Thomas Doughty (1793 - 1856 )

Thomas Doughty was an important precursor of the landscape painters of the Hudson River School. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1793, he was a leather currier by the age of 15, and never had any formal or professional training in painting. In partnership with his brother, Doughty owned a successful leather business; in 1820, however, at the age of 27, he gave that up to further develop his painting career.

Doughty was one of the first painters to recognize the ruggedness of the America landscape as an attractive subject matter for art. According to the Springfield Museum of Art, "It was the inner spirituality of nature that Doughty sought to express in his landscapes and he was grouped with his contemporaries who shared the same ideals, collectively known as the Hudson River School." (1) Doughty, along with peers such as Alvin Fisher, Thomas Birch, and Washington Allston, frequently painted landscapes surrounding the Hudson River vicinity.

Included among his many landscape drawings and paintings are images of Gilpin's Mill on the Brandywine, the Delaware Water Gap, and the Passaic Falls of New Jersey. Doughty died in 1856, impoverished and abandoned by his peers and critics. Unfortunately, it was not until after his death that the poetic style of his landscape painting was fully appreciated.(2)

(CMG)

(1-2) Springfield Museum of Art web site, (see link below).

Passaic Falls

Passaic Falls, n.d., engraved by G. B. Ellis after a drawing by Thomas Doughty. Courtesy Claude Epstein.

Detail of Passaic Falls, n.d. Courtesy Claude Epstein.

In a time before cameras, American artists like Doughty played a vital role in converting American scenery into visual models. The image shown above is an engraving by G.B. Ellis, based on a drawing by Thomas Doughty. It is an image of the Passaic Falls located in Patterson, New Jersey. The Great Passaic Falls was dedicated as a national landmark in 1976, and today many people visit the New Jersey attraction to observe the second largest waterfall on the East Coast (second only to the Niagara Falls).(1)

In Doughty's day, it was a popular subject for artists, especially among the Hudson River School group. Passaic Falls illustrates a picturesque composition and fits the description of many of Doughty's New Jersey-inspired works: a focal point of a body of water bordered by trees in the foreground with hills or mountains in the distance. Sometimes Doughty's paintings include human figures, as in this case, and they are usually insignificant in size compared to the rest of the composition. (2) According to the Hunter Museum, "at his best he produced charming and poetic pastoral images. Rather than the grand panoramas that typify the work of several of his successors in The Hudson River School, Doughty's paintings are intimate and approachable.”(3)

(CMG)

(1) Springfield Museum of Art web site, (see link below).

(2-3) William Henning, Jr. Hunter Museum website, (see link below).