New Hampshire (White Mountain Landscape)

Label

Regis François Gignoux completed New Hampshire in 1864, roughly thirty years before George Inness painted In the Gloaming, which hangs in an adjoining gallery. Both landscapes suggest a reverence for nature—but what aspects of nature does each highlight? How do they differ in subject and style, and how do both works reflect their cultural and historical contexts? Below are some points of comparison.

The Gignoux’s large size and sharp contrasts between light and shadow accentuate the drama of this panoramic, vertiginous, and somewhat embellished vista, which is likely a synthetic view based on the Great Gulf in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. Adding to its theatricality, note that we as viewers seem to be precipitously suspended mid-air above the canyon. The more broadly painted, nearly monochromatic Inness offers instead an intimate twilight view of an unremarkable meadow that was probably near the artist’s home in Montclair, New Jersey. We can barely discern three figures, a wooden structure to the left, and perhaps sheep to the right.

Gignoux’s New Hampshire is as operatic and expansive as Inness’s In the Gloaming is quiet and introspective. With its prominent eagle soaring through the canyon and seemingly endless view into the distance, New Hampshire can be viewed as a reflection of the nation’s Manifest Destiny—the then-popular belief that the United States had a God-given right to expand its borders westward and beyond.  Could Gignoux’s lifting clouds and sunlit vista have also been alluding to the Civil War, then in its final stages? With remote battle scenes being notoriously difficult and dangerous to capture on paper or canvas, perhaps even a New England landscape could serve as a poignant expression of national hopes and anxieties.

Inness’s In the Gloaming reflects his deep interest in spiritualism and a growing late 19th-century fascination with alternative religious traditions and the life of the mind. As a spiritualist, Inness believed in the continuity between material and spiritual realms. Figures and forms almost dissolve in his mysterious half-light paintings, transcending physicality to appear as vague recollections.

From the 2019 exhibition American Art, Colonial to Modern, curated by Barbara J. MacAdam, Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art

One might wonder why this painting inspired by New Hampshire’s White Mountains appears in a thematic section exploring westward expansion. The artist was almost surely attempting to compete in size and drama with the popular, showstopping paintings and photographs of the American West at the time. Here, Régis François Gignoux accentuates the drama of the White Mountains, which were becoming a major tourist destination, and features a bald eagle, symbol of the young nation, soaring through the shadowed canyon toward a seemingly limitless horizon. This motif echoes the notion of manifest destiny that was playing out through the nation’s expansionist interests in both the West—site of the “Indian Wars”—and Latin America during this time.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

WRIT 5, Expository Writing, Carl Thum, Winter 2013

COLT 73, 101, Spectacle and Exhibitionism, Michelle Warren, Winter 2012

WRIT 7, Religion and Literature: Revisioning the Invisible, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Democracy in America, Wendy Piper, Winter 2015

GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Abigail Neely, Winter 2015

GEOG 7.13, New England’s People and their Landscapes, Past and Present, Abigail Neely, Spring 2015

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2015

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness: Vox Clamantis in Deserto, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2015

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2016

WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2016

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Geography 7.02, Into the Wild, Coleen Fox, Spring 2023

Geography 40.05, African and African American Studies 28.10, Race, Space, and Nature, Elizabeth Shoffner, Summer 2024

Exhibition History

A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven: Artists in the White Moutains, 1830-1930, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 10-October 30, 1988.

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Art, Colonial to Modern, Israel Sack Gallery and Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-September 12, 2021.

American Viewpoints: Painting and Sculpture from the Hood Museum of Art, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California, May 5-August 31, 2003.

Brooklyn Art Association, Brooklyn, New York, 1864 (Gignoux's "New Hampshire").

Exposition Universelle, Paris, France, 1867 (Gignoux's "Mt. Washington").

Goupil's Gallery, New York, New York, January 1865 (Gignoux's "New Hampshire").

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 7, 2010.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 12, 1990-June 1, 1993.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 2, 2009-November 2, 2009.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 26, 1996-June 22, 1997.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-April 28, 2003.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 19, 2003-May 8, 2007.

The New England Image: 19th Century Landscapes from the College Collection, Carpenter Galleries, Datrtmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 14-September 26, 1982, no. 13.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5–July 22, 2022.

Publication History

New Hampshire Images, Spring 1997, ill. p. 14.

Rebecca Bailey, What Is There to Teach About Art?, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Volume 88, Number 8, May 1996, South Burlington: The Lane Press Inc., 1996, pp.36-45, ill. p. 38.

Robert L. McGrath and Barbara J. MacAdam, "A Sweet Foretaste of Heaven", Artists in the White Mountains 1830-1930, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1988, p. 63, no. 24, ill.

Barbara J. MacAdam, "American Paintings in the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College", Antiques Magazine, 1985, Illustrated in color, p. 1024.

Treasures of the Hood Museum, New York: Hudson Hill Press, 1985, p. 114, no. 102.

Jacquelynn Baas, "From 'a few curious Elephant Bones' to Picasso', Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, September 1985, Hanover: Dartmouth College, 1985, pp. 37-43, ill. p. 40.

The New England Image: 19th Century Landscapes from the College Collection, Dartmouth College, 1982, pp. 36-37, no. 13., ill.

Illustrated in one of late 19th c. popular magazines.

Robert L. McGrath, Gods in Granite: The Art of The White Mountains of New Hampshire, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001, 216 p., color plate no. 5.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 50, no. 29.

Catalogue of Paintings Drawings Statuary Etc., of the Art Deparment in the Great Central Fair, 2nd Ed., Philadelphia:n. p., 1864.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 121, ill. plate no. 52; p. 60, ill. fig. 9.1.

Provenance

Possibly owned by Charles Christmas (the artist's father-in-law), 1867; possibly owned by A.T. Stewart, 1879; possibly in the collection of the Minneapolis Art Museum, dates unknown; M. R. Schweitzer Gallery, New York, New York; sold to Irving S. Manheimer, New York, by January 31, 1961; lent to present collection, 1961 [arranged by M.R. Schweitzer (dealer), New York], New York; bequeathed to Mrs. Irving S. Manheimer, at the time of her husband's death, 1980; sold to present collection, 1984 (arranged by M.R. Schweitzer, New York, New York)].

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