The Mentor: American Landscape Painters, Vol. 1, Num. 26, Serial No. 26 — Reading Notes

From Portraiture to the Wild

Isham establishes a clear structural arc: American art began with “grotesque effigies” of colonial figures, then slowly expanded into history, allegory, and genre. Landscape painting did not appear as a dedicated pursuit until 1820, when Thomas Doughty abandoned his leather trade. The author uses this delayed start to frame the landscape school as a deliberate break from European tradition. He notes that Thomas Cole, the “real founder,” was an idealist who painted not for visual pleasure but to “awaken high, moral thoughts.” This philosophical bent, Isham argues, persisted even as later artists moved away from explicit allegory, shifting the interest to “the strangeness or beauty of their subject” rather than personal feeling.

The Painter as Explorer

Several profiles emphasize the artist’s role as an explorer of unknown terrain. Thomas Moran accompanied a government expedition to the West, sketching the Rockies with “a poetic imagination, coupled with an eye trained to note and remember the smallest details.” His paintings of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone were purchased by the U.S. government for $10,000 each. A. H. Wyant also ventured west, but his expedition ended in disaster: the leader treated him so brutally that he suffered a stroke of paralysis. Wyant then learned to paint with his left hand, producing what Isham calls “more perfect work” than before. These contrasting outcomes—Moran’s success, Wyant’s resilience—underscore the physical and psychological demands of capturing the American landscape.

Recurring Motifs: The Adirondacks and the Ohio Valley

Isham returns repeatedly to specific geographic settings. Wyant made studies of the Ohio Valley, “where no artist of any account had ever painted,” and later turned to the Adirondacks, where his “mystic coloring” hints at an unfulfilled ambition. George Inness, though less tied to a single region, is described as a master who influenced Wyant after the younger man saw his work in Cincinnati. The text also mentions Thomas Cole’s “Course of Empire” and “Voyage of Life” series, which use landscape as a stage for moral narrative. These recurring locations—the Ohio Valley, the Adirondacks, the Rocky Mountains—function as both setting and subject, shaping each painter’s technique and thematic concerns.

Structure and Sequence in the Mentor Format

The issue follows a consistent pattern: each painter receives a biographical sketch that moves from early training to key works and critical reception. Isham often highlights a turning point—Doughty’s career change, Cole’s arrival in New York, Wyant’s stroke—that reorients the artist’s trajectory. The prose is economical, relying on concrete details (Wyant’s apprenticeship to a harness maker, Moran’s family of nine artists) rather than abstract praise. This structure allows readers to compare the painters’ paths: some, like Moran, achieved quick success; others, like Wyant, struggled against physical and financial odds. The result is a compact survey that emphasizes process and perseverance over finished masterpieces.

Isham’s issue is best read as a series of linked portraits rather than a comprehensive history. The brevity of each profile—often just a few paragraphs—means that the reader is invited to notice patterns: the recurrence of engraving as a trade, the importance of European travel, the role of government expeditions. Pay attention to the moments when Isham quotes a painter directly, as in Wyant’s lament, “Had I but five years more in which to paint.” These rare glimpses of the artist’s voice offer the most intimate entry into the ambitions and frustrations that shaped American landscape painting.

That rainy afternoon, Isham’s sketches of the Hudson River School kept pulling me toward their quiet skies and wet earth. I closed the Mentor with a longing for that same stillness, and my hand drifted to a slim volume on the shelf. Treatise on landscape painting in water-colours by David Cox — Story, Setting & Ideas felt like the same rain falling somewhere gentler, teaching patience rather than grandeur.