ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART CHOSEN AS RECIPIENT 

OF HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL ARTIST

 WILLIAM HART’S PERSONAL COLLECTION

The Albany Institute of History & Art (AIHA) is in the process of cataloging a recent gift of more than 500 items from the personal collection of Hudson River School artist, William Hart (1823-1894), including prints, sketchbooks, a hand-written autobiography and lecture notes.  Examples from the collection are currently on display in the Entry Point Gallery on the second floor of the Albany Institute.

William Hart was a second-generation landscape painter of the Hudson River School.  Born in Scotland, William and his brother James M. Hart (1828-1901), also an artist, settled in Albany with their parents in 1831.  William began his career as a carriage and ornamental painter, later became an itinerant portrait painter and then turned to landscape painting.  Hart taught at Albany Academy from 1848-1851, before moving to New York City, where he became one of the first artists to occupy the 10^th Street Studio Building and later went on to become the first president of the Brooklyn Art Association and in 1865, an organizer of the American Society of Watercolorists.

Hart focused his subject matter on distant pasture scenes, seascapes and rural life.  These landscape paintings show how man altered the land by building towns and logging the land, but formed a positive impression overall.  Hart’s sketches were made in the field rather than the studio, which he explained as “essential in a conscious discovery of the power and freshness of a location” and the ability to secure its “strange and subtle sentiment.”

Hart’s landscape works have long been admired in several upstate New York and New York City museums, but until now, this collection has remained in the possession of his descendants.  This collection was the gift of Janice Hart White (1918-2002), great granddaughter of William Hart.  Both the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts were potential recipients of the gift, but Ms. White’s final choice was the Albany Institute of History & Art.