History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 65

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

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The Academy of fine arts, brief as was its existence, did much to inaugurate this era. It was short-lived; and another effort was made in behalf of art culture, by the establishment of a department of the fine arts in the new Cincinnati Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowl- edge. Provision was made for it in the courses of lectures delivered before that body and the public; and the dis- quisitions upon various topics of art by James H. Beard, E. P. and John Cranch, and others, are remembered as foreshadowing a brilliant future for æsthetic growth in the Queen City. This society too, however, was doomed to extinction, and the materialistic view taken of art by the average Cincinnatian of that day is probably well set forth by Mr. John P. Foote, in a remark in his book on the Schools of Cincinnati. Says Mr. Foote:

After the extinction of two academies and one section of fine arts, most of those who had been active in efforts for their encouragement and promotion thought best to let art stand upon its own feet and be governed by the laws of trade or of taste-and flourish or fade accord- ing to those laws.

In 1846 the establishment of the American art union in New York city led to the founding of the Western art union in Cincinnati. Its headquarters were at the cor- ner of Fourth and Sycamore streets. Mr. Stetson was president of the union, and Messrs. E. S. Haines, Mar- chant, Baldwin the artist, and others, lent their energies to keep it in life for a few years; but it had not the elements of permanence, and expired soon after its New York prototype. While it lasted, however, it exerted a health- ful and hopeful influence, and scattered many excellent works of art through the city and more or less over the west and south.

Following this was a scheme for a national portrait gallery, toward which a purchase was made of Rembrandt Peale's well-known collection of portraits of heroes of the revolution, then forming part of Peale's museum in Phil- adelphia. Many other appropriate pictures were bought, and placed in a gallery, which was opened for public ex- hibition. This enterprise, contrary to expectation, was shorter lived than the art societies. The paintings strangely but surely disappeared, and the Cincinnati national portrait gallery soon passed into history.

Still later, in 1855, organized effort in behalf of art took the form of a ladies' gallery of the fine arts, which was projected by Mrs. Peter. Its plan was to secure for exhibition copies of famous works by the old masters- copies made by artists whose reputation would alone be

a sufficient guarantee of their authenticity. The ener- getic projector of the scheme made two voyages to ' Europe in its interest ; but she did not meet with suffi- cient co-operation and encouragement otherwise to war- rant the consummation of the undertaking. No special associated endeavors have since been made here to aid fine art. A very excellent school of design has been maintained in connection with the Mechanics' institute, and receives due notice in our history of that institution. A school of art and design, with instructors in the sev- eral branches of sculpture, carving, drawing and per- spective, decorative design and water-color painting, also exists as a department of the Cincinnati university, with rooms in the College building, on Walnut street. It was founded in 1868, and has already done a good work, as is shown by the facts set forth in our outline history of the university.

Recurring to the golden age, it may be mentioned that Mr. Charles Soule, the oldest artist in the city by contin- uous residence and work, set up his easel here during that period, in 1841, at No. 83 West Seventh street. The full-length portrait of Josiah Lawrence, in tl.e Mer- chants' exchange, and many other well-known portraits, are among his works. Miss Clara Soule, his daughter, was also a meritorious artist, painting flower and fruit pieces, as well as portraitts.

Mrs. Lily Martin Spencer, who achieved considerable though perhaps but temporary fame, was a favorite in this city for some years. She furnished a number of the best paintings distributed by the Art union, as well as some popular subjects for engraving. Her specialty was Shake- spearian delineation, and her King Lear, Ophelia, Romeo and Juliet, and others, added materially to her fame. The latter part of her career was in New York city.

J. Insco Williams dated here from 1842. His histori- cal pieces were very favorably received, and his elaborate Panorama of the Bible, which was burned in 1851 or 1852, was publicly exhibited with some success.

Other well-remembered artists of or about this decade were B. M. McConkey, 1844, afterwards a student of the Dusseldorf school; William Walcutt, 1844, subsequently of New York, painter of "The Battle of Monmouth;" Herrmann M. Groenland, also of 1844 and still a resi- dent of the city, a singer as well as artist, who receives due notice in our history of music in Cincinnati; J. C. Wolf, painter of allegorical and historical pictures, whose "Joseph and Potiphar's Wife" was long among the adorn- ments of the St. Charles exchange; J. O. Eaton, 1846, since of New York city, and one of the most famous por- trait painters in the land; A. H. Hammill, 1847, and continuously here since, except for a short time at Waynes- ville, Ohio, painter of animals and birds; and Gerhard Mueller and Henry Koempel, historical painters. Mueller had been a student at Munich, and came here in 1839 or 1840, occupying a studio in an old frame building where the Debolt exchange was subsequently built. Some of his works are to be seen in St. Mary's, St. Joseph's and other Catholic churches of this city. William, his son, who changed his name to Miller, was a meritorious paint- er of miniatures. Mr. Koempel began his labors in 1848,

Samuel Bailey, Jis

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

and won but small renown. An attempted adaptation of Guido's St. Michael, by Koempel, is in existence as the altar-piece of St. Michael's church, in the Twenty-first ward.

About 1840 came another Catholic artist, a Suabian, in the person of Michael Muckle the sculptor. He had a specialty of saints and crucifixions, and made so many of the latter as to obtain among the Germans the sobri- quet of "Herrgott-schmitzes," or the crucifix carver.

C. E. Gidland, another of Cincinnati's veteran artists, also dates from this decade, and keeps his studio still at No. 8 East Fourth street. Mr. Ratterman says: "He is of a very eccentric nature; yet his pictures are full of vivacity and, though sometimes roughly sketched, of striking color effect."

Another veteran of the golden age, but in a different walk of art, was Mr. T. D. Jones, the sculptor, who is be- lieved to have made more portrait busts than any other artist in the country. Among his subjects were Clay, Cass, Corwin, Chase, and other notabilities whose names do not begin with C. He modeled the fine figure in bronze of the Soldier on Guard, which adorns the sol- diers' lot in Spring Grove cemetery.

Mr. Cist also names, as portrait and landscape painters in Cincinnati before 1851, Messrs. C. R. Edwards, Jacob Cox (afterwards of Indianapolis), D. B. Walcutt, the brothers C. J. and Jesse Hulse, C. S. Spinning, George W. Philipps, P. McCreight, Ralph Butts, A. P. Bonte, George W. White, Jacob H. Sloop, and Miss S. Gengem- bre; none of whom attained distinguished honors.

The only colored artist of note Cincinnati has pro- duced is R. S. Duncanson, who opened his studio here in 1843. He was presently taken up by the Anti-slavery league, which saw in him a valuable piece of testimony against the assertion that the colored people are devoid of genius, and was aided by the society to go to Europe, where he resided for a time in Edinburgh. His talent was versatile, enabling him to turn out at will portraits, land- scapes, fruit, flower, or genre pieces, or even histori- cal pictures. He painted the portraits of Charles Sumner, James G. Birney, and other anti-slavery agitators. In the higher walk of the art his principal pieces are: "The Trial of Shakspere," "Shylock and Jessica," "The Ruins of Carthage," "The Western Hunter's Encamp- ment," etc.

The painters of the later and present days in Cincin- nati are mostly portrait painters. Among them have been, or are: John Aubrey, Dwight Benton, Anthony Biester, A. Gianini, E. D. Grafton (a painter in water-colors), Her- man Goldsticke (removed to Quincy, Illinois), R. H. Hammond, J. A. Knapp, T. C. Lindsay, Israel Quick, Mary W. Richardson, Alexander Roeschke, Charles Rossi, Louis Schwebel, Raphael Strauss, Will P. Noble, Ru- dolph Tschudi, Michael Lendouski, T. C. Webber, Henry Mosler, Frank Duveneck, and others.

The first named of these, Aubery, has done something in historical as well as portrait painting. His "Gloria in Excelsis Deo," "Prometheus," "Charon," and "Eve's Daughters," are warmly praised. He was the painter of the altar-piece in the Church of the Holy Trinity, in this

city, burned a number of years ago. Mr. A. has been a painter in Cincinnati for nearly a generation, and his works are almost countless.

Mr. Webber has also painted in the historical field-as "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Rescue," the latter of which has been numerously reproduced in chromo-lithograph. A number of Mosler's miscellaneous pieces have been similarly copied and widely scattered-his "Lost Cause," "Found," "Asking a Blessing," etc. His "Preparing for Sunday" is considered one of his best pieces. Mr. Benton has likewise some pictures outside the line of portrait-paint- ing, as, "Evening," "Morning," and "The Wood-Path."

Duveneck is the most widely celebrated of Cincinnati artists. He is a native of Covington, of an old German family there, born in 1848. While still a boy he exhib- ited signs of talent, and at thirteen became the pupil of Schmidt, in Covington, with whom he remained for six years, during which he traveled much over the United States and the Canadas, painting saints and angels in the Catholic churches. Among his figures was a Madonna, which had such marked and original characteristics that it attracted great attention to his work, and materially aided him in procuring the means for study in Europe. At nineteen he reached Munich, where the new school of Dietz was just rising into prominence. Duveneck joined himself to it, in full sympathy with its vigorous color and realistic tendencies; and soon won a place among his seniors by his delicate and able treatment of study- heads. He here made a strong portrait of a classmate, since Professor Loefftz, which is owned by Mr. Herrman Goepper, in this city. His later "Circassian" is consid- ered among the masterpieces in the Boston Museum, and, either by accident or intention, appears first on the cata- logue. It is related of this that it could not secure a purchaser in Cincinnati at any price, but that a friend of Duveneck's finally took it at fifty dollars, carried it to an art exhibition in Boston, and easily sold it there for eight hundred dollars! The graceful genii which beautify the ceiling of the Grand Opera House are also the work of Duveneck's facile brush. He spent ten years in this city, but was comparatively unappreciated, and reaped small pecuniary reward from his labors; he then returned to Europe. One of his pupils, also a graduate of the School of Design, Mr. Alfred T. Brannan, remains. A praised picture of his-"A Garden Scene in Portugal"-is the property of Mr. A. Gunnison, of Glendale.

Henry F. Farny employs his talents principally and profitably in designing the pictures for school books, a department of art which he has almost revolutionized. He has made several visits to the Indian tribes to study their dress and manners, for the purposes of his work. His picture of "The Fugitives" has a history somewhat similar to that of Duveneck's "Circassian," in that it found no purchaser here at anything like its value, but was finally sold at the nominal price of forty dollars, taken to New York and sold for five times as much.

Of late Mr. Farny's work in the beautiful and striking illustration of Professor W. H. Vcnable's well-known poem, "'The Teacher's Dream," published as a holiday gift book for 1880, has attracted much attention.

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

William Lamprecht, an historical painter of considera- ble celebrity, resided for some time in Cincinnati, but did not meet the encouragement he seemed to deserve. Among his best known pieces are "Fenwick, the Apostle of Ohio," a portrait of the first bishop of Cincinnati, with an effective landscape and fitting surroundings; "Mar- quette Discovering the Mississippi," and "The Crowning of St. Mary's," which is in St. Mary's church, in this city. He worked for a time here in company with Lang, who made a specialty of architectonic painting, and left speci- mens of his art in St. Ludwig's church. He too went away, returning to his Fatherland.

Others who attempted to make an artist home in Cin- cinnati, but finally settled elsewhere, include Philip Wal- ter, a miniature painter and also a talented musician, conductor of the Cincinnati Sængerfest of 1870, now of Baltimore; Kemper, of Philadelphia; and young Den- nis, of Antwerp, in Belgium.

Professor Thomas S. Noble, painter of the "Hidden Nemesis" and "Forgiven," is principal of the School of Design, a department of the university of Cincinnati.

Among the home artists, amateur and professional, whose works have figured of recent years at the exposi- tions and in the windows of art stores, are Mrs. H. James, with fruits, flowers, and birds; Mary Spencer, flowers; Mary E. Snowden, portraits; Colonel George Ward Nich- ols, president of the College of Music; Mr. Landon Long- worth; Claude R. Hirst, devotional pictures; Gustave and Joseph Malchus; George Sharpless and J. R. Tait, landscapes; Joseph Turanjou and W. W. Woodward, pu- pils of Gerome; J. H. Twachtman, landscapes; and Hi- ram Wright, game and fruit pieces.

The sculptors of Cincinnati, besides those already men- tioned, have not been numerous, but talented in propor- tion to their rarity. Charles Bullitt was a French artist, who set up his studio at the corner of Fourth and Elm streets, chiefly for the sculpture of portrait-busts and me- dallions. He went to New Orleans a little before the war of the Rebellion broke out.

About the same time Signor G. Fazzia, an Italian, was here modeling portraits and statuary in clay and plaster.

M. Ezekiel was a young sculptor for a time in this city, who chiseled, among other work, the Hebrew monu- ment in Washington city, said to be the largest piece of marble statuary in the country. He has been in Rome for a number of years.

August Mundhenk, a young artist, exhibited his "Auld Lang Syne" with credit at the Centennial Exposition. Himself and partner, Herr Konrad Hoffman, both found- ers of the Munich Art School, introduced the zinc-cast statuary into the city, of which the copy of Kiss's Ama- zon and the griffins in front of the building of the Ama- zon Insurance company, on Vine street, are fair speci- mens.

Frederick and Henry Schroeder, brothers, are sculptors in wood, working mainly upon altars and pulpit orna- ments for the churches. Herman Allard, a pupil of Achterman at Minster, labors in the same work of art. His more famous pieces are: "The Death of St. Joseph,"

"Germania, the Protectress of Art and Science," and a life-size statue of an Indian in his war-dress. He was also the sculptor of the statue of St. Paul, heroic size, ex- hibited at the Exposition of 1873. Mr. Joseph Libbel, a student and comrade with Allard, produced "Always my Luck," which took a premium at one of the exhibitions of the School of Design; also "Asleep," "Caught," and other pieces of statuary.

Signor Louis T. Rebisso, teacher of sculpture at the University School of Design, and modeler of the eques- trian statue of General McPherson at Washington city; Charles L. Fettweis, jr., a native of Cincinnati, afterwards a student at Rome, and sculptor of "The Castaway," or "Wrecked," "The Italian Shepherd Boy," "Germania," the colossal statue adorning the building of the German Mutual Insurance company on the corner of Twelfth and Walnut streets, and the bust of General R. L. McCook in Washington Park; Francis X. Dengler-"the poet among our artists," says Mr. Ratterman, "where the others are but simple prose-writers"-sculptor of "Imelda and Azzo," "Blind," and "Damroschen," which, the last- named, won a gold medal at the Art Academy of Munich, while the first was pronounced by Lamprecht the greatest work of American art-now professor at the Boston Art Museum; with Mrs. Wilson, of Walnut Hills, modeler of a large piece of statuary cut in marble at Rome for Lane Seminary, are other honored names in the later roll of Cincinnati sculptors.

THE ART FOUNDRY.

Within a few months a notable impetus has been given to this department by the establishment of the Cincin- nati Art Foundry, at No. 21 Hunt street. The partners in this enterprise are all of foreign birth-Louis T. Re- bisso, of the Art School; August Mundhenk; and Con- rad Walther, who was of the famous royal foundry at Munich, and came with the Tyler-Davidson fountain to this city to aid in setting it up, afterwards returning to settle here. They are undertaking art-works in marble or any kind of metal; as fountains, monuments, reliefs, statues, groups, etc. Among the works already executed or in process of excution are the heroic statue of Gen- eral McPherson, designed by Rebisso, and the Odd Fel- lows' monument, in Spring Grove Cemetery, executed at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. The studio and shops of these gentlemen are now among the most interesting features of fine art in the Queen City.

ARCHITECTURE.

This is now distinctly recognized as one of the fine arts; and, notwithstanding the plainness of many of the earlier buildings yet standing, there are enough of the higher order to illustrate the development of this branch of art in the Queen City. It was long after Losantiville, however, before the primitive log cabin or the rude frame building formed of boat-boards or the product of the early saw-mills gave way to more ornamental and taste- ful structures. Until about 1800 the log cabin was still the type of the Cincinnati building; then the plain frame house became common; and finally, with the general ad- vent of brick and stone, a better era of architecture set

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

in .. In the enumeration of the buildings of the town, made 1815, less than two per cent. of them were found to be of stone and but about twenty-three per cent. of brick. The number of brick and stone buildings had increased by 1819, the year the city government was instituted, to four hundred and thirty-two, or about two- ninths of the whole number; and in 1826 to nine hun- dred and fifty-four, or three-eighths of all. The Germans inclined specially to the brick house, from the accus- . tomed weight and solidity of their buildings in the Father- land. In many cases, it is said, the buildings of Cincin- nati's first half-century were erected not only without the aid of an architect, but without building-plans or designs of any kind in a formal draft; and when they were first introduced, they were rudely drawn by the builder upon a smooth board or a shingle, and not elaborately, as now, on draughting paper. Even the pioneer public buildings, as the First Presbyterian church, erected in 1792, were put up without plans and specifications.

The second church built by the same society about 1813, was still very plain, but of brick, had two spires of the utmost simplicity, and was otherwise almost wholly devoid of ornament. It is not until 1824, in the Directory of that year, that mention is made of an architect by profession -Mr. Michael Scott, an Irishman by birth, and until that year, or thereabouts, a house carpenter. In the spring of 1825 he designed the plans of the old St. Peter's cathedral on Sycamore street, on the site now occupied by St. Xavier's church. A picture of this may be seen in Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio and in the sin- gle volume of the Monthly Chronicle, published by the late E. D. Mansfield, in 1839.

No successor or rival to Scott appeared until 1834, by which time the pioneer architect was dead. Then came Seneca Palmer, from Albany, who was the architect of the original Lane seminary buildings, of which the chapel, with its Doric front and colonnade of pillars, is the most marked remain. He also designed the building for the' Western Baptist Theological seminary in Covington, and it is believed also the Lafayette bank building on Third street. Some of his best plans are undoubtedly to be attribu- ted to a superior German architect, Mr. John Jolasse, who -was in his employ. They were kept to reasonable plain- ness, however, by the comparative poverty of house-own- ers at that time, as well as the incipiency of taste for ornamentation in architecture. Sometimes, in the effort at display, a comical mixture of styles occurred, as Doric or Ionic mouldings upon a Gothic window, or a Tuscan column surmounted by a Corinthian capital. It is said the old Trust company's building, at the corner of Third street, had a colonnade of Doric pillars with Ionic capi- tals. The most hideous example, however, long remained in the well-known "Trollope's Folly," or Bazaar building, on Third street, west of Broadway. It was erected in 1829-30, and presented a most absurd commixture of Ori- ental and Occidental styles, of which endless fun was made by the English tourists who since visited it, as well as by the citizens of the community it afflicted. Its archi- tect is said to have been the painter Hervieu, a French- man who came with Mrs. 'Trollope, and was the designer

of the caricatures upon American manners in her book, as well as decorator of her building and painter of a large picture of Lafayette's Landing at Cincinnati.

Francis Ignatz Erd, designer of the plans for St. Mary's Catholic Church, on Thirteenth street, was another of the early architects ; also Henry Walter, who is mentioned first in the directory of 1842, but who was long before that designer, in the Greco-Doric style, of the old Second Presbyterian Church on Fourth street, where now the splendid warehouse of the Mitchell & Rammelsberg Furniture Company stands, and of St. Peter's Cathedral, on the corner of Ninth and Plum streets, which has been so much admired for more than forty years, notwithstand- ing its incongruities of architecture ; also of the House of Refuge, in the Norman-Gothic style, a truly splendid edifice. Mr. Walter died shortly after its commence- ment, and the work was then entrusted to his partner, Mr. Joseph W .- Thwaites, and his son, William Walter. The latter, afterwards in association with James K. Wil- son, has long been a prominent architect here.

The burning of the old Shires' Garden Theatre, on the corner of Third and Vine streets, in 1847, and the projecting of the Burnet House by a company of local capitalists, brought to the city Mr. Isaiah Rogers, one of the most famous architects in the west until his lamented death. He was designer of the noble structure named, which was a marvel of hotel architecture in those days, and is still unsurpassed by its kind in the city. The Lunatic Asylum at Longview, likewise designed by Rogers, embodies the same ideas as the Burnet House, but on a larger scale.

After the coming of Rogers and the impetus given by increasing taste and prosperity to beautiful architecture, the gentlemen of the profession rapidly multiplied. In 1848 are noted, as architects here, Messrs. B. L. W, Kelley, Robert A. Love, James O. Sawyer, George W. Stevenson, and James K. Wilson ; in 1850, Joseph J. Husband ; 1851, John Bast ; 1853, J. R. Hamilton, J. B. Earnshaw, Joseph Gottle, Otto G. Leopold, James McClure, Robert Haines, William H. Bayless, Hudson B. Curtiss, William Tinsley & Son, E. C. Schultz, and Stephen Reddick ; Charles B. Boyle, Adrian Hagemann, and William S. Rosecrans (since known to the world as the Union general and now Congressman), in 1855; James W. Mclaughlin, Edwin A. Anderson, Carl Victor Bechmann, and Samuel Hannaford, in 1858; Anthony & Louis Piket, father and son, and Georg Willmer, 1859 ; Charles P. Dwyer, John Mierenfield, and Francis W. Moore, in 1863; and so on down in rapidly increas- ing numbers. The principal buildings designed by these are the Hughes High School, Norman-Gothic, by Earn- shaw; the Woodward High School, English-Gothic, by Hamilton; St. Peter's German Protestant Church, by Louis Piket ; the magnificent St. Xavier's Church, Ger- man-Gothic, and the St. Xavier College, by Anthony Piket ; and some others, including the present First Presbyterian Church, the Mechanics' Institute and Medi- cal College buildings, the Court House, etc.

The heavier Grecian and Roman styles of architecture have long been out of fashion in Cincinnati, and have

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 65

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co. Number of Pages: 666

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666