James McDougal Hart

The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is landscape painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are landscape. Work by James McDougal Hart is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walters Art Museum and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

• Name — James McDougal Hart • Born — 10 May 1828 • Birthplace — Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland • Died — 24 October 1901 • Place of death — Brooklyn, New York • Field — Landscape art, Painting • Training — Hudson River School • Illustration — James McDougal Hart, ca. 1890

Hart was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and was taken to America with his family in early youth. His older brother, William Hart, was also a Hudson River School artist, as were his younger sister Julie Hart Beers and his two daughters, both figure painters, Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867–1953) and Mary Theresa Hart (1872–1942). Another niece, Annie L. Y. Orff, became an editor and publisher. In Albany, New York he trained with a sign and carriage maker—possibly the same employer that had taken on his brother in his early career. James later returned to Europe for serious artistic training, studying in Munich and as a pupil of Friedrich Wilhelm Schirmer at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.

Hart returned to America in 1853. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1848 and became an associate in 1857 and a full member in 1859. He was particularly devoted to the National Academy, exhibiting there over a period of more than forty years and serving as vice president late in his life from 1895 to 1899. Like his brother William, James also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association (he lived for a time in Brooklyn) and at major exhibitions around the country. Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, Hart based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While he and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in Düsseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. Like his brother William, James excelled at painting cattle. Kevin J. Avery writes, "the bovine subjects that once distinguished [his works] now seem the embodiment of Hart's artistic complacency." In contrast with the complacency of some of his cattle scenes, his major landscape paintings are considered important works of the Hudson River School. A particularly fine example is Summer in the Catskills, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain. Among Hart's students was the Hudson River School painter Evelina Mount. Hart is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

• Illustration — A Stream in the Adirondacks (1859), oil on canvas, 21.125 x 35.25 inch.; collection of Walters Art Museum • Illustration — Gleneida Lake, Putnam County, New York (1863), oil on canvas, 17.5 inch. x 30.25 inch. • Illustration — Cows Watering (1865), oil on canvas, 26.75 inch. x 56.75 inch. • Illustration — Summer in the Catskills (1865), oil on canvas, collection of Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum • Illustration — Harriman New York Overlooking the Hudson • Illustration — Landscape with Stone Bridge, Pencil on paper, 5.5 inch. x 7.8125 inch., collection of Walters Art Museum • Illustration — The Old Homestead (1862), oil on canvas, High Museum of Art