biographie de William McDougal HART (1823-1894)

Birth place: Paisley, Scotland

Death place: Mt. Vernon, NY

Addresses: Albany, NY; NYC (opened studio in 1854); Mt. Vernon, NY

Profession: Landscape, allegorical, and portrait painter, teacher

Studied: self-taught (was painting portraits by age 18).

Exhibited: NAD, 1848-94; Brooklyn AA, 1861-83; Boston Athenaeum; also in Phila., Balt., and Wash., DC

Member: Brooklyn Acad. Des. (first pres., 1865); ANA, 1855; NA, 1858; AWCS (founder; pres., 3 years).

Work: MMA; NMAA; NAD; NYHS; Albany IA; Vassar College

Comments: Important painter of the Hudson River School. His family, which included his younger brother James McDougal Hart and sister Julie Hart Beers Kempson (see entries), emigrated to America in 1831 and settled in Albany. William apprenticed with a carriagemaker, but began concentrating on painting portraits by the time he was 18 years old. He left Albany after 1840 and traveled widely throughout the U.S., painting in Troy (NY), Richmond (VA), and Michigan, where he spent three years. He briefly visited Scotland but in 1847 returned to Albany, where he established a reputation for his idyllic landscapes and also exerted a strong influence as a teacher (his pupils included Homer Martin and Lemuel Miles). In 1854 he opened a studio in NYC. He later moved to Brooklyn, where he became the first president of the Brooklyn Acad. of Design in 1865. In the late 1880s he was painting his favorite motifó cows in a river landscape ó in the Lower Keene Valley in Northern New York State. His paintings were reproduced as engravings and widely distributed.

Sources: G&W; DAB; Clement and Hutton; Stiles, History of Kings County, II, 1145-46; CAB; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Cowdrey, NAD; Rutledge, PA; Rutledge, MHS; Swan, BA; Washington Art. Assoc. Cat., 1857; Antiques (Aug. 1943), 85, repro.; Sweet, Hudson River School, repro.; Keene Valley: The Landscape and Its Artists, intro. and cat. no. 12; 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 201; Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 1: 175; Campbell, New Hampshire Scenery, 77-79; Wright, Artists in Virgina Before 1900.