William Sidney Mount was born on November 26, 1807 in Setauket, New York, along the north shore of Long Island. Following the death of his father, Mount moved with his mother and family to nearby Stony Brook, and eventually William went to live in Manhattan to learn the trade of sign painting. He also began to take lessons at the National Academy of Design, then considered one of the best art schools in the United States.
The American Scene
As a student, Mount tackled the typical subjects of aspiring artists of his time -- such as landscapes and historical or Biblical scenes -- yet he felt an increasing need to focus on depicting true American life. Furthermore, unlike most aspiring artists of his time, Mount did not opt to pursue European education. He was hoping to keep his work free from too much classical tradition and instead wanted to create a wholly American style. Homesick, he left Manhattan and went back to Long Island, which at that point was still quite rural. Mount then set off wandering, eager to explore and artistically capture what he found in his travels.
Mount’s resulting genre paintings of farmers at work and play, fishermen, fiddlers and the local people he knew so well brought a sense of identity to a young America, and initiated the country’s artistic tradition. Mount also was one of the first painters to depict African-Americans in a fairly sensitive and humanistic manner, particularly in portraits of African-American musicians like Right and Left and The Bone Player. Mount played the fiddle himself and had a keen sense of rhythm and technique, and he often encouraged any musicians posing for him to play their instruments, so that they would feel more at ease and their music would inspire his own work. Mount even earned a patent for a special violin he had constructed to be better-heard over rowdy hollering and boot-stomping at dances.
Kindred Spirit of Walt Whitman
Mount’s open-mindedness and love of his countrymen and women parallel that of another fellow wanderer of Long Island: poet Walt Whitman. Like Whitman, Mount also had a fascination for many subjects and ideas and filled notebooks with his writings and observations. And for Mount to have found inspiration in such simple scenes as men fishing for eels or farm boys playing or a barn dance shows his further similarity to Whitman, who observed in the epic 1855 Song of Myself:
The carpenter dresses his plank…the tongue of his foreplane/whistles its wild ascending lisp…The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoons are ready/The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches…The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel….
Later Years and Legacy
Poor health began to eventually slow Mount down, though at first he refused to let it affect his artistic sojourns and designed a special horse-drawn portable studio to take him around. His American vision proved successful and attracted several wealthy patrons, while the ability to reproduce many of his works through engravings and lithographs brought fame within the United States and beyond. Mount composed his paintings carefully, with meticulous attention to detail. While he also did formal portraiture, his real life genre scenes are considered to be the best examples of his talent. It is reported that Mount attended séances and had a special rapport with the great Dutch painter Rembrandt, who Mount claimed spiritually advised him on his artwork.
Mount died in November of 1868, just about a week away from his 61st birthday. His paintings can be found at numerous American museums, including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts -- Boston, The New York Historical Society and the Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages. Additionally, the site where Mount worked and lived -- The William Sidney Mount House in Stony Brook-- is a national American landmark.
Sources:
- I Hear America Singing: William Sidney Mount -- PBS.org
- The Riches of Sight: William Sidney Mount and His World -- Traditional Fine Art On-Line
