The Long Island Museum Presents William Sidney Mount: The Education of an Artist August 28, 2010 through June 13, 2011

William Sidney Mount (1807-1868) was the best-known genre painter in the United States in the first half of the 19th century.  Since the sources of his fame – scenes depicting country folk in country settings – were rustic in nature, Mount came to be thought of as a simple, uncultured “down-home” type, who presumably had invented his own style and technique.  But nothing could be farther from the truth. In 1826, at the age of 18, William enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York, which offered the best art education available in the United States.  There he worked alongside artists who had studied in Europe and was taught by instructors who had trained there.  Mount’s schooling introduced him to European works of art and allowed him to make the acquaintance of collectors whose galleries included European examples.  He also collected books of European engravings and laboriously copied them into notebooks and journals. After his formal academic training, Mount continued to spend considerable time in New York City and its art world, dividing his time between there and Long Island.  He befriended other artists, actively participated in art organizations and attended exhibitions, enabling him to keep abreast of changes in artistic techniques and styles and, at the same time, to maintain important business and social contacts and establish new ones.  He also typically bought his artist’s materials in Manhattan – pre-pulverized pigments and even pre-stretched and pre-primed canvases.    Mount privately continued to study art and by the end of his life had amassed a sizable library of academic and historical writings by American and European art authorities.  The English art critic John Ruskin, who advocated a painstakingly detailed rendition of an artist’s natural surroundings, had a particularly significant influence on Mount in his later years. Throughout the gallery, paintings by William Sidney Mount have been paired with works that helped to inspire and inform them.  French, English and Dutch etchings, engravings of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and paintings, and works of other American artists all had a tremendous influence upon Mount, America’s first great genre painter.