William Groombridge
British, 1748-1811 (active USA)
The Woodlands, the Seat of William Hamilton, Esquire, 1793
oil on canvas
45 5/8 x 58 1/8 in.
SBMA, Gift of Mrs. Sterling Morton for the Preston Morton Collection
1960.58
RESEARCH PAPER
English born William Groombridge, (1748-1811) whose painting, "The Woodlands, the Seat of William Hamilton, Esq. (1793) hangs in the American collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, holds an obscure but significant place in American art history. Very little has been documented about either his early life or his work. He left England for America somewhere between 1790 and 1793. His reasons for leaving England more than likely had to do with political upheaval and economic uncertainty throughout Europe. The French Revolution had just taken place and England's King George III's first attack of mental illness had caused a regency crisis. It is evident that Groombridge had formal academic training in art, primarily under the guardianship of the provincial English topographer James Lambert of Leives.1 He exhibited his work consistently from 1773 to 1790 at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of Artists of Great Britain, and the Society of Free Artists.2
Groombridge's significance to the development of art in America was that he, along with three other English migrant artists, George Beck, William Winstanley, and Francis Guy, introduced the genre of landscape painting to American audiences at the turn of the eighteenth century. Prior to their arrival in America, "landskips", as they were called then, appeared during the colonial period as topographical prints, like those produced by William Burgis from 1715 to 1731 in New York and Boston. John Siebert, primarily a portrait artist, is credited with painting "View of Boston, 1733", which may have been the first academic landscape oil painted in America. According to J. Hall Pleasants, "The painting evinces an awkward handling of the subject and ineptness in the application of color." The value of the painting had more to do with its documentation of early Boston than its style of composition and technique of painting. In addition, the limited amount of landscape painting done at this time was for the artists' own amusement since portraiture was the main form of art in demand. Portraiture dominated American Art during most of the eighteenth century. This was in accordance with the values of a surfacing pragmatic American society. Protestant thinking had become rooted in English America and would not have tolerated painted religious icons. There was no established history of state to glorify or romanticize. An aristocracy of art collecting was certainly non-existent. Life was fundamentally hard for most - it was a struggle for survival politically, socially, and economically. Those who established themselves well enough created a demand for portrait paintings, not only to establish their places of importance in an emerging society, but also as a means of recording their likenesses to send to loved ones far away, much as we send photographs today.
William Groombridge's introduction of the professionally executed genre of landscape to America reflected the influence of Claude Lorrain's pictorial formula: simplified and symmetrical arrangement of subject matter framed with trees and poetic rendering of light. Lorrain was one of the great masters of French seventeenth century ideal landscape painting, along with Nicolas Poussin. He painted with an idealized view of nature, making it more beautiful and harmonious than it was. The foundation of his style employed classical concepts depicting ruins and figures in classical dress. Lorrain's work was particularly influential in England from the mid eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries. English painters were drawn to his unique execution of lighting in the landscape.
Groombridge relied heavily on Lorrain's classical ideas in his landscapes alongside his provincial British topographical training. "Woodlands, the Seat of William Hamilton, Esq." is one of the earliest documentations of Groombridge's landscape painting after his arrival in America. The pictorial formula of the painting reflects Claude Lorrain's compositional elements. We see a shaded foreground with a tall graceful tree framing the left of the canvas. The eye follows a lighted middle ground which continues into the distance toward a series of wooded hills and open skies. The water in the foreground has been identified as the Schuylkill River and is viewed from below by a small group of figures not clearly recognizable. To the right of the painting, set high upon a hill, is the prominent Neo-classical mansion, a clear indication of Mr. Hamilton's social and economic status. His elegant villa located near the outskirts of Philadelphia represented a growing merchant and ship owning aristocracy in America. Moreover, the classical Revival in a struggling new republic appealed to American citizens who admired ancient republican Rome and Spartan virtues. Groombridge's use of color in "Woodlands" was limited to "tints of autumn". He was criticized for painting haze over his landscapes and excluding the natural vibrant coloring of American country scenery. Groombridge's painting of foliage in "Woodlands" followed the style of Gainsborough by creating leaf clusters with broad turns of the brush rather than pointed precision.
For all his formal training and prolific production of painting, William Groombridge was not able to achieve much acclaim for his work in America. The opportunities he sought in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York were diminished by his short-lived career. He arrived during the last decade of the eighteenth century and died just after the first decade of the nineteenth century. He was one of the founders of the "Columbianum", or "Academy of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Engraving" in Philadelphia in 1795. Upon his death, an inventory of his estate revealed a large number of paintings, drawings, and engravings. Eliza Godefroy, editor and publisher of The Observer, wrote in 1807, "Real connoisseurs will say that as for Mr. Groombridge, he views nature with an artist's eye; that his is familiar with good schools; that he has a great deal of facility; and that to produce paintings really fine he needs only to meet with persons sufficiently generous and discerning, to indemnify him for the time and expense the necessary studies would cost him."4 Observers of art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art will remember him as an important contributor to the evolution of landscape painting in America.
The provenance of "Woodlands" did not involve a complicated history of exchange between art collectors. It originated from Groombridge's estate, believed to be around 1811. What happened to the painting between 1811 and 1954, when Victor D. Spark of New York acquired it, is unknown. The last recorded exchange was in 1960, at which time Mrs. Sterling Morton purchased "Woodlands" from Spark for the Preston Morton Collection.
The painting underwent cleaning and restoration, presumably at the time Spark acquired it in 1954. It was also lined with an aqueous adhesive at that time. The Balboa Art Conservation Center examined "Woodlands" in 1977 and found the support and lining to be in good condition. They did note that the painting revealed a general erosion: the surface coating was darkly discolored and had been removed at least once. Original paint was also missing from the bottom edge of the canvas. In 1978, the painting was treated by removing yellowed varnish and overpaint. Wax putty and dry pigment were added to remedy losses of color and mass.
1 J. Hall Pleasants, Four Late Eighteenth Century Anglo-American Landscape Painters (1942; reprint, Worcester.. Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1943), p. 31.
2 Pleasants, p. 31, no. 14.
3 Pleasants, p.6.
4 Pleasants, p. 36.
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Marta Turpin, March 27, 1997
Bibliographical Notes:
1. Pleasants, J. Hall, Four Late Eighteenth Century Anglo-American Landscape Painters, Freeport, N. Y. Books for Libraries Press (1970)
2. Larkin, Oliver W., Art and Life in America, Rinehart & Co., Inc. New York (1949)
3. Wilmending, John, American Art, Penguin Books, New York (1976)
4. Richardson, E. P., Painting in America ,Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York (1956)
5. Barker, Virgil, American Painting, Bonanza Books (no date)
6. Thieme Becker, Kunstler – Lexikon, E. A. Seeman, Leipzig 350/23/67 Page 82
7. The American Art Journal, Volume XVII Number 1 Winter 1985,"American Landscape Painting: Critical Judgments, 1730 - 1845" Bv William H. Gerdts, Pages 28 - 59
8. The Preston Morton Collection of American Art ,Published by Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1981 Edited by Katherine Harper Mead, Pages 65 – 66.
COMMENTS
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM THE DOCENT FILES
While there continued to be portrait commissions, the 19th century was an age of landscape painting. This was particularly true in the United States where the westward expansion stirred the imaginations of those who stayed behind as well as those who moved on. Before this, the only demand for landscape had been in connection with the topographical documentation of the growth of a community or estate, as in William Groombridge's Woodlands, the Seat of William Hamilton (1793). Here we see the formula, established by the 17th century French painter Claude Lorrain, which was to dominate American landscape painting up until the time of Inness. In Groombridge's painting a shaded foreground with a framing tree at one side leads the eye through a lighted middleground, and, on into the distance of wooded hills, which, through aerial perspective, blends atmospherically into the sky. Armed with this formula, three generations of landscapists scanned the continent for subjects both exciting and appropriate. The Hudson River School, as the movement was called, is really a misnomer, for it was never properly a "school" in the sense of an organized gathering of artists under a single banner. It was, rather, a generalized landscape movement, taking its name from the area of the Hudson River in upper New York State where many of the first American landscapists painted. Despite notable stylistic differences between them, these artists were equally inspired by the vast, unexplored expanses of the American continent. They were united in their keen observation and romantic interpretation of nature's beauties.
From a paper A HISTORY OF AMERICAN ART prepared by Mrs. Joseph E. Knowles in connection with the Young People's Art Program
Below is a quote from a letter (presumably from the registrar's file) written in 1954 and signed Harold Donaldson Eberl??? - hand written signature.
Unquestionably The Woodlands. The artist has taken some liberties in his composition. The water in the foreground is doubtless the Schuylkill River, but the Schuylkill is a respectably broad stream. Or, perhaps, the sway-backed horse, the ladies and the little lad may have been on a little spit of land projecting from the river bank.