Artist: Julie Hart Beers (1834–1913)
Title: Hudson River at Croton Point
Genre: landscape art
Date: 1869
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: height: 12.2 in (31.1 cm); width: 20.2 in (51.4 cm)
What I love about this image:
I love the way this scene is framed. We look downhill towards the Hudson River, seeing the rock outcroppings and stony land that is this part of New York State. Julie Hart Beers places a woman and child in this scene, rather than the usual men at work or draft and dairy animals that the male artists of the time usually placed in their work.
The trees at the edge of the meadow, birch and maples, are just beginning to turn red and gold—autumn is nearly here. I love the serenity of this scene, the peace of a day not too long after the end of the Civil War. It was a day of calm during a time when politics were still turbulent.
I love that Julie Hart Beers, a woman artist who was denied formal training solely because she was female, had brothers who gave her the education she needed. I love that they respected her as she made her way in an art world dominated by men jealous of their position, and achieved a grudging respect from the critics.
About the Artist, via Wikipedia:
Julie Hart Beers Kempson (1835 – August 13, 1913) was an American landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School who was one of the very few commercially successful professional women landscape painters of her day.
Born Julie Hart in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of James Hart and Marion (Robertson) Hart, who had immigrated from Scotland in 1831. Her older brothers William Hart and James McDougal Hart were also important landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and her nieces Letitia Bonnet Hart and Mary Theresa Hart became well-known painters as well. Another niece, Annie L. Y. Orff, became an editor and publisher.
In 1853, she married journalist George Washington Beers. After his death in 1856 she and her two daughters moved to New York City, where her brothers had their studios. Like most women artists of the day, she had no formal art education, but it is thought that she was trained by her brothers.
Well into her forties, with her second husband, Peter Kempson, she moved to Metuchen, New Jersey, where she set up her own studio. She continued to use the surname Beers when signing her artwork.
At the time of her death she was living in Trenton.
By 1867, Beers was exhibiting her paintings. Although she had her own studio in New Jersey, she continued to use William’s studio on 10th Street in New York City as a showroom. She was one of very few women to become a professional landscape painter in the America of her day, in part because women were excluded from formal art education and exhibition opportunities.
Beers’s mature style balances sweeping, well-balanced compositions with telling details. In the 1870s and 1880s, she exhibited frequently at the National Academy of Design as well as at the Brooklyn Art Association, the Boston Athenæum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She was able to sell a good deal of work through the Brooklyn Art Association, but she also took groups of women on sketching trips to the mountains of New York and New England to supplement her income.
She also painted some still lifes. [1]
Credits and Attributions
IMAGE: Hudson River at Croton Point by Julie Hart Beers. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:JulieBeers-Hudson River at Croton Point 1869.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:JulieBeers-Hudson_River_at_Croton_Point_1869.jpg&oldid=659236570 (accessed November 9, 2023).
[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Julie Hart Beers,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julie_Hart_Beers&oldid=1163696436 (accessed November 9, 2023).
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