Jervis McEntee

When he wasn’t painting, Hudson River School artist David Johnson loved to draw, with confident lines on big sheets. Every once in a while his pencil traced the figure of a woman. For example, in an 1886 drawing (above), a woman in full dress looks out over a pond in the Adirondacks. In lieu of a visible expression she appears self-possessed, as though lost in thought. In the forested background, meanwhile, is seen the shadowy and skulking figure of a man. The scene can be thought of as an unintentional metaphor: hidden in the trees of the Hudson River School artists lurked passion, ...

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When Hudson River School artist Jervis McEntee’s wife Gertrude died in October 1878 at the age of 44 of an unknown illness, it left a gaping hole in his life. They were married in 1854. Early on, they lived in an idyllic cottage on the McEntee family property overlooking the town of Rondout, New York (now Kingston). From their windows they could see the Catskill Mountains to the north and the Hudson River to the east. While Jervis worked on his art, Gertrude planted rose bushes around the cottage, played the piano, and sang: "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," "There you’ll ...

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"My dear McEntee…"On August 28, 1863, Sanford Robinson Gifford wrote to Jervis McEntee from a book shop at Saratoga Spa in northern New York State (the original letter is digitized on the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website). Gifford had recently returned from his final tour of duty with the New York Seventh Regiment in the Civil War. He was attempting to gather his friends, including artists Richard William Hubbard and Worthington Whittredge, for a sketching tour of northern New York.  His letter is a revealing glimpse of the affection and humor that characterized the close ...

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"When and how, therefore, did the generations perceive that the Cropseys, generically speaking, wouldn't do? When and how, still more, did they begin to perceive that the Hudson River wouldn't, and doesn't?"So inquired writer Henry James about the events by which, in the nineteenth-century, the Hudson River School—which he personified as "the Cropseys"—became passé.A poignant moment in their decline was captured in the diaries of artist Jervis McEntee, which are online and browsable at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. It is the kind of first-hand historical account that was ...

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