A young boy
sat on the stone wall at the corner of the boundary line of his father's
farm in Peru, New York, not far from Plattsburgh. Knees drawn up, chin resting
on them, he looked across open fields to Lake Champlain and the outline of
Mount Mansfield across the lake in Vermont. He'd been to this spot many times
when his chores were done. He'd seen Mount Mansfield in varying lights and
many weathers. He had a burning desire to reproduce that familiar scene and
capture the fleeting moment of a special light, cloud effect, or misty morning.
Daniel Folger Bigelow went on to achieve his wish,
first with pencil and later with colors. He became a major recorder of Adirondack
scenes and a nationally-known artist. Born in Peru of Quaker parents in 1823,
the third in a family of five children, distantly related to Benjamin Franklin
through his mother, son of a hero of the War of 1812, Bigelow grew up on
the farm where he was born. An active boy, he did his share of the chores.
However, he found time to roam the countryside and collect impressions.
Bigelow suffered the fate of many artists. His painting
brought indications from his family that he was unrealistic in his choice
of a career. They tried to dissuade him. Clippings of interviews in later
years have mellowed the story and refer to the proud father who arranged
for his first lesson with Ashel Powers, an itinerant portrait painter and
cousin of the then famous sculptor Hiram Powers. Ten years older than his
student, Powers is given credit by Bigelow for his "delicacy of coloring
and treatment."
Needing money to continue his studies and support himself
while he painted in Peru, Bigelow worked in a marble yard where he earned
a reputation for skill and design. He was in demand to "execute many of the
best pieces of work which were being turned out in that section of the country,"
according to a current publication. However, it was merely a job for him,
and he longed to spend all his waking hours at his easel. When he had worked
long enough to have nearly $100, free and clear, bigelow put down his chisel,
take up his paints, and continue his art lessons. When the money was gone,
back to the marble yard he'd go.
In an interview some years later, he reported that he
also turned out portraits and claimed them to be the worst portraits he ever
saw. Marble cutting and portrait painting were a means to an end. His eye
was still on the beauty of the landscape, and many times he returned to his
favorite spots to gather them into his memory for the time when he could
paint as he wanted.
When he was twenty, he took his first trip to new York
City.. to look at paintings. Having had little opportunity to see more than
an occasional painting or a few prints, this trip overwhelmed him. He returned
bewildered and overcome by the numbers, the beauty, and the skilled technique
of the paintings he saw. He knew a long road of hard work and study lay ahead,
but he was not deterred.
When he was thirty-five, Daniel Bigelow felt he was ready
to turn from his extra jobs and give all his attention to painting. In 1858
he pulled up stakes and went to Chicago where he was to continue painting
for more than fifty years. Acquiring a studio in the Crosby Opera House, he
joined a group headed by G.A.P. Healy. Nine years later in 1867 (World Book
Encyclopedia gives the date as 1866), this group founded The Academy of Design,
which in 1882 became The Art Institute of Chicago. Having established himself,
bigelow went back to Peru in 1865. On November 1, in nearby Schuyler Falls,
he married Charlotte Marie Barnes, twenty-one years younger than he,
and introduced her to Chicago and his new life there.
Two and a half years later, their first son, Folger Allen
Bigelow, was born. Florence Edgerton Bigelow arrived in 1871, and a second
son, Louis Barnes Bigelow, joined them in 1884, when his father was 61. Folger
Bigelow, already a promising young artist, was accidentally killed when he
was 23 by a friend who was cleaning a gun. Florence also turned to art and
taught in the Hyde Park School in Chicago for more than 40 years. Louis lived
(1970) in Memphis, Tennessee. Through these years while his family was growing,
Bigelow was developing his style, primarily in oils but also in watercolors.
One writer of the period said that "his great work is in oil, but his watercolors
are exceedingly beautiful." By the early 1870's a reporter from his home
area claimed he was "outdistancing many of his more favored competitors,
till today he stands in the front rank, the generally acknowledged authority
in that city of landscape painting."
Throughout his career Bigelow exhibited in galleries
all over the United States. His paintings were shown at the National Academy,
The World's Columbian Exposition, and of course, The Art Institute in Chicago.
His Adirondack scenes are consistently listed in the catalogues of these exhibits.
Today(1970) scattered through the Peru and Plattsburgh area are paintings
reflecting his moutain rambles over many years. Whiteface Mountain, from
the northeast, was a favorite view, and he had a scetchbook almost filled
with that one mountain subject. Various scenes with nearby Lake Champlain
in the foreground or middle ground were often portrayed. His first love,
the familiar scene across the lake to Mt. Mansfield and Camel's Hump is featured
in many paintings. It was not unusual for an artist to repeat a subject many
times or to copy a painting, if requested. Selling paintings and teaching
were Bigelow's business, and after his early struggles he lived well on his
work and feared no longer the call to the marble quarry.
Many Chicago citizens in the flat country of Illinois
had been born, or had strong ties, in the rolling hills of New England and
the changing terrain of New York State. In a scrapbook of Bigelow's career,
put together by his daughter, there are many indications of commissions to
paint "the old homestead" or the remembered mountains of New England and
New York for those Chicago citizens. His granddaughter writes that he tramped
around the mountains making sketches during the summer and then, returning
to his Chicago studio, converted them into paintings. Bigelow loved the country
where he lived as a boy and returned to it to visit, to sketch, and at times,
with students, to teach.
From the beginning of his career in Chicago, Bigelow
taught classes in and around the city. He took groups on summer sketching
trips to Lake Michigan, Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts
and to his native New York. Believing students should study and work in America,
he told his pupils that American scenes were "proper and fruitful" to develop
native talent and urged them not to go abroad for study.
America was always his subject and often his America
reflected northern New York scenes. An 1872 article speaks of the pride with
which "he points to these views of his old home in the east, reproduced with
marvelous truthfulness by the magic brush of a true artist." Another article
in 1870 (written when he was 47 years old, 40 years before his death) says
that from earliest childhood he had "a passionate love for the beauties of
nature, he early became fascinated with the scenery of this romantic and
picturesque region, a feeling that has grown upon him with years, and led
him to spend many summers of his later life in making of these scenes a close
and thorough study. His landscape paintings are nearly all from scetches
taken during these seasons of seclusion among the Adirondack Mountains and
about Lake Champlain."
Bigelow was described in his later years as one of the
old timers by a critic who wrote that "his pictures are always quiet in tone
and harmonious in color, and they have, too, some atmospheric qualities.
The subjects which appeal to him most frequently are stretches of hilly country
with plenty of trees and a glimpse of water in the distance, deep, cool,
shadowy forest dells, little waterfalls amidst trees or the grassy sloping
shores of small lakes."
His paintings were mostly realistic scenes done in good
weather with pleasant effects. After viewing some impressionist paintings
at the Art Palace in Chicago, Bigelow added a bit more vivid color and introduced
some new touches to his familiar work. Though in his eighties, he still was
receptive, and a critic remarked on his Carot-like treatment of trees. Daniel
Bigelow continued to paint until shortly before his death in Chicago in July,
1910, at the age of 87. A few months before, the Chicago Art Institute honored
him with a parchment in recognition of long and faithful service to art.
Alonzo Jones, in 1870, wrote of Bigelow what was echoed
in varying degrees in newspaper articles over the years: "An artist's personal
characteristics are sure to show themselves in his works. Mr. Bigelow is
strictly honest, conscientious...a good hearted man, a good neighbor and
a genial friend; exceedingly modest...retiring, and 'unpretending'; always
speaking well of his brother artists." The little boy from Peru with his
chin on his knees looking at Mount Mansfield had come a long way.
see Page 4 for 1997 information from Chicago Art
Institute.
rodbigelow@netzero.net 
