Exterior view of Trinity Church, 371 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, New York.

At this stage, I’m researching individual objects in preparation for writing the exhibition catalogue. Summer is a great time to conduct research—libraries, historical societies, and other archival institutions are usually air-conditioned! It’s also when many of us get away for a break. This year, I was able to combine work and vacation in Buffalo, New York. Trinity Church, one of this city’s many churches, has a direct connection to a drawing featured in Fine Lines: I had to make a research visit!

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This stunning drawing by John La Farge is a preparatory study for a stained-glass window he designed for the church in 1889. The image depicts a scene from the Bible’s Book of Revelation in which an angel (at lower left) places a seal on the forehead of a woman to identify her as one of God’s chosen people, while two other faithful ascend into heaven above. Comparing the two works, you can see that the finished window follows the drawing very closely in composition. Note how, in the drawing, La Farge marked out the window’s architectural borders, including its arched shape and the triangular peak of the altar below. Given how close these works are, it’s interesting to compare how La Farge realized the same design in different media. In the monochromatic drawing, he models the figures and their drapery tonally—varying the shading of the silvery-colored graphite in order to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms. He achieves these same effects in the window through individual pieces of colored glass (with the exception of the hands and faces which are painted).

Detail of Preparatory Study for “The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes”

As these works demonstrate, La Farge was highly talented in many different art forms. Trained as a painter, he turned to decorative work—particularly stained glass and mural painting—in the 1870s. His first major project, Trinity Church in Boston (1876), brought him widespread acclaim. La Farge revolutionized the centuries-old practice of stained glass with several important innovations, including the use of opalescent glass (milky glass with variegations of colors) and the layering of sheets of glass to achieve greater depth and subtleties of color—both evident in the Buffalo window. He developed these techniques in the late 1870s-early 1880s around the same time as Louis Comfort Tiffany, another modern master of stained glass, was making similar experiments. (La Farge received a patent for opalescent glass shortly before Tiffany did.) These two artists set new standards of artistry for the medium, although competition between them turned the former friends into rivals. The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes window helped to bring such advances to international audiences. Before it was installed in Buffalo, La Farge exhibited it at the 1889 Exposition Universale in Paris. The French government awarded him a Cross of the Legion of Honor for the window’s technical originality.

View of interior of Trinity Church; main altar at right, La Farge’s “The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes” window is left of center.

When Trinity Church completed construction on its current building in 1886, its wealthy congregants sought out the best designers to decorate its windows. As a result, it has some of the finest stained glass in America. Of the over twenty windows that bathe the interior with richly colored, luminous light, La Farge made ten and Tiffany five. Charlotte Sherman Watson, a member of a prominent Buffalo banking family, commissioned The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes in memory of her mother and aunt. You can learn more about Trinity Church and its windows at http://buffaloah.com/a/del/389/hp/hp.html.

Seeing the window in situ was a real treat—if you travel to Buffalo, I highly recommend putting this church on your itinerary! My visit also helped me to better understand our beautiful La Farge drawing through learning about its historical context. Keep an eye on the Museum’s website for more information on the Fine Lines exhibition of American drawings.

Attributed to Thomas Hudson (British, 1701-1779), Mrs. John Wendt, circa 1745. Oil on canvas, 50 1/4 x 39 7/8 in. (127.6 x 101.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Kaywin W. Smith Lehman, 79.290.

While these galleries display works of vast diversity in terms of date, medium, style, and cultural origin, the featured artists have generally always worked in the Americas. We’re making an exception to include this British painting in the gallery devoted to the colonial experience, where it will join objects made in North and South America. From an historical and aesthetic standpoint, this addition makes a lot of sense. Anglo-Americans who settled in the British colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries frequently looked to the mother country for artistic inspiration. When elite patrons commissioned a portrait, they wanted to emulate the latest styles in London as a sign of their cultural refinement. And, during the mid-eighteenth century, Thomas Hudson was one of the most sought out portraitists by London’s high society. The portrait of Mrs. John Wendt is typical of Hudson’s manner in which he combines the grandeur of earlier Baroque images of royals, with the soft, pastel colors favored by the current Rococo style. Such portrait trends traveled across the Atlantic in several ways: by English-trained artists working in the colonies, by Americans traveling overseas, and by printed reproductions of works of art imported from abroad.

View of American Identities galleries with, from left to right: Robert Feke (American, ca.1707-ca.1752), Portrait of a Woman, 1748, oil on canvas, 49 3/8 x 39 9/16 in. (125.4 x 100.5 cm), Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund and Museum Purchase Fund, 43.229; and William Williams (American, 1727-1791), Deborah Hall, 1766, oil on canvas, 71 3/8 x 46 3/8 in. (181.3 x 117.8 cm), Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 42.45.

For this British “incursion” into the American galleries, Hudson’s work will hang near American-made paintings of the same period, including the stunning portraits of an unidentified woman by native-born Robert Feke and of the Philadelphian Deborah Hall by British immigrant William Williams. Comparing these works, you can see how the American ladies had themselves portrayed in the same manner as their European counterparts—with sumptuous dresses, elegant poses, and stylish accessories (lace, jewelry, and flowers). This grouping speaks to the vibrant nature of globalization in the eighteenth century as people, ideas (such as British portrait conventions), and things (such as the Chinese silks used to clothe such wealthy and fashionable women as these) moved throughout the world. Similar kinds of international cultural exchanges can be seen throughout the American Identities galleries.

Asher B. Durand (American, 1796-1886). The First Harvest in the Wilderness, 1855. Oil on canvas, 31 5/8 x 48 1/16 in. (80.3 x 122 cm) Frame: 43 1/2 x 59 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. (110.5 x 151.1 x 12.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Transferred from the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences to the Brooklyn Museum, 97.12

For its inaugural purchase with the Graham bequest, the Brooklyn Institute sought out one of the nation’s leading artists Asher B. Durand (1796-1886).  At this time, Durand was the dean of American landscape painters known as the Hudson River School and president of the National Academy of Design in New York.  As a sign of support for the Institute, he agreed to accept the Brooklyn commission for $175, a sum far smaller than his usual asking price. 

At first glance, The First Harvest in the Wilderness, which was hanging on the Institute’s walls by September of 1856, is an allegory of the nineteenth-century concept of Manifest Destiny.  This belief held that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent.  (Many Americans viewed westward expansion as the inevitable progress of a divinely favored and culturally superior nation, although it resulted in the exploitation of natural resources and the often violent subjugation of native peoples.)  Durand’s picture depicts the softer side of Manifest Destiny in the form of a pioneer family domesticating the frontier through settlement and agriculture.  We see their homestead in the center of the painting in the midst of a rugged landscape of forests and mountains-the bright light that shines upon this clearing not only draws the viewer’s attention to the homestead, but also symbolizes divine approbation.  While a man harvests a field of wheat (dotted with the stumps of trees he has felled), his wife stands before their snug log cabin (built from felled trees) and cows and horses graze in their pens.  Durand suggests that the pioneers enjoy the fruits of their labor-an idyllic and bountiful existence on the frontier full of promise of future rewards.

Asher B. Durand (American, 1796-1886). The First Harvest in the Wilderness (detail), 1855. Oil on canvas, 31 5/8 x 48 1/16 in. (80.3 x 122 cm) Frame: 43 1/2 x 59 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. (110.5 x 151.1 x 12.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Transferred from the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences to the Brooklyn Museum, 97.12

A closer examination of The First Harvest in the Wilderness reveals that this vision of national progress also had particular, local significance for Brooklyn.  The large rock in the right foreground of the painting is inscribed with the name “GRAHAM,” a clear reference to Augustus Graham, the Brooklyn Institute’s benefactor whose bequest funded this commission. This rock serves as a rustic gravestone memorializing the man.  In addition, its prominence in the composition symbolizes Graham’s important role in advancing civilized pursuits in another kind of wilderness-the American art scene.  One reporter for the art journal The Crayon was quick to pick up on the painting’s analogy between progress on the frontier and progress in the arts.  He wrote:

The sentiment of the picture is also in keeping with the circumstances belonging to its production.  The field of Art is, in the country, but just emerging into the reality of a clearing, upon which the sun of encouragement does shine, if it gleams from clouds and is surrounded by shadows.  As an illustration, Mr. Graham may be considered the pioneer in the wilderness, and all honor be to his memory for being the first to make a clearing.[1]

In other words, just as the settler transforms the inhospitable frontier into farmland, so too did Augustus Graham cultivate the arts in the cultural fields of America.  Although Graham’s vision for the Brooklyn Institute took decades to accomplish-shifting administrative priorities and declining financial fortunes hampered the plans for a permanent gallery in the nineteenth century-his support helped to make American art one of the finest and foundational collections of the Brooklyn Museum.

Valerie Hegarty. First Harvest in the Wilderness with Pileated Woodpecker, 2010. 10 x 8 in., ed. of 200. © Valerie Hegarty. Image courtesy of the artist and 20×200 | Jen Bekman Projects

Given Graham’s commitment to living American artists, it seems only fitting that Valerie Hegarty, an American artist of today, pays tribute to Durand’s The First Harvest in the Wilderness—the first painting funded by the Graham bequest.