Lot Essay
Until recently Conrad Wise Chapman was best known for a body of work he produced while serving in three major theatres of the Civil War as a volunteer in the Confederate army. Historians and history buffs in general know his depictions of Rebel encampments and the defensive works of Charleston harbor because they have appeared frequently as illustrations in publications on the War Between the States. New scholarship and the sale of a major collection of previously little-known work, however, now reveal the artist to be an important figure in nineteenth-century landscape painting who brought a fresh, European-trained sensibility to subjects that appear rarely in American painting: the people and landscape of Mexico. Indeed, Chapman was the first American artist of consequence to live and paint in Mexico.
The Valley of Mexico, painted late in Chapman's life, is an especially fine example of the work he produced in a country he loved.
Born in Washington, D.C., where his father, John Gadsby Chapman was completing his Baptism of Pocahontas for the Capitol rotunda, Conrad was raised and trained in Rome. The atmosphere and high-keyed tonality of his landscapes have been compared to Corot's Italian oil sketches while Chapman's brushwork and horizontal formats appear to link him with the Macchiaioli who painted in Tuscany in the 1860s onward.
After his service in the war, Chapman traveled to Mexico to join a large group of ex-Confederates who were encouraged by Emperor Maximilian I to colonize lands east of Mexico City. When this project failed Chapman remained in the country long enough to sell enough work to earn his passage back to Italy. A commission for a painting of a tile factory on the edge of the city led to a more ambitious project to paint a mural of the historic Valley of Mexico. He made numerous field studies for this commission, many, we may presume, en plein air.
In his rambles about the countryside to find the viewpoint and details - native flora, peasant fieldworkers - to fill the foreground, he came to a spot that provided an elevated view of the valley, the Olivar de los Padres (The Priest's Olive Garden). He kept the field sketches and tracings he made from earlier pictures for many years. The Valley of Mexico of 1897, executed during an extended sojourn in Mexico from his middle years onward, is no doubt based on both memory and the earlier work he kept close at hand, and appears to be a journey back to that olive grove. His artistic activity towards the end of the century was mostly devoted to revisiting the subjects of early years. But this Valley of Mexico, in its luminosity and sweep of vast spaces, projects a youthful vitality.
Ben Bassham, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Kent State University.
September 2005.
The Valley of Mexico, painted late in Chapman's life, is an especially fine example of the work he produced in a country he loved.
Born in Washington, D.C., where his father, John Gadsby Chapman was completing his Baptism of Pocahontas for the Capitol rotunda, Conrad was raised and trained in Rome. The atmosphere and high-keyed tonality of his landscapes have been compared to Corot's Italian oil sketches while Chapman's brushwork and horizontal formats appear to link him with the Macchiaioli who painted in Tuscany in the 1860s onward.
After his service in the war, Chapman traveled to Mexico to join a large group of ex-Confederates who were encouraged by Emperor Maximilian I to colonize lands east of Mexico City. When this project failed Chapman remained in the country long enough to sell enough work to earn his passage back to Italy. A commission for a painting of a tile factory on the edge of the city led to a more ambitious project to paint a mural of the historic Valley of Mexico. He made numerous field studies for this commission, many, we may presume, en plein air.
In his rambles about the countryside to find the viewpoint and details - native flora, peasant fieldworkers - to fill the foreground, he came to a spot that provided an elevated view of the valley, the Olivar de los Padres (The Priest's Olive Garden). He kept the field sketches and tracings he made from earlier pictures for many years. The Valley of Mexico of 1897, executed during an extended sojourn in Mexico from his middle years onward, is no doubt based on both memory and the earlier work he kept close at hand, and appears to be a journey back to that olive grove. His artistic activity towards the end of the century was mostly devoted to revisiting the subjects of early years. But this Valley of Mexico, in its luminosity and sweep of vast spaces, projects a youthful vitality.
Ben Bassham, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Kent State University.
September 2005.