19C American Gardens by Artist Walter I. Cox 1868–1930

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) Hodges Garden, East Hampton, Long Island, New York

Walter Ignatuis Cox was born in Broxwood Court, Hereford, England. By the age of 13, he was studying at St Gregory's College in Somerset, England. After studying in Paris with Laurens, Lefebvre, & Benjamin-Constant, he returned to England to marry in 1897.  Cox & his wife Lavenia Carson Millett sailed to the United States in 1902, where they were naturalized in Pennsylvania.  They traveled to Victoria, British Columbia and then sailed to San Francisco in 1905. Although he lost many paintings in the 1906 earthquake, they remained active in San Francisco, until at least 1914. By 1920, Cox & his wife were living in Manhattan, frequently making sketching trips to the continent, England, & Scotland. Although he was known as a portrait painter of notables like Presidents Warren Harding & William Taft, I am particularly interested in his garden paintings, which are often images of typically American gardens.  Cox died in Alexandria, Virginia in 1930.

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) Lady under a Tree

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) The Front Porch

Walter I. Cox (American artist, 1868–1930) In the Shade

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) Wine for Two

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) The Back Porch

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) Outdoor Dining

Walter I. Cox (English-born American artist, 1868–1930) Porch Overlooking a Garden

Gardens Decline in Importance as Economy turns from Agricultural to Industrial

The Coming Machine Age & the Declining Importance of the Pleasure Garden

George Washington (1732-1799), who had gone from fumbling young military officer to plantation owner to leader of the Revolutionary army to president of a proud new nation, actually devoted much time & effort to organizing his garden. Despite all of his amazing life experiences, or perhaps because of them, Washington wrote that gardening was among “the most rational avocations of life.”

He believed, as did former Baltimore judge John Beale Bordley (1727-1804), who retired from the political & adversarial life of an attorney to become a gentleman farmer, that gardening contributed to the spiritual health of America's citizens. In 1770, his wife Margaret Chew inherited half of Wye Island, in Queen Anne's County, on the Chesapeake Bay. The Bordleys maintained a winter residence in Annapolis, but they moved to this beautiful estate on Wye Island.

Ever feisty John Adams (1735-1826) wrote to his beloved wife Abigail from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 3, 1776. "I long for rural and domestic scenes, for the warbling of Birds and the Prattle of my Children. Don't you think I am somewhat poetical this morning, for one of my Years, and considering the Gravity, and Insipidity of my Employment? - As much as I converse with Sages and Heroes, they have very little of my Love or Admiration. I should prefer the Delights of a Garden to the Dominion of a World."

George Washington stated in his 8th Annual Message to Congress in 1796, "It will not be doubted, that with reference either to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as Nations advance in population, and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent; and renders the cultivation of the Soil more and more, an object of public patronage."

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) wrote of the importance of working on the land to artist Charles Willson Peale from his secluded retirement retreat Poplar Forest on August 20, 1811, "I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest, a continued one thro' the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table. I am still devoted to the garden. But tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener."

But Jefferson saw the age of the spiritual expericence of gardening ending, as he wrote of the British during the War of 1812, “Our enemy has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise: from peaceable & agricultural nation, he makes us a military & manufacturing one.”

The garden did wither as a symbol of power & moral force; as the agricultural gave way to the industrial, & factories flowered on the American landscape. As the gentility of pleasure gardening became available to greater numbers of the middling sort in the emerging republic, it declined in importance to the ruling class. The symbol of might & right shifted from the garden to the machine.

Annapolis gardener William Faris (1729-1804) was a clockmaker at the end of the America’s agricultural age, when people’s perception of time still relied on nature’s manifestations, the rising & the setting of the sun & the changing of the seasons. Industrialization would dramatically change the significance of time & the clock. The clock would soon become the mechanical indication of units by which work, & therefore pay & worth, were measured.

In the earlier agricultural economy of 18th-century America, a man’s worth was measured by his harvest. When he had succeeded in having some leisure time & extra money from his crop production, he devised a pleasure garden in order to control, in an abstract & artful form, at least a small part of unpredictable nature, which otherwise controlled him.  He knew that the setting sun halted his day’s work. An unexpected storm or drought could destroy his daily plans or his yearly harvest.

Irish-born Philadelphia author & seed dealer Bernard M’Mahon (1775-1816) & English-born Annapolis clockmaker & silversmith William Faris were wedged between the old world & the new world, and between the ancient agricultural order & the coming technical age. The looming 19th century industrial era would see cities burgeon & replace the wilderness as the frightening place in the minds of the American people.

Citizens working in the urban machine economies would retreat to bucolic woodlands for the serene security of nature, much as farming citizens of the earlier colonial era clamored for the safety of towns with ordered streets & tidy, fenced gardens, when threatened by the terrifying unknown lurking in the uncivilized nature of the frontier.

Gardening would become just of many diversions in an industrial & technological world, where individuals’ livelihoods were no longer dependent on manipulation of the land & the rising and the setting of the sun.

M’Mahon & his fellow seed dealers & nurserymen contributed to this trend in 19th-century America, as they promoted gardening to all classes & both sexes in the new nation. M’Mahon hoped his book might “make any person…his own Gardener.” 

Working in the soil helped a person understand the cycle of life & death. Many plantation owners, farmers, & gardeners chose to bury their loved ones in their near-by gardens & went there to remember departed relatives & friends.

Whether they gardened or not, early Americans easily understood that gardens, economies, & men are ultimately under nature’s control. Perhaps they found some comfort in the knowledge that nature, not man, renews life year after year. In an agrarian society, people understood the symbolic & symbiotic relationships of people, plants, soil, weather, & the seasons.

Eighteenth century American gardeners understood that there is an order to nature but not always a kindness. People whose lives depended on the success of crops understood that nature controls floods, hailstorms, droughts, tornadoes, & death.

1764 Plants in 18C Colonial American Gardens - Virginian John Randolph (727-1784) - Celandine

A Treatise on Gardening Written by a native of this State (Virginia)
Author was John Randolph (1727-1784)
Written in Williamsburg, Virginia about 1765
Published by T. Nicolson, Richmond, Virginia. 1793
The only known copy of this booklet is found in the Special Collections of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Celandine

Celandine, Majus Chelidonium, is a medical herb, often cultivated in gardens. The several varieties are propagated by sowing the seed, and the plants will cast their seeds, and keep you constantly with a stock of young plants, without further trouble. It is an annual Celandine; the lesser is a Ranunculus.

Tho Jefferson (1743-1824) Writes about Gardening

 

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

1810 March 17.  (Jefferson to William Johnson).  "all of these articles [Benni seed, Egyptian grass, and acacia seed] are highly acceptable. they bring nourishment to my hobby horse: for my occupations at present are neither in reading nor writing. the culture of the earth in the garden, orchard & farms engage my whole attention."

William Johnson Jr. (1771-1834) was an American attorney, state legislator, & judge from South Carolina. He served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1804 to 1834 after previously serving in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Johnson was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Thomas Jefferson. 

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello.org website. 

1764 Plants in 18C Colonial American Gardens - Virginian John Randolph (727-1784) - Mint

A Treatise on Gardening Written by a native of this State (Virginia)
Author was John Randolph (1727-1784)
Written in Williamsburg, Virginia about 1765
Published by T. Nicolson, Richmond, Virginia. 1793
The only known copy of this booklet is found in the Special Collections of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Mint

Mint, Mentha, from mens, the mind, because it strengthens'the mind. These should be planted in the spring, by parting the roots or cuttings, and planted six inches asunder; otherwise the roots mat into one another, and destroy themselves in three years.
.

Bernard McMahon, Pioneer American Gardener

Bernard McMahon, Pioneer American Gardener

"Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon (1775-1816) has often been described as Thomas Jefferson's gardening mentor; and his classic work, The American Gardener's Calendar, 1806, as Jefferson's horticultural "Bible". McMahon forwarded the newest vegetable and flower varieties to Jefferson, who would often follow the directions in the Calendar step-by-step when planting tulips in his flower beds or sea kale in his vegetable garden. McMahon also served as curator for the plants collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition, published the first seed catalogue in the United States, and was honored by botanist Thomas Nuttall, who in 1818 bestowed the genus name Mahonia on a group of west-coast evergreen shrubs still popular in American gardens.

"McMahon's chief legacy was his American Gardener's Calendar, the most comprehensive gardening book published in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century; popularity and influence can be gauged by the eleven editions that were printed up to 1857. The 648-page Calendar was modeled on a traditional English formula, providing month-by-month instructions on planting, pruning, and soil preparation for the various horticultural divisions -- the Kitchen Garden, Fruit Garden, Orchard, Nursery, etc.

"McMahon borrowed extensively from English works, especially those of Philip Miller and particularly from John Abercrombie, author of Every Man his own Gardener, first published in York in 1767 under the name of Thomas Mawe, at the time a more recognizable figure. McMahon's sixty-three page General Catalogue of recommended garden plants (3,700 species) was unrealistically biased in favor of traditional Old World species. It is doubtful whether a majority of them were then found in the United States; one also wonders how many American gardeners actually possessed an English-style Fruit Garden, much less a Greenhouse or Hothouse, in 1806? A renowned English contemporary, J. C. Loudon, suggested the derivative character of the Calendar in 1826: "We cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars."

"Nevertheless, Mahon's Calendar appealed to Jefferson because it attempted to deal with some of the unique problems of American gardening. McMahon made a concerted effort to break away from English traditions in the way he celebrated the use of native American ornamentals, championed large-scale cider and seedling peach orchards that could be grazed with livestock, and admitted the harsh realities of eastern North America's continental climate.

"McMahon reinforced Jefferson's custodial pride in the culture of American plants. It was in the Calendar that American gardeners were first urged to comb the local woodlands and fields for "the various beautiful ornaments with which nature has so profusely decorated them." Wildflowers, according to McMahon, were particularly suited for the hot, humid summer when American gardens "are almost destitute of bloom." McMahon continued, "Is it because they are indigenous that we should reject them? What can be more beautiful than our Lobelias, Asclepias, Orchis, and Asters? In Europe plants are not rejected because they are indigenous; and yet here, we cultivate many foreign trifles, and neglect the profusion of beauties so bountifully bestowed upon us by the hand of nature."

"McMahon's Calendar also included the first American essay on landscape design. Titled, "Ornamental Designs and Plantings," this eighteen-page treatise may have inspired Jefferson's design schemes for the Roundabout flower border and oval beds on the West Lawn at Monticello. Following the dictates of English landscape designer Humphrey Repton, McMahon promoted the new, informal style of naturalistic gardening. He urged his readers to "consult the rural disposition in imitation of nature" that would include "winding walks, all bounded with plantations of trees, shrubs, and flowers in various clumps." The use of broad lawns, thickets, and irregularly-shaped flower beds were further ways of banishing traditional, formal landscape and garden geometry. Few American gardening books have so thoroughly combined landscape gardening and horticulture like Bernard McMahon's The American Gardener's Calendar. McMahon's writings provided a foundation for the popularity of Andrew Jackson Downing, generally considered the father of landscape design in this country.

"Who was Bernard McMahon? Information on this gardening pioneer is scanty. Born in Ireland "of good birth and fortune," he moved to Philadelphia in 1796 to avoid political persecution and soon established a seedhouse and nursery business by 1802. In that year (or perhaps in 1803) he published a broadsheet "A CATALOGUE OF GARDEN GRASS, HERB, FLOWER, TREE & SHRUB-SEEDS, FLOWER ROOTS, ETC." that included 720 species and varieties of seed. Considered the "first seed catalogue" published in this country, it is a landmark index to the plants introduced and cultivated in the United States at that time. For instance, this list supplements the documented plantings of Jefferson in the yearly plantings of the flower gardens at Monticello. In 1804 another catalogue of thirty pages, mostly devoted to native American seeds, was published.

"Beginning in 1806 McMahon was trusted with seeds and plants collected from the Lewis and Clark expedition. Jefferson insisted that these new discoveries were the property of the expedition and of the federal government, so McMahon was forced, perhaps rightfully so, to grow these novelties under restriction in a quarantine-like situation. As well, sticky complications and fierce personal rivalries arose over the description, illustration, and release of the plants, which included golden currant (Ribes aureum), snowberry (Symphoricarpus albus), and Osage orange (Maclura pomifera): as many as twenty-five undescribed species. Botanical historian and scholar, Joseph Ewan, observed, "It must have tried his soul on occasion to have to weed and water these plantings through the years without realizing thereby either the aura of publicity for his nursery or the personal satisfaction of guardianship for what were precious discoveries of new genera and species eventually announced, not in America, but in England!"

"In 1808 McMahon purchased twenty acres for his nursery and botanic garden that would enable him to expand his business. A steady stream of correspondence, thirty-seven letters, passed between him and President Jefferson until 1816, when McMahon died at his "Botanical Garden, called Upsal." The nursery business was left to his wife, who, according to Ewan, "conducted it under difficulties that would have appalled most women." Their son, Thomas P., was also involved in the business, as well as further publications of the Calendar.

"The most vivid written document to survive regarding McMahon and his Philadelphia seedhouse was written by John Jay Smith, editor of The Horticulturist, for the eleventh edition of the Calendar in 1857. Smith's memoir suggests the ferment of botanical and horticultural activity at the time:

"Many must still be alive who recollect its [the store's] bulk window, ornamented with tulip-glasses, a large pumpkin, and a basket or two of bulbous roots; behind the counter officiated Mrs. M'Mahon, with some considerable Irish accent, but a most amiable and excellent disposition. Mr. M'Mahon was also much in the store, putting up seeds for transmission to all parts of this country and Europe, writing his book, or attending to his correspondence, and in one corner was a shelf containing a few botanical or gardening books; another contained the few garden implements, such as knives and trimming scissors; a barrel of peas, and a bag of seedling potatoes, an onion receptacle, a few chairs, and the room partly lined with drawers containing seeds, constituted the apparent stock in trade of what was one of the greatest seed houses then known in the Union.

"Such a store would naturally attract the botanist as well as the gardener, and it was the frequent lounge of both classes, who ever found in the proprietors ready listeners as well as conversers. They were rather remarkable, and here you would see Nuttall, Baldwin, Darlington, and other scientific men, who sought information or were ready to impart it."

"A portrait of Bernard McMahon by an unidentified Philadelphia artist was revealed to us by a McMahon descendent, Betty Carter Fort of Washington, D.C. Although it is impossible to verify that the portrait is indeed our pioneer American nurseryman, the force of his surprisingly powerful gaze suggests a certain wily intelligence. Here, we suspect, is a sensibility worthy of the responsibility for the Lewis and Clark botanical collection; the authoritarian visage of the author of America's best gardening book of the early nineteenth century."

Originally published in 1993 in Monticello's Twinleaf newsletter as "Bernard McMahon, Pioneer American Gardener" by Peter J. Hatch

19C Women & Gardens - American Lydia Field Emmet (1866-1952)

Lydia Field Emmet (American artist, 1866-1952) Grandmother's Garden

Lydia Field Emmet (1866 -1952) was an American artist best known for her work as a portraitist. Emmet exhibited widely during her career, and her paintings can now be found hanging in the White House, and many prestigious art galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lydia Field Emmet (American artist, 1866-1952) Flowers along the White Picket Fence

Lydia Field Emmet (American artist, 1866-1952) Two Women in a Garden

Lydia Field Emmet (American artist, 1866-1952) Woman & Boy in a Garden

1764 Plants in 18C Colonial American Gardens - Virginian John Randolph (727-1784) - Lettuce

A Treatise on Gardening Written by a native of this State (Virginia)
Author was John Randolph (1727-1784)
Written in Williamsburg, Virginia about 1765
Published by T. Nicolson, Richmond, Virginia. 1793
The only known copy of this booklet is found in the Special Collections of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Lettuce

Lettuces, Lactuca,from lac, milk, they being of a milky substance, which is emitted when the stalk is broken. There is a common garden Lettuce which is sown for cutting young and mixing with other small salads, and is the Cabbage Lettuce degenerated, as all seed will do that is saved from .a lettuce that has not Cabbage close by. These may be sown at any season of the year. The Cabbage Lettuce should be sown every month to have a succession, and drawn, as all the sorts ought to be, to stand at different distances, and these should stand about ten inches asunder, and by replanting those that are drawn, they will head later than those which stand, by which means you may have a succession. This sort of Lettuce is the worst of all the kinds in my opinion. It is the most watery and flashy, does not grow to the size that many of the other sorts will do, and very soon runs to seed. When I Say the seed is to be sown every month, I mean only the growing months, the first of which February is esteemed, and August the last. In August you should sow your last crop, about the beginning of the month, and in October transplant them into a rich border, sheltered from the weather by a box with a lid, which should be opened every morning and closed in the evening, and in the month of February you will have fine loaf lettuces; a lettuce is a hardy plant, particularly the Dutch brown, and will stand most of our winters, if covered only with peas, asparagus haum, mats or straw. In order to have good seed, you should make choice of some of your best Cabbage, and largest plants, which will run up to seed, and should be secured by a stick, stuck into the ground; and different sorts should not stand together, for the farina will intermix and prejudice each other, and none but good plants should be together for seed; experience has shown that the bad will vitiate the good, and the seed from the plants that have stood the winter are best. The seed is good at two years old, and will grow at three, if carefully preserved.

The Siiesia, imperial white, and upright Cos Lettuce, should be sown in February or beginning of March, and should he drawn so as to stand, Miller says, eighteen inches at least distance from each other, but thinks two feet much better.

The Egyptian green Cos, and the Versailles upright Cos and Silesia, are most esteemed in England as the sweetest and finest, though the imperial wants not its advocates. I, for my own part, give it the preference for three reasons, the first is, that it washes by far the easiest of any; second, that it will remain longer before it goes to seed than any other, except the Dutch brown; and lastly, that it is the crispest and most delicious of them all.

The Dutch Brown, and green Capuchin are very hardy, will stand the winters best, and remain in the heat of summer three weeks longer than any other before they go to seed, which renders them valuable, though they are not so handsome or elegant a Lettuce as any of the former. They may be sown as the common garden Lettuce in the spring, and in August as before.

The Aibppo and Roman Lettuce cabbage the soonest of any, and may be propagated for that reason; the first is a very spotted Lettuce: Col. Ludwell gave me some of the seed, but it did not please me so well as the other more common sorts; all the seed on a stalk will not ripen at the same time, so you must cut your stalk when some of the first seed are ripe. Mice are very fond of the seed. Some Lettuces show a disposition to head without assistance^ these should not be touched, but where they throw their leaves back, they should be tied up, though that restrains them from growing to a great size. They will not flourish but in richl and, and if dunged, the dung should not be very low, because the root of a lettuce will not go down so low as the dung is commonly spitted into the ground. The time for gathering the seed is when the plants show their down. Transplanting, it is said, contributes towards cabbaging; but they will cabbage, from my experience, every bit as well without. By transplanting you retard the growth, and by that means may have a succession.

Tho Jefferson (1743-1824) Writes about Gardening

 

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

1809 September 22.  (Jefferson to Benjamin Rush).  "I am endeavoring to recover the little I once knew of farming, gardening Etc. and would gladly now exchange any branch of science I possess for the knolege of a common farmer. too old to learn, I must be contented with the occupation & amusement of the art. already it keeps me so much without doors that I have little time to read, & still less to write."

Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence & a civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social reformer, humanitarian, & educator & the founder of Dickinson College. Rush attended the Continental Congress. He served as Surgeon General of the Continental Army & became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, & clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Rush was a leader of the American Enlightenment & an enthusiastic supporter of the American Revolution. He was a leader in Pennsylvania's ratification of the Constitution in 1788. He opposed slavery, advocated free public schools, & sought improved education for women & a more enlightened penal system. As a leading physician, Rush had a major impact on the emerging medical profession. As an Enlightenment intellectual, he was committed to organizing all medical knowledge around explanatory theories, rather than rely on empirical methods.

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello.org website. 

Garden Walls by American Winslow Homer 1836-1910

Winslow Homer (American artist, 1836-1910)  Girl and Laurel 

Winslow Homer was an American artist. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19C America and a preeminent figure in American art. Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator.

"The sun will not rise or set without my notice, and thanks." Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Peach Blossoms
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Girl in a Garden
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Peach Blossoms
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Girls with Lobster
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) The Garden Wall

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) On the Fence

19C Women & Gardens - American Frederick Childe Hassam 1859-1935

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Poppies on the Isles of Shoals, Maine.

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Celia Thaxter in Her Garden.

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Garden, Isles of Shoals, Maine.
Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Reading in the Garden at Villers le Be 1889

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). After Breakfast. 1887

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Lilies. 1910

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Mrs Hassam in the Garden. 1896

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Reading. Date Unknown

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). In a French Garden. 1897

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). The Artist's Wife in a Garden Villiers le Bel. 1889

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Gathering Flowers in a French Garden. ca 1888

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Lady in the Park. 1897

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Woman Cutting Roses in a Garden. 1888-89

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). In the Garden. ca 1888-89

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Lady in Flower Garden. ca 1891

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935) Celia's Thaxter's Garden 1892
Childe Hassam (1859-1935) Geraniums
Childe Hassam (1859-1935) In the Park, Paris

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) Listening to the Orchard Oriole
Childe Hassam (1859-1935) Spring the Artist's Sister

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) The Garden Door
Childe Hassam (1859-1935) The Fisherman's Cottage

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) Mrs Hassam in the Garden 1888

Childe Hassam (1859-1935) Mrs Hassam at Villiers le Bel
Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Portrait of Edith Blaney with Garden behind Her, 1894. She is reading Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden, illustrated by Hassam, published in 1894.

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Garden 

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). An Outdoor Portrait of Miss Weir, 1909 

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935). The Sea