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Highlights

James McDougal Hart (American1828 - 1901)

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

In 1879, historian and author G. W. Sheldon said of landscape painter James McDougal Hart:

He spends his evenings with his family, and is less seldom seen in a public place than any other artist in New York. At his studio he can be found from early morning till early evening. His industry is something amazing, while his capacity for hard work, and plenty of it, is unusual. He has the hearty manners of the best type of his countrymen in the land of Burns; his wit is fluent and spontaneous; his good-nature is the same; you would appeal to him instinctively in trouble if he were near you, and you would trust him to the last dollar you had in the world. Some of the finest qualities that make a man prized in social life are to be found in James M. Hart; and why he has not been carried by them into social life is inscrutable...

This enigmatic man, known for exacting detail in his landscapes, would become known for his cows, not always a focal point in his landscapes, but often there just the same, and with the same exacting detail as the landscape within which they were placed.

Hart was so intent on painting the cows and oxen in his paintings correctly that during the early 1870s he spent time studying them. In an 1892 article in the Art Amateur, He said: "you cannot paint an animal in movement until you know him by heart; you must know his structure, the places of his bones and muscles, and the markings caused by every change of attitude; you must even know more than this: the mind and character of the animal must be familiar to you, and more than familiar – friendly." Hart further said "I cannot remember the time when I did not love to draw them. They are troublesome subjects, and one must love them to do anything with them."

Hart owned a small place in the country, where he also raised his "models, spending days studying them until he knew each one "like an old friend." He taught his pupils to paint in a manner in which one is able to not only distinguish among the species of trees and but between horses and oxen, and of course cows! He stated that "the farmer or the fancier may appreciate their ‘points’ quite as well in the cow-shed, but the artist chiefly enjoys the play of light on their glossy coats and the with them, as, of their rich, warm colors with the blues and greens and grays of out-of-doors -- in the open you see nobler and more characteristic attitudes and actions.

James McDougal Hart was born Kilmarnock, Ayreshire, Scotland in 1828. He came to the United States with his parents in 1831 and the family settled in Albany, New York. [1, 2, 7] James and his older brother William (who would also become an artist) were apprenticed to a coach and sign painter. According to Tuckerman in his Book of the Artists (1867), Hart "was led by native taste and endowment to adopt the career of a landscape painter." This was after spending some time "dabbling" in portraiture. At age 21, Hart was listed as a "landscape painter" in the 1849 Albany City Directory and was exhibiting his landscapes at the Albany Gallery of Fine Arts, the city’s first fine art venue. Large panoramic landscapes, his oeuvre during the 1840s and 1850s, were described by Zellman (1987) as "idyllic scenes peopled with schoolchildren and farmers depicted in meticulous detail." His other early landscapes featured deer and bear.

Hart was initially self-taught, but in 1850, he traveled to Europe in 1850 for art training in Dusseldorf under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, and made sketching tours along the Rhine River and in the Tyrol of Austria – mostly on foot! He returned to Albany in 1853 and moved to New York City in 1857. Hart was considered a leading member of the second-generation Hudson River School of landscape painters and their influence was apparent in his earlier paintings; however, his training in Dusseldorf may have influenced his later style. The Dusseldorf Academy at that time insisted on the technique of chiaroscuro (the use of light and dark to achieve mass and dramatic three-dimensional effects). Hart’s handling of "mass" in his landscapes, along with skillful handling of color and light, give his paintings a harmonious, subtle "truth to nature"; perhaps, even a sense the sublime. Hart strove to reproduce the feeling produced by the original scenes themselves. He was looking for a level of perfection to make the viewer feel precisely as they would feel when viewing such a scene in nature. He was as honest to nature as he was with his fellow man.

Hart first exhibited a landscape at the National Academy of Design in 1848, at the age of 20 -- before his trip abroad to take formal art training. His large canvas, 6 feet high in true Dusseldorf style, of an Adirondack stream with cattle, submitted at the Academy in 1857 was sold on the first day of the exhibition! The news ran like wildfire through the exhibition studios -- it was such an unusual occurrence. That same year, Hart was made an Associate of the Academy and elected Academician in 1859. He also served as vice president from 1895 to 1899. He would continue to exhibit there throughout his career.

His later landscapes would be smaller – scaled down in size but not in magnificence, color or light. It was after the Civil War that Hart had switched from painting wilderness scenes with bear and deer to more bucolic and pastural scenes with cows. His palette and technique changed a bit also – still wonderfully balanced compositions, beautifully lighted, but with looser brushwork, eschewing the detail of every leaf and rock and still preserving the "truth" of a scene. You can probably still tell the Alderneys from the Guernseys!

"Of Scottish art, which has produced some fine things in this country, James McDougall Hart is a highly-creditable incarnation" (George William Sheldon, 1879) and I cannot disagree.

Written by Joan Hawk, Researcher and Co-Owner Bedford Fine Art Gallery, August 26, 2025.

Use only with the permission of Bedford Fine Art Gallery.

References:

  1. -----The Art Amateur, 1892, A Veteran landscape Artist, A Talk with Mr. James M. Hart on Cattle Painting and Landscape, Vol. 27, issue 4, Open Court Publishing Co.
  2. ----- 1965, American paintings: a catalogue of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vols. 1-2, pp. 305-306, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y.
  3. ----- 1998, Albany Institute of History & Art: 200 years of collecting, p. 29, New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with Albany Institute of History & Art.
  4. Mitchell, Mark D., 2005, The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum: Handbook of the Art Collection, The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vermont.
  5. Sheldon, George William, 1879, American painters: with eighty-three examples of their work engraved on wood, pp. 46 – 51, Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library, D. Appleton and Company.
  6. Tuckerman, Henry T., 1867, Book of the Artists, pp. 547-551, G. P. Putnam & Son, New York; Sampson Low & Co., London,
  7. Zellman, Michael, David, 1987, 300 Years of American Art, Volume I, pg. 477, Wellfleet Press.

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Jerry & Joan - Thanks for your hospitality and helping us find this beautiful new piece for our home. Until next time...

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