London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

The Tappan Zee in the Age of Rig & Sail

Julian Oliver Davidson, The Hudson River from the Tappan Zee
Oil on canvas, (size not on record)
1871, Private collection

Francis Augustus Silva, On the Hudson near Tappan Zee
Oil on canvas, 20 in. x 36 in.
1880, Private collection

Francis Augustus Silva, The Hudson at the Tappan Zee
Oil on canvas, 24 in. x 42 3/16 in.
1876, Brooklyn Museum

THESE THREE PAINTINGS depict that august body of water that was long ago christened the “Tappan Zee”. The name simply means Tappan Sea in the Dutch of our forebearers, but the construction of the Tappan Zee Bridge in the 1950s transferred the term in the public conciousness from the body of water below to the engineering work above. In epochs now since passed, to be “on the Tappan Zee” would have betokened a pleasant day’s sail on this unusually wide stretch of the Hudson; today, being “on the Tappan Zee” more likely describes sitting in a car stuck in the bridge’s notorious rush-hour traffic jam. (I know one woman who lived in Rockland but worked in Westchester. Despairing of the many hours spent in Tappan Zee logjams, she finally moved house to the east bank of the Hudson, only to promptly be offered a better job on the west; I believe, however, she was free of the bridge for at least a few weeks).

The topmost, and earliest, of the three paintings here presented is by Julian Oliver Davidson. A New Yorker who had travelled the world by boat, Davidson had a lifelong love of sail, ship, and sea. As an artist, he studied under Mauritz F. H. De Haas, and became known for his well-researched, accurate rendering of nautical detail. The Hudson River from the Tappan Zee is one of his earlier works, done in his late ‘teens. Davidson’s summer studio was in Nyack, on the Rockland side of the Zee, and the painter was frequently on the Tappan waters, sailing and sculling (for which he won medals), when he wasn’t painting his maritime scense, composing adventuries stories of the sea for children, or exhibiting his work at the National Academy of Design.

Francis Augustus Silva, meanwhile, was Davidson’s senior by over fifteen years. Another New Yorker, his father was a Franco-Portuguese barber, and he showed an early talent; his pen drawings were exhibited at the American Institute while he was but a boy. His industrious parents disapproved of art as a calling, and so Silva apprenticed at a number of trades. He was an apprentice in a sign-painting workshop until the Civil War erupted, when Silva joined New York’s Seventh Regiment. Within three years of the Confederacy’s defeat, Silva arrived on the New York art scene by taking part in the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design for 1868-1869. Like Davidson, Silva became known for his maritime and riparian themes, with a special attention to detail. “We have few artists who are so accurate in drawing or so conscientious in the rendering of detail,” one critic wrote in 1880. Francis Augustus Silva died just aged fifty years, but other works of his are to be found in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection of Madrid, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the National Gallery of Art (D.C.), and in numerous private collections.

Detail from Francis Augustus Silva, The Hudson at the Tappan Zee

Published at 2:56 pm on Sunday 24 May 2009. Categories: Art New York The Hudson Tags: , .
Comments

Capital, Mr Cusack, capital. You make me homesick, for a time even more than a place.
Silva was very good indeed, wasn’t he? The Europeans among whom I live really ought to recognize that their colonies were capable of very fine work; indeed, I have often thought our nineteenth century architecture outclasses all but the very best examples of what our English masters were (once) capable.

— B T Van Nostrand 24 May 2009 9:33 pm

Capital indeed. I just hope they replace the bridge which has captured the name Tappan Zee before those words become forever associated with a tragic loss of life. No private owner could get away with keeping something that unsafe in operation–but governments function by a different set of rules than private parties do. (Just as the placement of the bridge at one of the river’s widest points makes no sense unless you realize it is just a few feet north of the jurisdiction of the Port Authority. So politics trumps common sense.)

— Steve M 26 May 2009 3:08 am

The Hudson at the Tappan Zee is my favorite painting. I have a large framed poster of it made for the Met’s World of the Hudson River event in September to January of 1988. But it’s turned all blue from exposure to the window light and I can’t find another anywhere. The technique and detail is truly amazing! I wish I could somehow blow up the copy above!

— Newt 9 Aug 2009 8:12 pm
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