James McDougal Hart and at major exhibitions around the country.
Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, Hart based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While James Hart and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in Düsseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. William Hart, who did not seek academic European training, seems to have been more comfortable painting small and mid-sized works.
Like his brother William, James excelled at painting cattle. Kevin J. Avery writes, "the bovine subjects that once distinguished now seem the embodiment of Hart's artistic complacency." (p. 250 in American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born Before 1835) In contrast with the complacency of some of his cattle scenes, his major landscape paintings are considered important works of the Hudson River School. A particularly fine example is Summer in the Catskills, now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.
James Hart was survived by two daughters, both figure painters, Letitia Bonnet Hart (1867 - Sept. 1953) and Mary Theresa Hart (1872–1942). He is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
A Stream in the Adirondacks (1859), oil on canvas, 21.125 x 35.25 inch.; collection of Walters Art Museum
Gleneida Lake, Putnam County, New York (1863) oil on canvas, 17.5 inch. x 30.25 inch.
Cows Watering (1865) oil on canvas, 26.75 inch. x 56.75 inch.
Summer in the Catskills (1865) oil on canvas, collection of Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Harriman New York Overlooking the Hudson
Landscape with Stone Bridge, Pencil on paper, 5.5 inch. x 7.8125 inch., collection of Walters Art Museum
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