz’s illustrated notes were published from 1881
through 1889 and variously called American Academy Notes, Illustrated Art Notes, and National Academy Notes. Some of the artists’ sketches for these Notes
are now in the collection of the National Academy of Design. See David B. Dearinger, “Foreword,” Rave Reviews: American Art and Its Critics, 1826–1925,
ed. David B. Dearinger (New York: National Academy of Design, 2000), pp. 25–26, p. 29, n. 80.
97. Geo[rge] C. Lambdin, “Further Words on the Tariff,” Art
Union 1 (January 1884): 22. 98. G[eorge] C. L[ambdin],“Primitive Colors,” Art Union 1 (May 1884): 114. 99. Geo[rge] C. Lambdin,“The Charm of the Rose,”
Art Union 1 (June–July 1884): 137. 100. Geo[rge] C. Lambdin,“Style,” Art Union 2 (January–March, 1885): 5–6. 101. Geo[rge] C. Lambdin,“An Artist’s View
of the Nude Question,” American 10 (July 4, 1885): 141; idem., “The Picturesque,” American 11 (February 27, 1886): 301. The second letter called the human
body “picturesque.” Interestingly, at this same time arguments about nudity in art were being hurled back and forth in the British papers Times and Pall Mall
Gazette. Also George Lambdin himself, in 1885 and shortly thereafter, exhibited or submitted a nude subject, Youth, a watercolor showing an unclothed girl by
the shore with a butterfly (dated 1884; location unknown).
102. For the text of this lecture, see “What Is a Work of Art?” Times (Philadelphia), May 18, 1885, p.
2. 103. For the text of this lecture, see “Oil Painting,” Times (Philadelphia), May 16, 1885, p. 3. George Lambdin gave a similar lecture at the National Academy of
Design later that year. 104.“Notes,” American 10 (June 27, 1885): 125. 105.“Art Notes,” American 10 (August 29, 1885): 267; American 12 (September 4, 1886):
317. 106. Sister Eliza Monica and Sister Florence Teresa,“Sister Agnes Maria,” p. 1.Will of James R. Lambdin, dated July 26, 1878. Collection of Valuable Engravings
Belonging to Alfred C. Lambdin, Esq., of Philadelphia, cat. no. 998 (Philadelphia: Samuel T. Freeman & Co., June 1, 1909).
107. Anna Wells Rutledge, “Dunlap
Notes,” Art in America 39 (February 1951): 44–48. Dunlap (who of course was a friend of James) published his two-volume history of American art, the first such
compilation, in New York in 1834.
108. Obituaries for J. R. Lambdin: Public Ledger (Philadelphia), February 1, 1889, p. 4; New York Times, February 1, 1889, p.
5. 109.“Art Notes,” American 13 (April 2, 1887): 382. After the sale of paintings from his studio that month (see Catalogue of Valuable Paintings), George’s
name seldom turns up in connection with artistic activities. James and George vacated their Philadelphia studios at about the same time in spring 1887.
110. Obituaries for G. C. Lambdin: Public Ledger (Philadelphia), January 29, 1896, p. 2; Germantown Guide, February 1, 1896, p. 2; Times (Philadelphia), January
29, 1896, p. 4.; Statement by E. C. Jellett dated 1896, in Warren H. Poley’s scrapbook, Germantown Historical Society. 111. O’Connor,“Reviving a Forgotten Artist”;
J. R. Lambdin,“Brief Sketch,” p. 4.
F I N E
P A I N T I N G S
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1806 Chestnut Street
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Philadelphia PA 19103
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The Lambdins of Philadelphia (Schwarz Gallery

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