Artist Biography & Facts

Thomas Bangs Thorpe

Thomas Bangs Thorpe was a portrait painter, graphic artist and illustrator. In addition, he practiced law, was a newspaper editor and journalist whose writings included articles on artists such as Charles Loring Elliott.

Thorpe was born in Westfield, Massachusetts and received his art training in New York City under John Quidor. In 1836, he quit college and traveled to Louisiana in where he remained until 1854, becoming editor of various newspapers including the "Concordia Intelligencer" (1843) and the New Orleans "Commercial Times (1845). He developed a reputation as a writer of Southern humor, and he also continued his painting career.

During the Mexican War in 1846, Thorpe traveled with the U.S. Army as a correspondent, recording the battles on the Rio Grande and in Monterrey, Mexico. His illustrations of the accounts of the war were included in his book, "Our Army on the Rio Grande". He was also a strong supporter of Zachary Taylor, who served as President during the Mexican War. Thorpe painted a full-length portrait of Taylor, executing the face from life and daguerreotype views of his own body (Thorpe's) to complete the painting. The Louisiana State Legislature voted to purchase the portrait.

Following the war, Thorpe was a surveyor and customs officer in New York City . He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and returned to New Orleans in 1862 as a Colonel under Benjamin Butler when northern troops occupied the city.

Thomas Thorpe died in 1878 in New York City. He had become city surveyor there after the Civil War and was also an officer in the Customs House.

Exhibitions for Thorpe included the American Academy of Fine Arts, New York (1883) and local exhibitions in New Orleans (1842-1851) including the St. Charles Hotel, J.B. Steel's bookstore, Phoenix House and the Lyceum Library.

Source:
John and Deborah Powers, "Texas Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists"
John Mahe, "Encyclopedia of New Orleans Artists"
Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"

THOMAS BANGS THORPE (1815-1878)

The painter, essayist, humorist and politician Thomas Bangs Thorpe (spelled Thorp until 1839) was born in Westfield, Massachusetts and lived in a succession of cities in his early years. Upon his father's death in 1818, Thorpe's widowed mother took her children to her father's home in Albany, New York, where her father was a whip maker by trade. In Albany, the young boy absorbed the Dutch culture which permeated that city, including the collection of Old Master paintings. In the mid-1820s, however, the family moved to New York City. A country boy at heart, Thorpe spent much of his spare time roaming the forests of Saratoga and enjoying the scenery along the Hudson River.

These boyhood experiences, along with a rich imagination, directed Thorpe toward painting. In about 1830, Thorpe and Charles Loring Elliott, who would become his life-long friend, began formal study with the eccentric artist John Quidor. The only figure painter in New York City at that time, Quidor was best known as a romantic painter who pioneered the use of American literary subjects in art. In 1828, Quidor produced his first literary picture, "Icabod Crane Pursued by the Headless Horseman" (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut), followed in 1832 by "The Money Diggers" (Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York). Quidor's appreciation of the comic and fondness for the humor of Washington Irving was to have a major influence on his young student's painting and writing.

Thorpe would later claim to have known Washington Irving's "Sketch Book" and "Knickerbocker's History" by heart as a youth. Encouraged by his mentor, Thorpe chose Irving's most famous character as subject matter for his first painting. "Icabod Crane" portrays the dance scene recounted in Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" from "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Esq."

Thorpe chose to illustrate the moment when Icabod arrived at the castle of the Mynheer Van Tassel to find it thronged with merrymakers: And now the sound of music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-bearded negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bowwith a motion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, and stomping his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.Icabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon hisvocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitas himself that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negros; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing grinningrows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous. The lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner (Irving in Darley, p.11).

Thorpe followed Irving's colorful descriptions with remarkably deliberate exactness, including such details as the emaciated appearance of Crane, who with "his huge ears," long snipe nose" and "spindle neck" might have been "mistaken for the genius of famine descending on the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield" (Irving in Darley, p. 4). Thorpe contrived the scene in a tightly composed and animated composition that must have taken formal cues in part from William Sidney Mount's dance scenes, as well as the caricatured figure subjects of Quidor. The marvelously contorted figure of Crane, dancing at center with the lovely Katrina Van Tassel, is surrounded by the "leathern-faced farmers, "withered dames," "buxom lasses" and amorous young men of Irving's tale.

These figures, along with the architectural details of the room, are bathed in strong, artificial light, while the black faces distinguished by "white eyeballs" and "rows of ivory" peeking in through the doors and windows are presented in shadow. Rich primary colors are employed throughout, while the use of white is confined to the coquettish figure of Miss Van Tassel. Crane is dressed in white stockings, blue breeches and jacket, and a bright red vest. One sees the gleam of his upturned "green glassy eyes" and his grotesquely caricatured feet. The arrangement of the interior space, the use of a window and door at the back and sides, the inclusion of still life elements in the foreground to create a sense of depth, as well as the strong and varied local colors, are all derived from Dutch precedents.

In addition to Thorpe, Irving's popular tale inspired other artists of the day as well. Henry Inman, Asher B. Durand and William Sidney Mount each produced paintings during the 1830s that were based on "The Sketch Book". Thomas Cole created landscapes of Sleepy Hollow, while a similar subject found in Irving's "Tale of a Traveler of 1824" inspired Charles Deas' "The Devil and Tom Walker" (1838).

In 1849, the American Art-Union sent an illustrated copy of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," designed and etched by Felix O. C. Darley, to its membership. One of Darley's etchings, though different in composition, deals with the same dance scene discussed hereWith marvelous self-confidence, the eighteen-year-old painter exhibited "The Dance" (known then as Icabod Crane) at the American Academy of Fine Arts in 1833, probably at the suggestion of Quidor (Cowdrey, p. 352).

For the balance of that year, Thorpe worked as a portrait painter in the New York business location of his stepfather, a bookbinder and gilder whom his mother had married in 1832. Lacking the funds to travel to Europe for further art study, Thorpe entered Wesleyan University in 1834. By September 1837, he was residing in Louisiana, where he remained until 1854, dividing his time between portrait painting, writing and editing.

An interest in politics developed at this time; Thorpe's letters to a New Orleans paper were published regularly. He became active in Whig politics in the 1840s and turned down that party's nomination for Congress. When the Mexican War broke out, he enlisted in the Army. Thorpe returned to New York City in 1854, where he practiced law for a short time, edited a newspaper and served as an officer in the Union expedition that captured New Orleans in 1862. He also served as Head of the Bureau of Public Works which restored the levee and drudged the harbor. Reconstruction politics soon attracted his attention, and Thorpe served as vice-president of the Republican party's first post-war state convention. In 1864, Thorpe became city surveyor of New York City; five years later, he was appointed chief clerk in the warehouse department of the New York Customs House, where he was employed until his death.

The author of several articles on American artists, including his childhood friend Charles Loring Elliott, Thorpe is best remembered today as the author of "The Big Bear of Arkansas", an 1841 sketch greatly admired by William Faulkner and widely considered the most famous yarn by a Southwestern humorist. Thorpe's first book, "Tom Owen, the Bee-Hunter", was published in 1839. Though Thorpe retained his loyalty to the ideals of the North-evidenced most clearly in his 1854 anti-slavery reform novel, "The Master House: A Tale of Southern Life", he nurtured a deep respect for the people of the Southwest, a regard which reveals itself in his writing. Many of Thorpe's stories, published en masse in "The Mysteries of the Backwoods" (1846) were translated into French, German and Italian.

Though he painted throughout his life, few of Thorpe's pictures are known. From 1859 until the spring of 1862, he exhibited works, including a large painting of Niagra Falls titled "Niagra As It Is", at the National Academy of Design in New York and other local venues. In 1862, he became one of the first officers of the new Brooklyn Art Association and exhibited four paintings with Southern subjects: "I'll Fight It Out on This Line"; "Palmettos Swamp - The Banks of the Mississippi"; "Red Snapper - the Game Fish of the Gulf of Mexico"; and "Country Wood".

Earlier that same year, Thorpe exhibited two paintings at the National Academy of Design, one a tribute to Irving titled "Washington Irving's Grave".

Thomas Bangs Thorpe died of Bright's disease in 1878.

Nancy Rivard Shaw, 2000© Robert M. Hicklin Jr., Inc.

References:

"American Humorists, 1800-1950, Part II," Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 11. Detroit: A Brucolli Clark Book, Gale Research Company/Book Tower, 1982.

"Antebellum Writers in New York and the South," Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 3, Detroit: A Brucolli Clark Book, Gale Research Company/Book Tower, 1979.

Cowdrey, Mary Bartlett. "American Academy of Fine Arts and American Art Union Exhibition Record, 1816-1852". New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1953.

"Encyclopedia of New Orleans Artists, 1718-1918". New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1987.

Falk, Peter Hastings. "Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975", vol. III. New York: Sound View Press, 1999.

"Illustrations of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow", Designed and Etched by Felix O. C. Darley, for the Members of the American Art Union. New York: The American Art Union, 1849.

Irving, Washington. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Esq., first published in 1820 and reprinted in numerous editions since that time. Citations in this essay were taken from Felix Darley's illustrated version of the story.

"The National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826-1860", vol. 2. New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1943.

Naylor, Maria, ed. "The National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1861-1900", vol. 2. New York: Kennedy Galleries, Inc., 1973.

THOMAS BANGS THORPE (1815-1878)

Though he enjoyed success as a painter of portraits and still life, Thomas Bangs Thorpe was best known in his own time as an author of Southwestern humor. The son of a circuit Methodist preacher, Thorpe received a public school education and, by 1830, had begun art lessons with John Quidor in New York. During this time, he made the acquaintance of the artist Charles Loring Elliott, who became a lifelong friend, as well as the sculptor John Henri Isaac Browere. Over the next few years, the young artist also sought instruction from the portraitists Samuel Lovett Waldo and William Jewett, as well as John Trumbull. He first exhibited at the American Academy of the Fine Arts in 1833.

Thorpe briefly attended Wesleyan University beginning in 1834. When the harsh New England winters began to affect his health, college friends from Mississippi suggested the fledgling artist and writer move south. Thorpe began his exodus in 1837, eventually settling north of Baton Rouge, and pursued itinerancies painting portraits and fancy pieces. In Still Life with Grapes, Watermelon and Peaches dating to 1839, Thorpe demonstrates his awareness of trends in classic seventeenth century Dutch still life art, especially the Haarlem school. He also began to write antebellum anecdotes, including "Tom Owen, The Bee Hunter" (1839) and "The Big Bear of Arkansas" (1840). Over the next decade, Thorpe's activity as an artist declined as he became increasingly involved in the writing and editing of various Whig newspapers in Louisiana. During the Mexican War, he accompanied General Zachary Taylor's army to Mexico and later penned his reminiscences.

As sectional tensions increased, Thorpe returned to New York in 1853. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he published multiple volumes of humor, picaresque stories, reminiscences and one novel, The Master's House: A Tale of Southern Life. His last major show as an artist came in 1860 when his monumental Niagara As It Is was displayed in New York.

Despite his affection for the South, Thorpe enlisted with federal forces and returned to New Orleans in 1862 as a member of the staff of occupying General Benjamin Franklin Butler. In this capacity, he participated in the convention that rewrote the Louisiana constitution. Once back in New York, he resumed his literary and journalistic career, and held various posts at the New York Custom House from 1869 until the time of his death.

The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
thejohnsoncollection.org