Demystifying George Harvey

By Chris Kemble

I recently inherited a painting, a gift to my mother decades ago. Hidden in a corner of my parents’ bedroom, I had never seen it before. The curious title on the back says The Terrace of the Artist’s at Hastings, NY. The artist and date were unreadable, and I thought the apostrophe might be in error. I was sure it was Hudson River School.

The Painting’s Provenance

First thing, I asked some experts and they said “We don’t think it is by a Hudson River School artist … We are also confused, as the scene depicted is not Hastings-on-Hudson. Wondering whether it may be Hastings, England?” Wrong and wrong! Other challenges were ambiguities and errors as I made inquiries. I will try to set the record straight.

When the painting was cleaned, out popped “G. Harvey 1845.” George Harvey was an established, prolific and some say famous English artist. A miniaturist painter in his early years, he produced 400 tiny portraits in a two-year span. He was a young National Academy of Design member, gave art lectures for years, and is viewed as an important forebearer of the Luminism movement. Harvey’s works are permanently represented in at least six public collections. He is sometimes confused with two other George Harvey landscape painters, one Scottish and the other his own American nephew. Many references confuse these three Harveys and published mistaken art attributions are common!  The Hasting’s Harvey was born about 1800 in Tottenham England and died there too about 1878.

Harvey referred to himself in the third person in lectures, writings, and in another painting called The Shady Seat at the Artist’s at Hastings. So, the apostrophe makes the title understood as The Terrace of the George Harvey Estate at Hastings, NY. When first examining the uncleaned painting, I wondered what the heck the line in the distance across the water could be. I was amazed when I learned about the 4,000-foot Piermont Pier three miles north of Hastings-on-Hudson, and on the opposite side of the river. Built in 1839, the pier was the eastern terminus of the Erie Railroad. Steamboats shuttled passengers and freight twenty-six miles up from New York City and docked there.

Harvey bought property in Hastings in 1834, with published sizes for his property ranging from 15 to 50 acres. I measure it at about 25 acres. As evidenced by three maps from the time of Harvey’s ownership, it appears he initiated surveying and mapping of his property. A map notation indicates subdivided lots sales started with him. His estate was significantly subdivided within a few years. 

The Icons Tell the Story

The key map is the Property of Mr. G. Harvey with three marginal icons. I will call the top icon South House and the middle icon, with the triple-chimney, North Cottage. The perspective shown in the bottom icon matches the painting exactly: you can clearly see the terrace wall with two planters on the left, a pillar with one planter on the right, with a view down the “shady walk” past the triple-chimney cottage to the dock with an anchored steamboat. Both the icon and the painting show the pier-line across the water. This map is looking east and the footprints of the two house/cottage icons show they are also viewed looking east. This is bolstered by the five and six steps shown; this is the downhill riverside.

Surprisingly, Harvey may have illustrated this map and drawn in the estate details himself! Logically it was made before 1847, during his tenure. The map was not filed until 1849, but late filing is not unusual. The illustration quality is high and the handwriting is similar to Mr. Harvey’s. And it appears to be hand-drawn without proof of a surveyor’s precision. In any case, the bottom icon and painting are identical views – one may have inspired the other. 

A Steamboat Dock

The distance to a dock near the present Hastings-on-Hudson train station would be about one-quarter mile. Showing a docked steamboat, the painting helps rewrite the understanding of the Hastings waterfront. Several times I was told Hastings did not have regular ferry service, only commercial shipping from factories on the waterfront, that the docks were for commercial marble and stone shipping with some boats bringing in provisions.

Scholars at the Hudson River Maritime Museum, Kingston, NY, call the ship shown typical, i.e., a “small passenger/freight sidewheel steamer,” and estimate “perhaps some 40 steamboats running on the river at various times by the mid-1840s.” 1868 and 1872 maps show a massively developed Hastings waterfront and, just north of the Hudson River Steam Sugar Refinery, another “Steam Boat Dock.” Clearly Hasting’s riverfront was a dynamic place and ferries made many stops.

Harvey’s Two Houses

Both North Cottage and South House are mysteries. When Harvey bought his property, it was described as having two docks and a quarry. No mention is made of a house. Harvey records that he “built a cottage after my own plan,” which he called Woodbank. The Property of G. Harvey estate map and painting make it irrefutable that the North Cottage was on his property and no one disputes Harvey owned the South House. So how did Harvey get two houses? And which is Woodbank? For years it was believed Woodbank morphed into the Marble Castle, but the research says otherwise.

Hastings’ historian Karolyn Wrightson wrote that Harvey constructed his cottage “near the river.” North Cottage is near the river, South House is up the private road and three terraces uphill. Later property owner William Lorton documents that the artist’s cottage and the massive main building are not the same.  Multiple sources say Woodbank was Elizabethan architecture, which makes sense as Harvey was English. Neither house shows diagonal beams, dormer windows or overhanging floors. But North Cottage has an Elizabethan-style pillared porch and very characteristic high chimneys.

The Hastings Historical Society found an interesting note from 1981 in their files. In 1941 the John Gondek family bought what was known then as the Marble Castle. They had research on the origins of the house, which was unfortunately mislaid, indicating that the house was very old. Their research traced the house back to the Commission of Forfeiture after the Revolution, when property was seized and given to the Patriots. According to this 1981 note, the original house was owned by Philip Livingston, an early New York State legislator.

But the claim that the house itself is the same is questionable; it appears it may have been rebuilt twice close by. South House, the William Lorton house, and the Marble Castle have different footprints, different compass orientations, and plot to different locations. The Lorton house carriage circle abuts the Aqueduct, while the Castle was on Warburton Avenue. A chain of owners through the years owned a house on that acre and may have proclaimed the Harvey connection; white marble and materials may have been repurposed, but the turreted Castle appears to be the third iteration of South House.

Perhaps Harvey lived in a dilapidated South House while building Woodbank, which I believe is the North Cottage. What is more logical than George Harvey painting the cottage he designed and built himself! On an 1868 map, the footprints of North Cottage and South House are gone.

In conclusion, this painting is classic Hudson River School (HRS) juxtaposing man, nature and technology in pastoral settlement coexistence.  The 1845 date makes it first generation HRS.  Showing the Hudson with people lounging, reading and playing music evokes characteristic HRS romanticism.  Harvey shared with other HRS artists like Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand the view of America as a second creation of Edenic qualities, and the settling of the continent as divine intervention. 

Notes:

Members of the Society can read about William B. Lorton, a later property owner from 1865 to 1874, in the Winter 2021 issue of The Hastings Historian. The article is an excerpt of Leroy and Jean Johnson’s Troubadour on the Road to Gold, an excellent work that details Lorton’s California gold rush adventures.

Seeking a picture of an 1835 Harvey watercolor titled An Elizabethan Cottage on the Hudson. Leave a comment if you have a lead.

The Society is excited by the many new facts uncovered related to George Harvey’s Hastings residence. We thank Chris for sharing his research. A footnoted version of this article is in the Society’s files.

Special thanks to Natalie Barry.

Chris Kemble is married and lives in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. An army brat, he grew up at West Point, NY. He worked for years in the printing industry. He is a competitive cross-country skier, long track speed skater, and mountain bike racer.