Samuel Colman (March 4, 1832 – March 26, 1920) was an American painter, interior designer, and writer, probably best remembered for his paintings of the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

Life and career

Born in

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

, Maine, Colman moved to New York City with his family as a child. His father opened a bookstore, attracting a literate clientele that may have influenced Colman's artistic development. He is believed to have studied briefly under the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, ...

painter

Asher Durand Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796, – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School. Early life Durand was born in, and eventually died in, Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He was the eighth ...

, and he exhibited his first work at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

in 1850. By 1854 he had opened his own New York City studio. The following year he was elected an associate member of the National Academy, with full membership bestowed in 1862. His landscape paintings in the 1850s and 1860s were influenced by the Hudson River School, an example being ''Meadows and Wildflowers at Conway'' (1856) now in the collection of the

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, commonly known as The Loeb, is a teaching museum, major art repository, and exhibition space on the campus of Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It was founded in 1864 as the Vassar Colleg ...

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...

. He was also able to paint in a romantic style, which had become more fashionable after the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. One of his best-known works, and one of the iconic images of Hudson River School art, is his ''Storm King on the Hudson'' (1866), now in the collection of the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

in Washington, DC. In the 1860s, Colman lived in

Irvington, New York Irvington, sometimes known as Irvington-on-Hudson,Staff (ndg"The Irvington Gazette (Irvington-On-Hudson, N.Y.) 1907-1969"Library of Congress is a suburban village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is loca ...

, where he made a number of paintings featuring the countryside around the village."Hudson River from Irvington"
Googe Arts & Culture

Louis Comfort Tiffany Louis Comfort Tiffany (February 18, 1848 – January 17, 1933) was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art NouveauL ...

, inventor of

Tiffany glass Tiffany glass refers to the many and varied types of glass developed and produced from 1878 to 1933 at the Tiffany Studios in New York City, by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a team of other designers, including Clara Driscoll, Agnes F. Northrop, an ...

, studied with Colman when he lived there. Colman was an inveterate traveler, and many of his works depict scenes from foreign cities and ports. He made his first trip abroad to France and Spain in 1860–1861, and returned for a more extensive four-year European tour in the early 1870s in which he spent much time in Mediterranean locales. Colman often depicted the architectural features he encountered on his travels: cityscapes, castles, bridges, arches, and aqueducts feature prominently in his paintings of foreign scenes. In 1870 and again in the 1880s he journeyed to the western United States, painting western landscapes comparable in scope and style to those of

Thomas Moran Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 – August 25, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth too ...

. In the aftermath of the Civil War,

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

painting became more popular. In 1866, Colman was one of the founders of the

American Watercolor Society The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States. Qualifications AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...

, and he became its first president from 1867 to 1871. Colman also became skilled at the medium of

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

. He was an early member of the New York Etching Club, and published popular etchings depicting European scenes. Colman's artistic activities became even more diverse late in life. By the 1880s he worked extensively as an interior designer, collaborating with his friend

on the design of

Samuel Clemens Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...

' Hartford home, and later on the

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

home of

Henry Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) *Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...

and

Louisine Havemeyer Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer (July 28, 1855 – January 6, 1929) was an art collector, feminist, and philanthropist. In addition to being a patron of impressionist art, she was one of the more prominent contributors to the suffrage movemen ...

. He also became a major collector of Asian decorative objects, and wrote two books on geometry and art, one of which was entitled ''Nature's Harmonic Unity'', the other which was entitled ''Proportional Form''. Colman died in New York City in 1920. He was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.

Gallery

File:Colman Storm King on the Hudson.jpg, ''Storm King on the Hudson'' (1866), oil on canvas,

; one of Colman's best known works File:Brooklyn Museum - Late November in a Santa Barbara Cañon, California - Samuel Colman - overall.jpg, ''Late November in a Santa Barbara Cañon, California'' (c.1888), watercolor on paper,

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

File:Brooklyn Museum - On the Viga, Outskirts of the City of Mexico - Samuel Colman - overall.jpg, ''On the Viga, Outskirts of the City of Mexico'' (1892), oil on canvas,

References

Notes Sources
American Watercolor Society's history
Retrieved June 1, 2005.

External links

''American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Colman (see index)
''Hudson River school visions: the landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Colman (see index)
''Nature's Harmonic Unity'' at Archive.orgProportional Form at Archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Colman, Samuel 1832 births 1920 deaths 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters Hudson River School painters American landscape painters Artists from Portland, Maine Painters from New York City Orientalist painters Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists

Life and career

Gallery

See also

References

External links