New Hampshire Sketchbook, 1859

Brown fabric–covered cardboard covers and brown leather spine;
fifty pages of off-white wove paper
9.9 x 15.8 cm
William C. Heilman Fund
1960.167

Benjamin Champney is best known as the premier painter of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He lived to ninety years of age, and knew many of the artists associated with the Hudson River school, including John W. Casilear, Asher B. Durand, and John Frederick Kensett. His serene, majestic views of New Hampshire embody what he referred to as "the beau ideal of a certain kind of scenery—a combination of the wild and cultivated, the bold and graceful."(1)Charles O. Vogel, "'Wanderings after the Wild and Beautiful': The Life and Career of Benjamin Champney," Historical New Hampshire 51, nos. 3–4 (Fall/Winter 1996): 78.

Champney and Kensett first visited the small village of North Conway, New Hampshire, in 1851. Situated on the eastern flank of the Presidential Range along the Saco River, it commanded spectacular views. In his memoirs, Champney described the scene: a "wide stretch of the intervales, broken with well-tilled farms, the fields just ripening for the harvest, with noble elms dotted about in pretty groups. Then beyond the Saco, the massive forms of the ledges rose up, their granite walls covered with forests. But behind these and above all was the broken line of Moat Mt. To the north Mt. Washington and its attendant peaks bounded the view. Then came Kearsarge on the right, and the lesser Rattlesnake range on the east. The whole formed a scene of surpassing beauty, rarely to be found anywhere. We had seen grander, higher mountains in Switzerland, but not often so much beauty and artistic picturesqueness brought together in one valley."(2)Benjamin Champney, Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists (New York, 1977; reprint of 1900 edition, Woburn, Mass.), 102–3.

North Conway quickly became a popular destination for artists, who were drawn to the combination of expansive, pastoral landscape and dramatic mountain scenery. Champney recalled that "every year brought fresh visitors as the news of its attraction spread, until in 1853 and 1854 the meadows and banks of the Saco were dotted all about with white umbrellas [of artists sketching] in great numbers."(3)Champney, Sixty Years' Memories, 106.

Champney made yearly pilgrimages to North Conway, and he built a summer home and studio there. In the winter he retired to Boston and produced paintings based on his sketches. The drawings in this sketchbook, from July through September 1859, illustrate Champney's peregrinations around North Conway and its surroundings. The drawings are intimate, minutely scaled records of a landscape domesticated by villages and cattle. The mountains are gentle silhouettes, unthreatening backdrops to the settled foreground landscapes and activities. The Saco River meanders throughout the sketchbook, capturing reflections of trees in its limpid surface. Champney's drawings retain a modesty of description that contrasts with the tranquil grandeur of his paintings.

Another sketchbook by Champney in the Fogg Art Museum collection, of views in Maine, dates from the summer of 1878.

1. Charles O. Vogel, "'Wanderings after the Wild and Beautiful': The Life and Career of Benjamin Champney," Historical New Hampshire 51, nos. 3–4 (Fall/Winter 1996): 78.

2. Benjamin Champney, Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists (New York, 1977; reprint of 1900 edition, Woburn, Mass.), 102–3.

3. Champney, Sixty Years' Memories, 106.