Hirschl & Adler Galleries Revisits America's Gothic Revival

NEW YORK CITY

:The middle years of the Nineteenth Century continue to challenge scholars of American decorative arts, who have never found a way to neatly sum up the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

Of the Nineteenth Century's many stylistic movements, the Gothic Revival remains one of the most complicated and cerebral: English and intellectual in its origins, initially suspect among American Protestants who thought it Papist, and, as the Nineteenth Century progressed, vigorously if obliquely intertwined with Romanticism in the fine arts.

As the more than 100 pieces of furniture, glass, ceramics, silver, brass, iron, textiles, paintings, prints and drawings on view in "In Pointed Style: The Gothic Revival in America, 1800-1860," at Hirschl & Adler Galleries through June 9, demonstrate, Gothic Revival design was either massive or delicate, voluptuous or chaste, coolly rational or feverishly imaginative. Some objects were grafted-together hybrids; others, organically whole. In this display, each choice, artistically excellent and best-of-form, helps dispel Gothic's sometimes lurid reputation.

Twelve institutional lenders - among them The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the New-York Historical Society, the National Academy Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and The Newark Museum - plus half a dozen private collectors contributed to "In Pointed Style," which takes up where David B. Warren and Katherine S. Howe's sweeping 1976 exhibition and catalog, "The Gothic Revival in America, 1830-1870," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, left off.

Given the challenges of mounting a loan exhibit like this in a private gallery, shows such as "In Pointed Style" are increasingly rare. In the past 18 years, Hirschl & Adler has organized six similar displays, beginning with "From Architecture to Object: Masterworks of the American Arts & Crafts Movement" in 1989-90 and "Neo-Classicism in America: Inspiration and Innovation, 1810-1840" in 1991.

Curated by Elizabeth Feld and Stuart P. Feld, with major contributions from David Warren, David Scott Parker, Eric Baumgartner, Joseph Goddu and Zachary Ross, "In Pointed Style" builds on the firm's deep appreciation for neoclassical arts and design. Even the exhibit's dateline has been stretched to show how classical and Gothic impulses often merged.

"For us, that is where the interest started," says Elizabeth Feld, gesturing to a circa Philadelphia box sofa of circa 1840-50, a neoclassical form Gothicized with the addition of trefoil carvings. Trefoil motifs and attenuated columns turn an essentially Restauration style New York sofa table into an appealingly understated Gothic form.

"The Gothic style was slow to reach America," Warren, retired director of Bayou Bend and associate director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, writes in his catalog essay. An "early transmitter" was Benjamin Henry Latrobe, an Englishman who emigrated in 1795, settling in Philadelphia. One of the Gothic Revival's lingering curiosities is that it was heavily concentrated in Philadelphia and New York. Gothic Revival furniture was hardly known in New England, though Gothic motifs were readily adopted by Massachusetts glassmakers.

Encouraged by the architect and designer Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892), who coined the term "pointed style," and his friend and colleague, Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), author of The Architecture of Country Houses,1850, the movement was particularly pronounced in the Hudson River Valley.

One of "In Pointed Style's" chief accomplishments is to bring together Davis's watercolor renderings of houses with examples of furniture created for these residences. Among the most spectacular of these pairings is Davis's moody, moonlit watercolor of Ericstan, built for John J. Herrick in Tarrytown, N.Y., between 1855 and 1859, and a monumental armchair designed by Davis for the home and probably made by Burns & Brother of New York. The watercolor is from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the chair, from Hirschl & Adler Galleries.

Many of Davis's Gothic Revival mansions have long since been demolished. Dramatically, a 42-inch-tall carved finial with traces of its original paint, on loan from David Scott Parker, is all that survives of Walnut Wood in Bridgeport, Conn., shown in a Davis watercolor from the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.

"Telltale markers help us sort classical furniture by city," says Elizabeth Feld, noting the difficulty of attributing Gothic pieces, few of which are signed or labeled. Marked pieces in "In Pointed Style" include a signed and inscribed J. & J.W. Meeks of New York bookcase lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art; a signed and inscribed Alexander Roux of New York davenport, an exceedingly rare American form; a signed and inscribed Charles A. Baudouine of New York dressing bureau and mirror; and a signed and dated Philadelphia sideboard by Joseph B. Barry. With its Egyptian and Gothic Revival touches, this largely neoclassical piece has provided a basis for identifying similar works in several museums.

In addition to signed pieces there are "signature" forms, without which no display of American Gothic Revival furniture would be complete. Among them, from the Peter and Juliana Terian Collection of American Art, is a hexagonal center table from a design by Davis. An octagonal library table is from a small group of tables, the most elaborate of which is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Perhaps because of its literary associations, Gothic Revival furniture was often intended for libraries.

An unintended accomplishment of "In Pointed Style" is to provide a fascinating retrospective look at Manhattan, whose architectural landscape is much altered from the mid-Nineteenth Century.

"Murray Hill, Fifth Avenue, New York: The Home of William C.H. Waddell," an oil on canvas of 1854, shows one of Davis's grandest Gothic villas in what was then a tranquil suburban setting and is now Midtown, with the dome of the Crystal Palace in the distance. More exotic is Samuel Finley Breese Morse's "Allegorical Landscape Showing New York University," on loan from the New-York Historical Society. The oil on canvas of 1835-36 is paired with Davis's watercolor study for New York University Chapel, elements of which Morse, with great artistic license, incorporated into his own work.

Almost all of the paintings in "In Pointed Style" are borrowed. It is a rare treat to see works such as Thomas Cole's companion canvases of 1838, "Past" and "Present," depicting the glories of the medieval past and its lingering romantic gloom, in the novel context of this display.

"Gothic motifs trickled down to generic levels of architecture and also to the decorative arts, appearing even on such disparate items as stoves, pickle bottles and spittoons," writes Warren.

To illustrate their point, the organizers sought out a spittoon, a marked earthenware example by the American Pottery Manufacturing Company of Jersey City, N.J.; Boston & Sandwich glass sugar bowls in the Gothic Arch pattern; ingrain carpet; a variety of lighting; and even a cast-iron bed. The way in which this decorative miscellany was incorporated into middle-class interiors is illustrated in Nicholas Biddle Kittell's "Portrait of Mr and Mrs Charles Augustus Carter," an 1846-47 oil on canvas lent by the Museum of The City of New York.

"In Pointed Style: The Gothic Revival in America, 1800-1860" is documented by an accompanying catalog, on sale in the gallery for $40, or $45 postpaid in the United States. At 21 East 70th Street, Hirschl & Adler Galleries is open Tuesday through Friday from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm, Saturdays from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm, or by appointment. Telephone 212-535-8810 or visit www.hirschlandadler.com.