Samuel Colman was 19th century painter, draftsman, designer, watercolorist, and printmaker. He is best known as a member of the Hudson River School and a painter of grand landscapes. His most recognizable work is Storm King on the Hudson (1866), but he was a prolific and varied artists who worked in a variety of styles and media, including etching.
Colman was born in 1832, in Portland, Maine into a family of Swedenborgian booksellers. His father was a publisher best remembered by bibliophiles for publishing Hyperion, by a then-unknown Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His mother was a prolific author and editor of children's stories, particularly the "Lulu" series.
More importantly for Colman's future career, his uncle William was the properieter of Colman's Literary Rooms, a New York bookseller that doubled as an art gallery. In 1825 the store would become the first place to display and sell works by Thomas Cole, the progenitor of the Hudson River School and the most influential American artist of the first half the 19th century.
Colman spent his early years roving between Portland, Boston, and New York as his father pursued different business opportunities, many of which were unsuccessful. By the 1850's, Colman had graduated high school, the family had settled in New York, and the young artist had begun exhibiting works at the National Academy of Design. While the source of his artistic training is unknown, it is certain Colman knew Asher B. Durand, and may have studied with him. Colman's earliest works bearing a distinct resemblance to Durand's.
In 1860, at the age of 28, Colman departed on an abbreviated "grand tour" of France and Spain, which would have a huge influence on his art. The Civil War began while Colman was still abroad. He returned the same year, but never served. How he avoided the draft is unclear, as it's unlikely the family could have afforded the $300 "commutation fee." Colman's elder brother William, already a veteran of the Mexican-American War, fought and was killed at the Battle of Corinth.
The remainder of the war years were a time of tremendous personal accomplishment for Colman. In 1862 he married Anne Lawrence Dunham, daughter of Edward Wood Dunham, a tremendously wealthy New York banker. The marriage secured for Colman access to the upper echelons of New York Society and a relationship with a then-fourteen-year-old Louis Comfort Tiffany, a cousin Anne's by marriage. Two years after his marriage Colman was made a full member of the National Academy of Design and was inducted into the Century Association, a prestigious New York social club.
Colman's artistic career was also taking off. In 1864 he held his first major sale at Snedecor Gallery, joining with fellow Hudson River painters Aaron Draper Shattuck (his sister's husband) and Jervis McEntee. He had already painted some of his best known works and major masterpieces, including Storm King on the Hudson would follow within the next two years. Just as he was reaching his mature style in oil, Colman would begin to experiment with watercolor. In 1866 he cofounded the American Society of Painters in Water-Colours, which would later be become the American Watercolor Society.
The remainder of the 1860's and 1870's were extraordinarily productive for Colman. He would produce numerous accomplished works in both watercolor and oil. Some of his most remarkable pictures would be the product of his travels to the American West. Beginning in 1870 he would travel as far as Utah. He would also return to Europe, this time for a three-and-a-half year stay that included time in North Africa.
In 1875 Colman held a second major exhibit at Snedecor Gallery. It may be at this event that he met the ultra-wealthy industrialist Henry Osborne Havemeyer. This relationship would profoundly alter the trajectory of the artist's career. Colman would share his burgeoning love of decorative arts, in particular Asian pottery and textiles, with Havemeyer. This would ultimately lead, many years later, to Colman and Louis Comfort Tiffany working together to design the interiors of Havemeyer's landmark Manhattan mansion. Colman himself would amass a celebrated collection of Asian art, a portion of which he would later gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1877 Colman took up etching and became a founding member of the New York Etching Club. With the "etching revival" already well underway in France and England, and New York artists increasingly traveling abroad, it was only a matter of time before the trend reached the New York. A prolific draughtsman, Colman seems to have been drawn the spotinenity of etching. Many of his etched works have a loose, curvilinear style that is charictaristic of his drawings, but distinctly different from his more formal oil paintings. While Colman would go on to etch more than fifty plates, his prints have never achieved the same recognition as those of some of his peers, notably his close friends and traveling companions Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran.
Colman would paint and etch throughout the 1880's and 1890's, though his output would slow as he passed his 50th year. In 1884 he and his wife leave New York for an ornate home they had constructed in Newport, Rhode Island. He would also become more active as a decorator, working closey with Tiffany on the Havemeyer mansion and other projects.
In 1902 Anne died. A year later Colman remarried to Lillian Margarat Gaffney. Around this time he also began to part ways with significant parts of his collection, selling Asian art, paintings by other American artists, and his own paintings in large numbers. In the middle of the decade he and his wife sold the Newport house and moved back to New York. They also traveled together, first to Mexico and then to Canada. Colman produced many drawings documenting their travels. Then, in 1908, at the age of 76, they had a son.
Colman would devote much of the last twenty years of his life to authoring two esoteric books of art theory: Nature's Harmonic Unity and Proportional Form. Lillian would continue to disperse his art. In 1927 a large collection was sold at Anderson Galleries and in 1939 an sizeable collection of drawings was gifted to the Cooper Hewitt.
During his life, Colman's artistic output was often overshadowed by other artists, as it continues to be today. Many more museum-goers wil recognize the work of Asher B. Durand, George Inness, or Winslow Homer. And yet, Colman's story is threaded just as tightly as theirs into the artistic history of 19th century America. From the rise of the Hudson River School, to the boom of the etching revival, to his knack for satisfying the orientalist demands of the robber barons, he seems to have had an remarkable talent for being in the middle of all of it.