Jervis McEntee

A well-known 19th-century American artist, Jervis McEntee was a prominent member of the Hudson River School recognized for his expressive autumnal landscapes.

By Chelsea DeLay

I. Biography

Jervis McEntee was born in Rondout, New York on July 14, 1828. During the winter of 1850–51, the twenty-two-year-old McEntee studied under Frederic Edwin Church and the two maintained a life-long friendship. McEntee married Gertrude Sawyer in 1854 and three years later the couple settled in New York City, taking up residency in Richard Morris Hunt’s Tenth Street Studio Building._[1] The couple’s social life flourished in the downtown art community and they frequently were in the company of some of the biggest names in 19th-century American art; McEntee’s closest friends included Eastman Johnson, John George Brown, Sanford Gifford, John Ferguson Weir, and Worthington Whittredge.

McEntee and Gifford went on their first of several European sketching trips together in 1859; the small sketches produced on these excursions were often used as models for the final landscape paintings created in McEntee’s studio. His election to the National Academy of Design in 1861 and active membership in the Century Association cemented McEntee’s place within the ranks of the most distinguished 19th-century American artists. McEntee began to exhibit his work at the National Academy the same year he was elected membership; throughout his career, McEntee’s work was also shown at respected institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Paris Exposition of 1867, the Royal Academy, and the Boston Art Club.

In 1872, McEntee became consumed with a depression that initially stemmed from financial troubles; his unhappiness was apparent on his forty-fourth birthday, when he wrote in his diary, “Sometimes I doubt if an artistic temperament is compatible with the happiest and serenest life.”_[2] McEntee’s penchant for the American landscape reflected the influence from his early training under Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church, but a diary entry from 1874 explained the personal influences behind his artistic preference for autumnal scenes: “Perhaps what would mark my work among that of my brother artists is a preference for the soberer phases of Nature, the gray days of November and its leafless trees.”_[3]

After his wife passed away in 1878, McEntee continued to paint; he visited his sister, Lucy, in Nevada in 1881, spent five weeks camping in the Catskills in 1883, and accompanied Church on an eleven-week sketching trip throughout Mexico in 1889. When McEntee passed away in 1891, his funeral was attended by “a large number of prominent people” including John Weir and Worthington Whittredge._[4] Aside from his legacy as a prominent American landscape painter, McEntee also left behind a written record of his everyday involvement within Manhattan’s thriving art community during the 1870s and 1880s. Today, his diaries survive as a valuable glimpse into the life of a typical New York painter entailed during and after the Gilded Age._[5] His landscape paintings are featured in the permanent collections of important institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, the Century Association, Cincinnati Art Museum, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Farnsworth Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Academy of Design, New-York Historical Society, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and The Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

II. Chronology

• 1828 Born in Rondout, New York
• 1850–51 Studies under Frederic E. Church
• 1854 Marries Gertrude Sawyer
• 1858 Opens studio in New York City
• 1859 Makes European tour with Sanford R. Gifford
• 1861 Elected to the National Academy of Design
• 1863 Travels to the Adirondacks in September, visits Lake George, Lake Champlain and Lake Placid with Sanford Gifford and Richard William Hubbard
• 1868 Travels to Europe with his wife and Sanford Gifford; the trio spends the winter in Rome
• 1874 Receives invitation from the Lotus Club for life membership
• 1877 Visits Kanawha Falls in July
• 1878 Wife, Gertrude Sawyer, passes away
• 1879 Arrives to Easthampton on July 2; sketches in Montauk with John Ferguson Weir
• 1881 Travels West to Fort Halleck, Nevada to visit his sister, Lucy Andrews
• 1883 Spends five weeks traveling throughout the Catskills on a camping expedition
• 1889 Joins Frederic E. Church on an eleven-week sketching trip through Mexico
• 1891 Passes away in January, buried in Kingston, New York

III. Collections

• Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine
• The Brooklyn Museum, New York
• Century Association, New York, New York
• Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
• Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences of West Virginia, Charleston, West Virginia
• The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
• Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
• The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota
• The Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi
• National Academy of Design, New York, New York
• National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• New-York Historical Society, New York
• Newark Museum, New Jersey
• Peabody Institute of Art, Baltimore, Maryland
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey
• Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, New York
• St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, St. Johnsbury, Vermont
• The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA

IV. Exhibitions

• 1861–90 National Academy of Design, New York, New York
• 1862–82 Brooklyn Art Association, New York
• 1867 Paris Exposition, France
• 1872 The Royal Academy, London
• 1873–91 Boston Art Club, Massachusetts
• 1876–77, 1885, 1887 The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• 1880 The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
• 1997 Beacon Hill Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts; solo exhibition
• 2007 Debra Force Fine Art, Inc., New York, New York; solo exhibition

V. Memberships

• Century Association
• National Academy, 1861

VI. Suggested Resources

• 1. Falk, Peter H. “Jervis McEntee,” Who Was Who in American Art. Madison, Connecticut: Sound View Press, 1999.
• 2. Jervis McEntee papers, 1796, 1848-1905. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/jervis-mcentee-papers-7251.
• 3. McCoy, Garnett. “An Archivist’s Choice: Ten of the Best,” Archives of American Art Journal 19, no. 2, 1979.

VII. Notes

1. Garnett McCoy, “An Archivist’s Choice: Ten of the Best,” Archives of American Art Journal 19, no. 2 (1979): 5.
2. Jervis McEntee papers, 1796, 1848-1905. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution., np.
3. ibid.
4. The Kingston Daily Freeman, Friday Evening. (January 30, 1891): np. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/container/viewer/Obituaries–283091
5. McCoy 7.