Essays on the paintings describe

Frederic Remington was a member of the Union League Club from 1895 to 1898. A larger than life character whose depiction of vanished western frontier life elevated the subject matter to near mythology. His introduction and nomination to the Club probably came from close friend and fellow Club member, the future President, Theodore Roosevelt. The two were friends from first acquaintance, with things in common such as their Ivy League background and their love of the great outdoors. They met in 1887 when Century Illustrated Magazine commissioned Remington to illustrate a series of articles by Roosevelt, articles that would later appear as a book, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. The following years were kind to Remington as a series of illustration commissions made him, by the early 1890's, one of the best known artists in the country. Along with the writer Owen Wister, author of The Virginian, Remington and Roosevelt formed a trio that began the process of iconizing the vanished West of the Indian Wars, the Cowboys and the Buffalo. None of the three had any interest in the life of the sod busting farmer, whose hard toil and successful domestication of the frontier meant the extinction of an earlier era. Remington went west in search of the past, not the future.

Ever the escapist, the hard living artist recoiled from the sight of blood. One of the earliest proponents of the Spanish American War in Cuba, he was sent on assignment in 1897 to cover the uprising by Hearst's New York Journal. It has been reported that upon arrival, Remington cabled Hearst, "Everything quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return." To which Hearst is supposed to have replied, "Remain! You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." [1]Hearst denied it later, Remington came home empty handed, but returned within the year as the conflict that Hearst, Remington and Roosevelt fanned from a mere spark finally burst forth into flame.

The War with Cuba was the most disappointing and disillusioning experience in his life. Very little drama, no dramatic western landscape, and long periods of inactivity punctuated by incessant rain. The sight of Spanish dead appalled him, even worse yet was the haunting specter of American dead. It took him more than a year to get over the war, and the depression probably had something to do with his departure from the Club. He did produce several monumental canvases of the Battle of San Juan Hill, though they more resembled an American football game than the actual battle in which his friend Theodore Roosevelt took part in.

Returning to the States in late 1898 he resumed painting were he left off, doing magazine illustrations. The Union League Club example, "Blanket Pony Strategy" dates from 1902 and was done in black and white, rather than in color for the purposes of magazine reproduction purposes. By 1906 new color reproduction techniques made possible for him to entirely work in color, and the ensuing work for his final years are considered Western Impressionist masterpieces. He died of a burst appendix in 1909.

[1]Fredrick Remington The Masterworks by Peter Hassrick, published in 1988 by the St. Louis Art Museum and Harry Abrams, Inc. NewYork, page 29.

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Robert Gould Shaw was a young Bostonian with impeccable family connections, strongly abolitionist parents, and battle experience. Born 10 October 1837, he was the only son of Francis Gould and Sarah Sturgis Shaw. Socially conscious and deeply devoted to intellectual and spiritual pursuits, the Shaws counted among their friends and associates such thinkers, writers, and reformers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

From 1856 until March 1859, Shaw attended Harvard University, but he withdrew before receiving his degree, entering his uncle's business in New York instead. After Lincoln's election and the secession of several southern states, Shaw joined the Seventh New York Regiment and marched with it to the defense of Washington in April 1861. The original plans had been for the regiment to march through Baltimore, but due to the attack there on members of the 6th Massachusetts just days before, it was decided that the 7th New York would board steamers and land at Annapolis. From Annapolis, they were transported by rail into Washington. Some companies of the 7th were quartered at Willard's, Brown's and the National Hotel, but Shaw's company, with a few others, was assigned living quarters in the House of Representatives.

The unit served only thirty days, but in the army Shaw at last found a vocation that commanded his enthusiasm and respect. In May, he joined the Second Massachusetts Infantry as First Lieutenant. Shaw was serving as a captain in the 2nd Massachusetts when he was tapped by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew for a special assignment. Shaw was to raise and command the first regiment of black troops organized in a Northern state. All the previous 11 “colored" regiments had been raised principally from freed slaves in occupied areas. Shaw went about the organization of his command, recruiting free blacks from all over New England and some from beyond. The regiment was mustered into service on May 13, 1863, with Shaw as its colonel, and was sent to the South Carolina coast to take part in the operations against the cradle of secession, Charleston. After leading the regiment in smaller actions on James Island, at Legaresville on July 13, and Secessionville on July 16, Shaw moved the regiment over to Morris Island.
On July 18, 1863, he led the 54th, in conjunction with two brigades of white troops, in an assault on Confederate Battery Wagner. In the unsuccessful charge, the black troops proved themselves to be fully capable of standing up to enemy fire but lost about one quarter of their men, including Colonel Shaw. The rebels in the battery were so outraged by the Union commanders arming blacks that they decided to insult the white officer by burying him in a common grave with his black enlisted men. But Shaw's parents, when they heard of it, were pleased and believed that was the way their son would have wanted it. Robert Gould Shaw is best remembered in history as the brave colonel who led the 54th Massachusetts in their fearless charge at Fort Wagner. The artist for this painting, Guiseppe “Joseph” Fagnani was an early member of the Union League Club.

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“Ships of the Plains” is by Samuel Colman and ranks up there with “Storm King on the Hudson” (col. Smithsonian Institution) as one of the greatest works of art this man ever painted. Colman was born the son of a successful publisher and bookseller, who through professional contacts arranged for Asher B. Durand to tutor the young artist. This was said to have occurred in the early 1850’s. By 1855 Samuel was elected as an Associate of the National Academy of Design, and seven years later was made full Academician.

The 1860’s and 1870’s were a whirlwind of activity for this multitalented artist who traveled on both sides of the Atlantic as well as venturing out west. Later he would work as one of the greatest interior designers of the “Gilded Age,” as he and his friend Louis Comfort Tiffany designed and built the great cottages of Newport, Rhode Island, many of which still exist. All of this in addition to being one of the leading Hudson River School artists working in oil paint. Furthermore he was one of the founding members of the American Society of Painters in watercolor. This was not a man content to sit on his laurels. Eventually his many commitments caught up with him in 1880 as he tried to simultaneously resign from the National Academy of Design, the Century Association and the Union League Club, citing time pressures elsewhere. Most of these institutions declined to accept his resignation. Later in the 1890’s he began to paint again, but this time it was most often in pastel form with a distinctive “Barbizon” palette, a shift towards the popular tastes of that day that decidedly lacked the shimmering translucent quality of his earlier work.

“Ships of the Plains” was painted in 1872 and was given to the Club by the artist, in lieu of dues owed. By its sheer size it is the largest example by the artist ever known. It is based upon a series of sketches the artist did while traveling out west between the time of 1870 and 1872 depicting the Oregon Trail and elsewhere, areas newly accessible because of the recently completed transcontinental railroad. Works like this and sketch relating to it recently added to the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine Arts in Philadelphia were credited with helping to make the public more aware of the new accessibility of the West. A tireless traveler in search of nature's beauty, his panoramic sketches, watercolors, and oils are full of atmospheric gradations and details of the landscape.

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Arthur Quartley (1839-1886) N.A. marine painter, son of Frederick W. Quartley (1808-1874), engraver and landscape painter, was born in Paris May 24, 1839 and spent his childhood in France and England. In 1851, his mother died and shortly thereafter he was taken to America by his father [Frederick William Quartley] who settled in Peekskill and found employment as an engraver. Arthur was apprenticed to a sign painter in N.Y.C. and from 1862-1875, he was associated with the decorating firm of Emmart and Quartley in Baltimore. During his time in Baltimore, he began to paint marine scenes and had a successful show and sale at the photographic studio of Norval H. Busey. Scholar Elizabeth Johns has said that Quartley's work reveals his familiarity with the Dutch marine tradition, in composition, light and color. (350 Years) In 1873, he became a full-time painter. A resident of Baltimore for little more than a decade, Quartley was so impressed by Maryland's scenic Chesapeake Bay, ocean and rivers that he drew on this subject matter after he departed Maryland for New York. He returned to New York in about 1875, where he continued to paint marine scenes, this time of New York Harbor, bays off Long Island and the New Hampshire Isle of Shoals.
Quartley was a pallbearer at renowned Neo-Classical sculptor William Henry Rinehart's funeral, along with William T. Walters, Francis Blackwell Mayer and Andrew J. H. Way, all figures central to Maryland art history in the 19th Century. His summers were spent on the Isle of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. In 1879 he was elected an associate of the National Academy; in 1886, an academician. He was also one of the early members of the Society of American Artists, and a member of the Water Color and Artists' Fund Societies. His work can be found in the Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, NY Brooklyn Museum, NY, the National Academy of Design, NY, NY, New-York Historical Society, NY, NY, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, Peabody Essex, Salem, MA, Princeton University Art Museum, NJ, Clark art Institute, Williamstown, Mass, Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, CT, and the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT.

Recent scholarship on Quartley focused on the fact that he was a member of a select group of the artists known as the Tile Club, which also included Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase and Francis Millet as members. At first they would get together and as the name indicated paint Tiles, but later the outings turned into expeditions of a sort including trips up the Hudson River and the Erie Canal, a trip to Port Jefferson, Long Island and later a trip out to the mosquito infested wilderness of the Hamptons. In late 1999 and early 2000 a museum exhibition was held on the Tile Club and the exhibition toured from the Museums at Stony Brook on Long Island, to the Lyman Allen Art Museum in New London and finally to the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh, PA.

This particular work owned by the Union League Club is the largest one known to have been done by the artist. A sketch for this painting is at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. The Peabody Essex might be the finest maritime museum in the world, and being from 1802, it is the oldest such museum.

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George Hetzel was born in Europe, near Strasbourg, but came to the States as a youngster. Eventually he would return to Europe to study at Dusseldorf Academy in Germany with Carl Sohn and Rudolph Wiegman. From them, he learned strong technique, detailed drawing, and a precisely realistic style especially evident in his numerous fruit still lifes. When he returned home to Pennsylvania, he became the founder of a colony of plein-air painters who worked in a retreat at Scalp Level, near Johnstown. These artists created dark, intimate landscapes, and patterned their painting after the Barbizon Colony in France, emphasizing the local landscape and people as subjects as well as the conveying of a sense of atmosphere, deep shadows, textures and reflected light. In 1876, he was one of three Pittsburgh artists represented in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and also participated in the first International Exhibition at The Carnegie Institute in 1896 where a major retrospective of his work was held in 1909. His work is in the collections of the Mellon Family Foundation and the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art.

Hetzel’s sale of this painting to the Union League Club was a great source of personal pride. In his obituary in 1899 the sale of Scene in Mifflin County was looked back upon as the high point of his life. Apparently it was how he was introduced to such Pittsburgh titans as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick. Both of whom were pillars of the art world in Pittsburgh, as well as being members of the Union League Club in addition to being bi-polar opposites of each other while partners in business.. The area it depicts is not too far from the Scalp Level area of western Pennsylvania. Anyone who has ever driven on the historic Pennsylvania Turnpike simply has to gaze north from the area of the four tunnels and they will see the vast stretch of forest and long running mountain ridges where Hetzel found his artistic home. This painting, long known to exist from the artist’s obituary, recently made its first public appearance since being seen at the National Academy of Design in 1876, when it was loaned to the Johnstown Flood Museum in 1999 as there was an exhibition commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the artist’s death. Apparently he is still held there in great regard being the father of the local artistic art tradition that still continues to this day at that fine art museum as well as the Westmoreland County Museum of American Art.

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Born in England, Edward Moran began his artistic career working with his family in their handloom weaving business. At the age of fifteen, Moran emigrated with his family, settling in Maryland and working in a large textile mill. By the time Edward was eighteen he made his way to Philadelphia, where he studied art under the marine painter James Hamilton and was first introduced to the luminist painting techniques. In 1854 Moran exhibited for the first time at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts while he supported himself as a lithographer. By 1857 he opened a studio in New York where he was joined by his brother Thomas, later a renowned artist of the American West. Thomas wrote: He (Edward) taught the rest of us Morans all we know about art and grounded us in the principles we have worked on all of our lives.[1]

In 1862, Edward traveled to London where he studied at the Royal Academy. There he encountered first hand the works of J.M.W. Turner. Thereafter, Moran integrated Turner’s sense of drama, with brilliant blue skies, sublime atmosphere and turbulent green seas within his compositions. Characteristically Moran’s paintings are of heroic events played out on a storm crossed sea, often loosely painted turbulent seas with bright ethereal light escaping from behind the clouds. By 1872, he returned to the United States, and settled permanently in New York City, where he came under the influence of artists like John F. Kensett and Sanford R. Gifford, and began painting tranquil harbor scenes rich in atmosphere. Edward Moran remained in New York until his death, but during the last decade of his life, he was devoted to executing a series of thirteen paintings illustrating important epochs of American marine history, now housed at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Edward Moran’s work can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; the National Gallery, Washington, DC; the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and the Denver Museum of Art in Colorado.

[1] Natalie Spassky, American Paintings: Metropolitan Museum of Art Volume II, 1985, p. 309.