Schwarz Gallery - Catalog 75 - New Jersery Remembered: Seventy-fifth Anniversary Exhibition



Catalogue Cover Title page Copyright/Colophon Preface & Acknowledgements Introduction (1 2 3 4 ) Thumbnail Images Plates [ sort by Artist ] Birch, Thomas Constable, William Gullager, Christian Lawrence, Unknown after Charles Bird Lawrence, Attributed to Charles Bird Eddy, Oliver Tarbell Winner, William E. Bonnell, William C. Bonfield, George Robert Carmiencke Johann Hermann Humphreys, Charles Spencer Toronto Jersey Blue Trotter, Newbold Hough Hamilton, James Beach at Atlantic City In the Inlet, Atlantic City Richards, Frederick de Bourg Beach Scene Atlantic City Beach Scene with Sailboats Herzog, Hermann Richards, William Trost New Jersey Shore Waves Crashing Against the Shore Bonfield, William van de Velde Lewis, Edmund Darch Cape May, New Jersey Looking up the Beach, Cape May Jersey Coast Beach Scene Essig, George Emerick Harbor View w/Sailboats & Steamers Jersey Shore Dunes Barnegat Lighthouse Atlantic City Windmill and Sailboat Willcox, William H. Smith, Xanthus Cape May Beach Atlantic City, New Jersey Three Figures w/Rowboat, A.C., N.J. Waller, Frank Church, Morristown Red Foliage with Cows Grazing The Beach Afternoon, Morristown House and Garden, Morristown Beale, Joseph Boggs Judson, William Lees Weber, Carl Clark, Frederick H. Holloway, Edward Stratton Freedley, George Harrison Atlantic City from the Bay Beach Scene, Atlantic City Morris, George Spencer King, Paul Bernard Patterson, Amelia Rumsey D’Ascenzo, Nicola Koehler, Paul R. Cameron, Peter Caledon Absecon Island, New Jersey Sandhills @ Ventnor: Atlantic City Island Sunset over the Salt Meadows Gloaming on Tuckerton Salt Marshes Creek and Marsh, Absecon Island Farley, Richard Blossom At the Seashore Ocean City, New Jersey People on the Beach Cain, Cecilia A. Sorver, J. D. Griffith, Ella N. Krick, David M. Schoonover, Frank E. Howard, Edith Lucile Sunset on the Jersey Marshes Beach Scene Gechtoff, Leonid Licini, Frank Lie, Jonas Kelly, Leon Sailboat Race, Harvey Cedars, NJ Barnegat Bay, Fishery Blackburn, Morris Atkinson Campbell, Hugh H. Chard, Daniel	Charles Spencer Humphreys (1818–1880) Toronto Oil on canvas, 25 × 30 inches Signed at bottom center: “Humphreys.Camden. N.J.” Inscribed at bottom: “TORONTO.was sired by an imported English thorough-bred HORSE,and/his Dam was a cross of the French Canadian & English thorough-bred stock.” Charles Spencer Humphreys was born in Moorestown, where his father owned a general store. He surfaced in Camden in May 1837, where he placed a notice in a newspaper advertising himself as a house, sign, and ornamental painter. He shared a studio with his brother Richard Humphreys (1803–1872) from 1840 to 1844 and around that time married Caroline Fetters, with whom he had five children. The majority of Humphreys’s surviving works represent horses, the earliest known example being a lettered sign made for the Mansion House in Cape May (now the Cape May Historical Museum, Cape May Court House). He is thought to have decorated harnesses and breast straps for a Camden harness manufacturer and also painted wagons. Humphreys made paintings for the interior of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Camden in 1850. During the early 1850s he began to paint the subjects for which he became famous, portraits of specific racehorses posed against landscape backgrounds such as Jersey Blue, or being driven by their owners or trainers such as Toronto. Humphreys retired to Long Branch, where he died. Horseracing enthusiasts held Humphreys’s work in high esteem. Some of his paintings were reproduced as color lithographs, and his portraits of horses and designs for carriages reportedly were included in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. His death was reported in both American and foreign newspapers.¹ Both of these paintings pertain to one of the most popular sporting activities in the United States during the late nineteenth century: trotting or harness racing. The sport had its origins in the late eighteenth century, when farmers would race across country roads to determine who had the fastest horse. Tracks were built during the early 1800s, and harness racing gradually became a popular national pastime, reaching its zenith in the last half of the century. The Standardbred horse was developed specifically to excel at harness racing; the breed’s name was derived from the fact that such horses had to meet a set standard time to qualify for the customary harness racing distance of one mile.² Humphreys’s patrons were probably wealthy horseracing enthusiasts who owned the horses represented in his paintings. Evidently they admired the artist’s naïve, non-academic style, and appreciated his accurate representation of equine anatomy and various nuances of the meticulously delineated carriages and trappings. This artistic style was certainly appropriate for representing a sport like harness racing, which, in contrast to thoroughbred racing, was an egalitarian sport that appealed to the masses. Humphreys often used lettered inscriptions, such as the one across the bottom of Toronto, to identify and provide information about the horses; these reflect his experience as a sign painter. A note in the Schwarz Gallery’s files records that Toronto was originally owned by the president of the Belmont Driving Club, who displayed it in the sitting room in the front of his house on Green Street in Philadelphia. According to Chester’s Complete Trotting and Pacing Record (1884), Toronto was a brown gelding who placed sixth at Fleetwood Park, New York, on June 19, 1874, second at Clyde, New York, on September 4, 1879, and third at New Hunting Park, Philadelphia, on May 1, 1882.³ It is thus likely that Humphreys executed this painting sometime during the late 1870s or early ’80s. Despite Toronto’s distinguished racing record, Humphreys represented him on a recreational ride with his owner or trainer, who sits rigidly erect in profile on a two-wheeled carriage. In similar paintings Humphreys showed race horses driven by people in more formal dress, such as The Trotter (c. 1860, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), or ridden by celebrated jockeys in specific races such as Budd Doble Driving Goldsmith Maid at Belmont Driving Park (1876, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). In such trotting subjects Humphreys consistently depicted the horses’ legs in the same position, and he habitually represented small clouds of dirt rising from the ground to suggest speed. (continues with plate 12) Copyright ©2005 The Schwarz Gallery

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