Hudson River Views Art Auction Ending 2/16

#12 – Early 19thC American School Framed oil on canvas attributed to Edward Nichols (1819-1872). An Autumn View of “Salt Grass Harvesting.”

The View witnesses a hay wagon at "Southgate” of the Hudson River having Anthony’s Nose Mountain on the left and Dunderberg Mountain on the right. This is the current location of the Bear Mountain bridge crossing. Sight: 21.25x35.25”. Overall 31x45”. Partial AskArt Bio for Edward Nichols: Edward Nichols, born and raised in Oxford, New Hampshire on the Connecticut River, first studied as a lawyer, but by the age of 30 had abandoned that career to study art at the Academy of Design* under the Hudson River School* artist and architect, Jasper Cropsey. Nichols "had come to believe that art---encompassing not just painting, but also furnishings, architecture, and landscape---had the power to shape and improve people and society." He married Maria Wilkinson from a highly cultured, prosperous family. Her father, Edward Watkinson, was a successful Hartford, Connecticut merchant and iron trader, and her mother, Lavina Hudson, owned the well-known Hartford newspaper, Courant. Maria was quite worldly for her era, having been a volunteer teacher in missionary schools in Beirut and Constantinople. Marrying into this family, Edward Nichols not only gained a highly cultured companion but likely gained the financial support he needed to fulfill his artistic ambitions. Edward and Maria spent two years, 1853 to 1855, honeymooning in Europe and England, where he did much sketching of architecture and landscape. They also spent much time in museums. In 1854, they had their only child, Edward Leamkngton Nichols, and shortly after returned to America, taking up residence in New York City. It was a time when Hudson River School painting flourished, and Nichols ability to paint in accord with its tenets of reverence for nature and celebration of wilderness landscape led to much appreciation of his work. He had a studio in the exclusive Tenth Street Studio Building*, a two-story exhibition gallery and studio facility. It had gaslights, skylights and much camaraderie as it was "the headquarters of the Hudson River School of painting." By 1853 Nichols was exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and in 1859 was made an Associate Academician of the Academy. The titles of many of the paintings he exhibited at the N.A.D. provided great insight as to where and what he painted during these years. In the 1850's he was painting in Connecticut and north along the Connecticut River as far as the White Mountains* of New Hampshire. By the mid 1860's the artist moved from Hartford, Connecticut to Peekskill, New York, about 45 miles north of Manhattan, where his subject matter was of the Hudson River Valley, from Peekskill and its surrounding Hudson Highlands north to the Catskill Mountains. Other works of the Rhine Valley in Germany and of the Gulf of Mexico were listed, but it is not known whether they were done first hand or through secondary materials. During the Civil War, his paintings took on a sombre tone reflecting the seriousness of the time, but when the war ended he returned to familiar haunts. He sold property that he had purchased in New Jersey, and he and his family moved to Peekskill, New York where he died in 1871. Some of the museums his works can be found in include the Mattatuck Historical Society of Waterbury, Connecticut, the North Hampton Historical Society, North Hampton, Massachusetts, and Historic Cherry Hill of Albany, New York. Sources: Ann Y. Smith, "Edward W. Nichols and the Image of an Ideal America", Fine Art Connoisseur, June, 2010, pp. 30-35. Alexander Boyle, who was featured on the television show "America's First River, Bill Moyers on the Hudson". Boyle worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the Assistant Director of a film, "American Paradise, the World of the Hudson River School" and from 1988 to 2001 was Vice-President of Godel & Co. Fine Art in New York. Nichols Auction Record: $20,000. Estimate: $3,000-$6,000.

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