TRANSLATING THE LANDSCAPE: EUGENE DOVILLIERS AND LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH Catherine A. Carlisle A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Art. Chapel Hill 2014 Approved by: Mary Sheriff Eduardo Douglas Tatiana String © 2014 Catherine Carlisle ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Catherine Carlisle: Translating the Landscape: Eugene Dovilliers and Landscape Painting in the American South (Under the direction of Mary Sheriff) This thesis examines the practice of early Southern artists who often adapted European stylistic conventions to render Southern subjects and settings. Two landscape paintings by Eugene Dovilliers, a little-known artist working in Columbia, South Carolina, are considered as a case study to demonstrate the various landscape traditions established in Europe that were transposed onto Southern places. First, what is known of Dovilliers’s biography is established, providing a rough idea of his whereabouts and activities which helps to determine what might have motivated him to make certain artistic choices. Second, one of Dovilliers’s landscape paintings, View of Columbia, c. 1855-1860, is considered as a topographical landscape that harkens back seventeenth-century Dutch landscape traditions. Third, Dovilliers’s other landscape painting, Duck Hunting Next to a Grist Mill, c. 1855-1860, recalls the picturesque landscapes of Claude Lorrain and is examined in this thesis using picturesque theory. Finally, the thesis concludes by determining what kinds of meanings might have been invested in Dovilliers’s landscapes. Through a close examination of Dovilliers’s pair of landscape paintings, this thesis demonstrates how artists working in the antebellum American South translated European artistic conventions into Southern settings. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who supported me throughout the process of researching and writing this thesis. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Mary Sheriff, my advisor on this project, for her expert advice and for helping me to navigate some of the murkier areas of this research. Additionally, I am indebted to Dr. Tatiana String and Dr. Eduardo Douglas for their helpful comments and guidance. I would also like to extend special thanks to Paul Matheny and JoAnn Zeise of the South Carolina State Museum and to Fritz Hamer of the South Caroliniana Library. To Richard, for helping me to negotiate the difficult rapids and come out the other side fast and clean. Finally, I wish to thank my parents, Tom and Marguerite, for their commendable show of patience and their unceasing support during this journey. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................................vi SECTIONS INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 I. EUGENE DOVILLIERS AND THE SOUTHERN LANDSCAPE TRADITION............................................................................................................6 II. VIEW OF COLUMBIA AND THE PASTORAL TOPOGRAPHICAL LANDSCAPE........................................................................................................14 III. DUCK HUNTING NEXT TO A GRIST MILL AND THE PASTORAL PICTURESQUE LANDSCAPE............................................................................23 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................35 EPILOGUE........................................................................................................................40 FIGURES.......................................................................................................................................42 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................67 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 - Eugene Dovilliers, View of Columbia, c.1855-1860.....................................................41 Figure 2 - Eugene Dovilliers, Duck Hunting Next to a Grist Mill, c.1855-1860...........................42 Figure 3 - Eugene Dovilliers, Untitled, date unknown..................................................................43 Figure 4 - Eugene Dovilliers, Untitled (Le Cue), date unknown...................................................44 Figure 5 - Eugene Dovilliers, Untitled, 1869.................................................................................45 Figure 6 - Eugene Dovilliers, South Carolina Female Collegiate Academy, 1860.......................46 Figure 7 - Eugene Dovilliers, South Carolina College, c.1850.....................................................47 Figure 8 - Eugene Dovilliers, Locks on the Broad River, c.1850..................................................48 Figure 9 - Bishop Roberts (painter) and William Henry Toms (engraver), Prospect of Charles Town, 1739........................................................................................49 Figure 10 - Unknown Artist, Untitled (Morattico Hall Overmantle), 1715-1725.........................50 Figure 11 - John Heaten (attributed to), Van Bergen Overmantle, 1728-1738..............................51 Figure 12 - Claes Janszoon Visscher, America, 1669....................................................................52 Figure 13 - Claes Janszoon Visscher, London, 1625.....................................................................53 Figure 14 - Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, c.1670....................54 Figure 15 - Eugene Dovilliers, “South Carolina Lunatic Asylum,” from View of Columbia, c.1855-1860.........................................................................................55 Figure 16 - Major R. Niernsee, Plan for the South Carolina State House, 1861..........................56 Figure 17 - Eugene Dovilliers, “Trinity Cathedral and the South Carolina State House,” in View of Columbia, c.1855-1860..............................................................57 Figure 18 - C. Drie, Birds Eye View of Columbia, SC, 1872.........................................................58 vi Figure 19 - C. Drie, “Relative location of the South Carolina State House and Trinity Cathedral,” in Birds Eye View of Columbia, SC, 1872....................................59 Figure 20 - Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (‘The Mill’), 1648................................................................................................60 Figure 21 - Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews, c.1750..................................61 Figure 22 - Unidentified Artist, The Start of the Hunt, c. 1800.....................................................62 Figure 23 - Unidentified Artist, End of the Hunt, c. 1800.............................................................63 Figure 24 - Unknown artist, Rose Hill, c.1820..............................................................................64 Figure 25 - Junius Brutus Stearns, George Washington as a Farmer at Mount Vernon, 1851......65 vii INTRODUCTION On March 23, 2013, the Art Museums at Colonial Williamsburg opened an unprecedented exhibition of works titled, “Painters and Paintings of the Early American South.” Gathered into the museum’s galleries were objects that explored, perhaps more comprehensively than any previous exhibition, the breadth of art produced by artists in the southern United States from 1735 to 1800.1 Conspicuously, of the eighty-three paintings by thirty-one artists, seventy were portraits. This intense concentration of portraits is not unexpected; patrons at this time saw portraits as a valuable tool to demonstrate wealth, taste, and social standing. Other genres, such as landscape, were not considered to be as capable of achieving the same purpose. However one characteristic is readily apparent across all genres of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Southern art: the translating of European artistic conventions into Southern subjects and places. Estill Curtis Pennington, a prolific lecturer and writer on Southern art history, has remarked that while the interest in whether there is an identifiably Southern art is an alluring question, it is ultimately less important, especially for the genre of landscape, than considering what factors contributed to the creating of such works.2 Attempting to distill Southern landscape painting into visually 1 The exhibition was curated by Colonial Williamsburg’s Juli Grainger Curator, Carolyn Weekely, who also wrote the corresponding catalogue, which covers works produced in the South much earlier than the exhibition, from roughly 1565. Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings of the Early American South (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2013). 2 Estill Curtis Pennington, “Below the Line: Design and Identity in Southern Art,” in South on Paper: Line, Color, and Light (Spartanburg, SC: Robert M. Hicklin, Jr., Inc.: 1985), 1. 1 recognizable components would, in the end, pit Southern landscape against the exceptional achievements of the Hudson River School, its northern counterpart. “Ultimately,” Pennington says, “I am not worried about the place of Southern art, but the places within it.”3 Likewise, the focus of this thesis is less concerned with how Southern landscape painting compares