WILLIAM HART

William Hart was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1823. At the age of nine he was brought to the United States by his parents, who made their home in Albany, New York. William was apprenticed to a coachmaker. It was as a decorator of panels in the shop of this mechanic that Mr. Hart made his first public appearance as a painter. For several years he continued in the same modest business. Soon success encouraged him to widen the field of his labors, and he began to sketch from Nature and to decorate window-shades. For several years he traveled throughout Michigan as an itinerant painter doing portraits before going to Europe to study. In his eighteenth year he was graduated as a portrait painter. His prices were five dollars a head; his studio was in his father's wood-shed in the neighboring city of Troy. His first fee of five dollars, he says, made him feel prouder than he has ever felt since on similar occasions. Yet, as the production of every portrait consumed several days, he did not get rich fast. He began to try his brush on landscapes and to sell them for cash or barter.

From 1852 on he kept a studio in New York City, working out of the 10th Street Studio Building from 1859 to 1870. He became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1855 and a full member in 1858. He moved to Brooklyn and became the first president of the Brooklyn Academy of Design in 1865. He was also a founder of the American Watercolor Society.

From the dates of his White Mountain views, he must have traveled in the area many times between 1859 and 1870. Chocorua Peak was engraved by the Boston engraver William Wellstood in 1861, giving Hart's work a wide audience. He exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum and at the National Academy of Design throughout his active life as an artist. He also exhibited in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. Albany, NY, was an important art center in the mid-19th century, and Hart's work was exhibited at the studio of Erastus Dow Palmer in that city in 1864 as a benefit for the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

His work has been preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as at many other museums.

http://whitemountainart.com/Biographies/bio_wmh.htm

Entered by: Michael Clayton, Print Study Room Staff, 2/3/06