FERDINAND RICHARDT (1819-1895)

Lake Winnipesaukee (Winnipiseogee Lake)

PROVENANCE
Henry H. Leeds & Company, Auctioneers, New York, March 10, 1859, no. 73
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, May 10, 1945, no. 673 Private Collection 

EXHIBITION
National Academy of Design, New York, Ferdinand Richardt’s Gallery of Paintings of American Scenery and Collection of Danish Paintings, January 19-March 10 (?), 1859, no. 21 [titled Winnipisogee Lake]

LITERATURE
Richardt’s Gallery of Paintings of American Scenery and Collection of Danish Paintings
(New York: National Academy of Design, 1859]): n.p.

Catalogue of Ferdinand Richardt’s Gallery of Superb Paintings of American Scenery
and Collection of Danish Paintings, Including his Views of the Mammouth Cave in
Kentucky, and of the Upper Mississippi to be Sold by Henry H. Leeds & Company
[at the National Academy of Design on March 10. 1859] (New York: Henry H. Leeds & Company, 1859), p. 5

Richardt was born in Brede, Denmark. In 1832 the family moved to nearby Orholm, and seven years later settled in Copenhagen. At the age of 18, he entered the Royal Academy, where his teachers included the architect and designer Gustav Frederich Hetsch and the historical painter J. L. Lund. While there Richardt received two silver medals for artistic excellence, and appears to have been invited to work in the studio of the great Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. In 1840 he executed the painting Thorvalden in His Studio at Charlottenborg (Thorvaldsen Museum).

In 1844, Richardt began a decade long association with the Danish writer-historian T. A. Becker. They jointly produced the Prospekter af Danske Herregarde (Album of Danish Manor Houses), a collection of lithographic views of manor houses set in picturesque landscape settings. Twenty volumes were to appear of the Prosekter over the next twenty-four years.  In 1847, Richardt received a five year stipend from the Danish crown to work on various artistic projects. From 1852-4 he executed a series of pictures of castles and manor houses in Sweden. Between 1840-1871 he exhibited regularly at the official salon in Copenhagen.

In July 1855, Richardt traveled to America with the purpose of capturing the sublimity and natural wonder of Niagara Falls on canvas. According to family legend he was invited to come to the United States and paint the falls by William H. Vanderbilt. After an extended stay in the Buffalo area he completed thirty two oils (some quite large) of Niagara from every conceivable angle in his New York City studio. He exhibited these and additional drawings and sketches of the falls in an exhibition held in February 1857 at the Stuyvesant Institute.

Following this showing Richardt traveled extensively for two years through New England, the upper midwest, the southern Appalachians, the mid-Atlantic region, the south, and parts of Canada painting primarily river and lake scenes, waterfalls, and various natural wonders. He almost exactly followed the route traveled by the artist William Bartlett in creating preparatory sketches for his illustrated American Scenery (1838-1840). On his travels Richardt sketched extensively in pencil. He utilized his drawings back in New York City in late 1857 and early 1858 to create 70 works, including twenty-nine large scale landscapes of America. These works, plus forty drawings of America and thirty paintings of Scandinavia, were included in a solo exhibition held in early 1859 at the National Academy of Design on lower Broadway, titled Ferdinand Richardt’s Gallery of Paintings of American Scenery and Collection of Danish Paintings.  The exhibition opening in mid-January and apparently remained on view through early March when an auction was held on the premises.

A report of the exhibition appeared in The New York Times and noted that Richardt had been “making a tour through the country with the object of illustrating its most striking features, in a series of engravings, shortly to be published. The collection is of a very catholic, not to say heterogeneous character, and embraces all sorts of scenes . . . . Since the publication of Mr. Bartlett’s book some twenty years ago, no collection of American views nearly so complete as that of Mr. Reichardt’s has been offered to the attention of the public” (“Paintings of American Scenery,” The New York Times, March 4, 1859, p. 5). The project evidently never came to fruition - no prints after the paintings are known.

Richardt returned to Denmark in June 1859. Over the next 14 years he painted Danish scenery, and traveled to southern Europe, the Mediterranean, and London.  It was reported in the press in 1863 that he had studio on Berners Street in London with his collection of paintings and sketches, mainly of Niagara Falls and other American, Canadian, and Scandinavian views. Reproductions of his European landscapes of the 1860s are reproduced in Danske Kunstneres Arbejder (Danish Art Works).

In 1873, Richardt sold all of his goods, including his paintings, at public auction. By the autumn of that year he was back in America creating sketches of Niagara Falls.  He lived and worked near the Falls for about the next two years. In 1875, he moved to San Francisco, and in the following year settled permanently in Oakland. For the last twenty years of his life he painted landscapes of California, primarily of the San Francisco Bay area.

Lake Winnipesaukee dates from 1858, and was included in Richardt’s 1859 exhibition at the National Academy of Design. It is one of five large scale landscapes of New Hampshire featured in the show. The other works were View of Mt. Adams and Mt. Jefferson in the White Mountains, Summit of Mt. Washington in the White Mountains, The Village of Centre Harbor in the State of New Hampshire, and Squam Lake.  According to Richardt authority Melinda Young Stuart, the artist produced at least ten oils of the White Mountains and nearby Lakes region. She has further noted that the New Hampshire pictures included in the 1859 exhibition were all “created from on-site sketches made during Richardt’s August 1857 visit to the area” (Melinda Young Stuart, [Summit of Mount Washington in the White Mountains], entry in Consuming Views: Art & Tourism in the White Mountains, 1850-1900 [Concord, New Hampshire: New Hampshire Historical Society, 2006], p. 86).

The listing for Lake Winnipesaukee in the exhibition catalog relates that the picture was taken “from the mountains lying back of Centre [now Center] Harbor village. This picture is taken in the morning, with a storm brewing in the horizon. This lake is 25 miles long and incloses [sic] no less than 365 islands, most of course very small. In the foreground are seen children picking berries. To the left is the little steamer ‘Dover’” (Richardt’s Gallery of Paintings of American Scenery and Collection of Danish Paintings [New York: National Academy of Design, 1859]): n.p.).

Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest lake in New Hampshire, and the third largest lake in New England after Lake Champlain and Moosehead Lake. It contains 274 inhabitable islands of which 132 are one-quarter acre in size. Center Harbor is one of the communities which surround the lake, and is located between Meridith and Moulonborough Harbors. In the 19th century it was the landing spot for lake steamers, making it a popular summer resort. At the time of Richardt’s visit people commonly traveled to the area by train and then transferred to one of the railroad-owned steamboats for the next leg of their journey. The Dover ran in connection with the Boston and Maine railroad, and made its first appearance in 1852. She was originally one hundred and fifty feet long and twenty-four feet beam. Sometime around 1860 the steamer was cut open, lengthened twenty feet, and renamed the Chocorua. In 1872 she was succeeded by the steamer Mount Washington, which is still in commission. The Dover was one of many early steamers that churned to and fro on the lake.
 
Lake Winnipesaukee was a popular subject for landscape painters. Among the artists to paint the site in the early and mid-19th century were Thomas Doughty, Thomas Cole, John Frederick Kensett, Sanford Gifford, David Johnson and John Henry Hill. Richardt’s painting is similar compositionally to his smaller canvas Bolton Landing (1858, Private Collection). This view of Lake George also includes a steamer and a large area of foliage in the foreground. Many of Richardt’s canvases of the late 1850s adopt a dramatic point of view, include large rocks, a boat or sailing vessel, and one or more groups of people. The catalog of the National Academy exhibition reported proudly that in every sketch the artist “has taken, he has been deeply impressed with a sense of the importance of bringing before tl copy of nature” ([Foreword], Catalogue of Ferdinand Richardt’s Gallery of Paintings of American Scenery and Collection of Danish Paintings [New York: National Academy of Design, 1859]): n.p.).he eye of the beholder, as nearly as possible, a faithful copy of nature” ([Foreword], Catalogue of Ferdinand Richardt’s Gallery of Paintings of American Scenery and Collection of Danish Paintings [New York: National Academy of Design, 1859]): n.p.).

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