New Eyes on America: the Genius of Richard Caton Woodville

New Eyes on America: The Genius of Richard Caton Woodville Organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. This project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. (Photography is not permitted in this exhibition due to contract requirements of the lenders) Richard Caton Woodville (1825–55) was the most important artist born in Baltimore during the 19th century. His short life reflected the era in which he lived—a time of rapid technological change and more accelerated transatlantic travel and trade. Working in the artistic capitals of Europe—Düsseldorf, Paris, and London—he sent his works to New York for exhibition and sale. Woodville was one of the artists held up by the American Art-Union, a broad-based membership organization, as “perfectly American.” He changed the character of genre painting (narrative paintings of everyday life) in America. His works appealed to the new American art patron just then emerging and reached a wider middle-class audience when reproduced as prints that were circulated in large numbers. Woodville’s personal life was somewhat scandalous for his time—he rejected his family’s enterprises to become an artist, married against his parents’ wishes, left his first wife and two children for a fellow artist, and died of “an overdose of morphine, medicinally taken.” Because he left no letters or diaries, we must piece together the meaning of his works from the visual clues in his highly detailed canvases and from their rich artistic and cultural contexts. Woodville addressed his own times, painting contemporary themes that continue to have relevance today, including difficulties in communication and conflicts among generations, the disruptive effects of new technologies (for him, the telegraph and railroads), society’s responses to war, and racial disparity. African American figures included as observers to the central narrative in many of his paintings are sensitively rendered, distinctly different from the stereotyping and caricature often seen in other American genre works of the period. The exhibition is organized chronologically, tracing the career and impact of this significant artist, and includes the 15 known paintings by him, numerous drawings and watercolors, and a selection of the popular prints based on his works. An Artist of Baltimore In the 1820s through 1840s, Woodville’s native city was bustling with business and expanding rapidly from the original settlement around the harbor into a grid of urban streets, which grew to cover surrounding pastures and farmland. The city’s advantageous location as the westernmost port on the Atlantic seaboard drove trade and the growth of related industries in transportation, packaging, and manufacturing. The first rail of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was laid on July 4, 1828, and along its line 16 years later, the first telegraph transmission traveled from the Supreme Court chambers in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., to the B&O depot on Baltimore’s Pratt Street. Baltimore ranked after Philadelphia as the nation’s second most populous city; the 1830 census counted 80,000 inhabitants, of whom one-fifth were African American. The majority of Baltimore’s black residents were legally free; they lived and worked side-by-side with new immigrants and 4,000 1 enslaved people, many sent to Baltimore by their rural owners to earn wages as day laborers or domestic servants. It was into this rapidly changing urban environment that Richard Caton Woodville was born. Members of his family were wealthy and well-connected merchants whose business interests included the B&O Railroad and international trade. He attended St. Mary’s College in Seton Hill, where he received a classical education among boys of similar social standing. These included his friend Stedman R. Tilghman, who collected a number of the artist’s early sketches in the scrapbook on view in this exhibition. Self-Portrait, 1844 Richard Caton Woodville American (working in Baltimore, Maryland), 1825–55 Graphite on paper Collection of Stiles Tuttle Colwill During his brief life, Woodville made several self-portraits in which he depicted himself as a fashionable young man full of confidence and swagger. In this drawing from September 1844, when he enrolled in one year of medical school, the artist sits in a tablet-top Baltimore chair, a type favored by the upper class. He placed great emphasis on capturing details of facial feature and expression, in contrast to the more loosely rendered clothing and figure. Battle Scene with Dying General, 1836 Richard Caton Woodville American (working in Baltimore, Maryland), 1825–55 Watercolor on paper Collection of Elizabeth Caton Woodville Callender Showing a precocious talent at the age of ten, Woodville likely based this watercolor on a print. He lavished attention on the soldiers’ uniforms, horse trappings, troops in formation, and corpse in the foreground. This work descended through the branch of his family that included his son Richard Caton Woodville Jr. (1856–1927), who had a long career as a military artist and illustrator. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 1829 Thomas Sully American (English-born), 1783–1872 Watercolor on paper 37.1553, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737–1832) was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence and father-in-law of the artist’s namesake and great-uncle, Richard Caton. In the last years of Carroll’s long life, the painters Thomas Sully and Chester Harding traveled to Baltimore to capture his likeness. This is a study for a finished oil 2 portrait that hangs in the Maryland State House in Annapolis. A major landholder, Carroll also invested in new technologies, including the B&O Railroad, where the artist’s father, William Woodville V, worked for a time representing Carroll and Caton family interests. Early Art Collecting in Baltimore Richard Caton Woodville was fortunate to have access to two major art collections during his years in Baltimore. Robert Gilmor assembled more than 400 paintings, of which nearly half were small-scale pictures by Dutch or Flemish artists. At Gilmor’s town house on Water Street and his country home Beech Hill, Woodville would have seen examples, real or attributed, by such northern European painters as Jan Steen, Gerard Ter Borch, and Adriaen Brouwer. Dr. Thomas Edmondson, who shared English roots in Liverpool and family mercantile connections with Woodville, was also a collector of northern European paintings and actively encouraged the young artist. The Maryland Historical Society, founded in 1844, began to hold annual exhibitions drawn from Baltimore collections in 1848. Two works (now lost), which Woodville gave to his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Sloan Buckler, showing an early interest in genre subjects—Woman Preparing Vegetables and Peasants Regaling—were included as “first attempts in oil (without instruction)” in the 1848 exhibition. The Dr. Stedman R. Tilghman Scrapbook: Early Efforts of R. C. Woodville, ca. 1838– 45 Richard Caton Woodville American (working in Baltimore, Maryland), 1825–55 Watercolor wash and pencil on paper Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, J. Hall Pleasants Papers 1773–1957 Dr. Stedman R. Tilghman (1822–48) attended Saint Mary’s College and the University of Maryland College of Medicine ahead of his friend Caton Woodville. His scrapbook contains a wide assortment of personal souvenirs, including newspaper clippings, autographs, a theater notice, engravings, a beaver tail, and 23 drawings, 19 of which are signed by Woodville. Tilghman served as resident physician at the Baltimore Almshouse, where Woodville made sketches of doctors and inmates. He may have studied with the miniature painter L. C. Pignatelli, a periodic inmate there, whose pencil portrait appears on page 91 of the scrapbook. (Please feel free to explore this facsimile of The Dr. Stedman R. Tilghman Scrapbook._ View from Beech Hill, 1822 Thomas Doughty American (Baltimore, Maryland), 1793–1856 Oil on panel 3 The Baltimore Museum of Art, gift of Dr. & Mrs. Michael A. Abrams (BMA 1955.183) Robert Gilmor inherited Beech Hill, which commanded “a beautiful and extensive prospect of the City, the river + Bay” to the west of the city center from his father in 1822. Aware of Baltimore City’s imminent expansion, Gilmor commissioned this and a companion view toward the Chesapeake Bay from Philadelphia artist Thomas Doughty to document the landscape his father would have known. If you look closely, you can see the dome of the Basilica and the Washington Monument, the construction of which began in 1815 and was completed in 1829. Dr. Thomas Edmondson, ca. 1844 Richard Caton Woodville American (working in Baltimore, Maryland), 1825–55 Oil on academy board Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, The Dr. Michael and Marie Abrams Memorial Purchase Fund (1984.6) Although trained at the University of Maryland Medical College, Thomas Edmondson (1808–56) never practiced medicine. A substantial inheritance from a bachelor uncle allowed him to live a life devoted to scholarship, music, art collecting, and horticulture. Woodville had access to Edmondson’s country estate “Harlem,” off of Edmonson Avenue west of Baltimore, and to his art collection, which included works attributed to well-know Dutch and Flemish artists. The older collector’s encouragement of his young friend is made clear by the inscription scrawled on the painting’s back which reads “Caton Woodville’s first kick into the world.” The Tough Story—Scene in a Country

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