James McDougal Hart
Biography
James McDougal Hart was born on May 10th, 1828, in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. In 1831, his family emigrated to Albany, New York. While in New York he began an apprenticeship with a coach-maker and then in 1849 exhibited landscape painting at the Albany Gallery of Art following the development of his painting skills. In 1850 to Munich and Düsseldorf, Germany, where he studied under the landscape painter, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, who was one of the Academy’s most important teachers.
In 1853 He opened a studio in Albany, New York and then in 1857 moved to New York City. He worked closely with the National Academy of Design throughout his career and exhibited almost yearly from 1853 to 1900.
He was a leading figure of the second-generation Hudson River School painters and was known for idyllic landscapes, especially with cows.
In 1866 Hart married Maria Theresa Gorsuch, an amateur artist; their daughter, Letitia Bennett Hart, and son, William Gorsuch Hart, also became painters. Hart died of pneumonia in Brooklyn, New York, on 24 October 1901, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
Today his work is in many private collections, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC
Born: 1828
Died: 1901
Education: Dusseldorf Art Academy
Collections
Select Collectors
High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland