Clough - "Ferry Crossing" Realistic oil painting of a ferry, horse, and travelers at the water's edge surrounded by mountains and trees.

George Clough • American (1824-1901)

Ferry Crossing C: 1901 • Oil on Canvas 36" x 58"

The odd assortment of friends were celebrating Rockefeller’s purchase of Clough’s latest painting for the princely sum of $6,000. George Lafayette Clough’s ship had finally come in.

George Clough lost his father early in life and had to start working by the age of 10, but had two strokes of good fortune. First, he had rare artistic talent and, second, he grew up in the Finger Lakes paradise of Auburn, New York. Eventually he fell under the influence of noted American portrait artist, Charles Loring Elliott who came to town to paint Auburn’s leading citizen, William Henry Seward, Governor of New York and future U.S. Secretary of State. Having Elliott and Seward camped in his modest studio had to be heady stuff for 20 year old painter looking to make his mark in the world.

Three years later Elliott returned the favor and brought Clough into his own New York City studio where he received the only real art instruction of his life. After a Grand Tour through Europe, where he refined his skill by copying works of the great masters, Clough found artistic success painting pastoral landscapes in a style very similar to Hudson River School painters. His work was shown in the National Academy of Design, but financial success was elusive as he moved from Auburn to Cleveland. He couldn’t make it anywhere, so moved back to New York and made it there.

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For 30 years he enjoyed the patronage of such leading art collectors as Rockefeller and Duryea. His paintings hung in many of the finest homes of the day. He became President of the Art Club of Brooklyn and exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design and Pennsylvania Academy. Eventually he became recognized as one of the foremost landscape painters in America. Not bad for an artist from the hinterlands with little formal training.

A few years after Rockefeller purchased that painting for the princely sum of $6,000 he turned around and sold it to the City of New York for the even more royal sum of $16,000. That’s why they named Rockefeller Center after John D. Rockefeller while his friend, George Lafayette Clough’s most lasting tributes hang on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Canton Museum of Art. Visit soon.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Gift of Canton Fine Arts Associates, 80.14

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“Although he grew up in upstate New York and painted in the style of the Hudson River School painters, he wasn’t considered part of that crowd. Not in with the in crowd, I guess.”

2.
“He lived and worked in Cleveland for about 6 years, living in a farm house at the corner of 9th Street and Prospect. I’m guessing that farm is gone now.”

3.
“He once received an award at the Ohio State Fair for “Best Fancy Painting. I’d love to see that plaque.”

4.
“He had little artistic training, but honed his skills traveling through Europe copying paintings of the Great Masters. It was a common practice in the 1800’s.”

Clough Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1824

Born in Auburn, New York, a small upstate town in the beautiful Finger Lakes District near the tip of Lake Cayuga. His father died soon after he was born and he was raised entirely by his widowed mother.

1831

He made his first painting at age 9, sitting by the light from a pine knot fire. That same painting was hanging on the wall of his son’s house when George Clough died there at the age of 77. By the age of 10 he was already working his first job outside the house to help his mother make ends meet.

1839

He began to paint more seriously, and had some instruction from the esteemed portraitist, Randall Palmer, who had moved to Auburn only the year before. Palmer was described as a “man of elegance of manners, courteous to all, well read and kind.” He had a strong influence on a young boy with an artistic bent and no other father figure.

1844

At the age of 20 he opened his own studio in Auburn. Around the same time, famed painter Charles Loring Elliott came to Auburn to paint a portrait of William Henry Seward, and used young Clough’s new studio as his own.

1847

Young Clough spent several months studying art at Charles Loring Elliott’s New York City studio. It is said he was a “competent professional portraitist” upon his return to his Auburn studio.

1848

He married Adeline Peat, a local Auburn woman. They eventually had two sons. In the same year, he had two of his portraits exhibited in the National Academy of Design in New York, his first taste of major professional success. By that time he was the most influential artist in Auburn and Cayuga Counties.

Early 1850s

He traveled throughout Europe, studying and copying local painters in France, Holland, Italy and Germany. At the time, this was a common custom among American artists who often learned their craft by copying the works of European masters.

1860

He moved to Cleveland, Ohio. We do not know what brought him, since the Cavaliers, Browns, Indians, Orchestra or Art Museum did not yet exist. But we do know he lived on a small family farm at the corner of 9th Street and Prospect. During his 3 years in Cleveland, he was also employed as a photographic “finisher” for photographer Jeremiah Merritt Greene.

1863

Received a Silver Medal at the Ohio State Fair for the “best specimen Ohio landscape in oil by Ohio artist.” He also received an award for “Best fancy painting, Ohio or foreign artist.”

1865

He left Cleveland, without ever having experienced a Cleveland sports championship. He immediately moved to New York City where he found fortune. During the 30 years he lived in New York and Brooklyn, he painted urban landscapes in addition to the pastoral landscapes he had become famous for painting.

1897

Returned to his boyhood home of Auburn. He was in ill health the last years of his life, but continued to paint grand landscapes, as evidenced by “Ferry Crossing”, now in the Permanent Collection of the Canton Museum of Art.

1901

Died of paralysis in the Auburn home of his sole surviving son, Charles. By the time of his death his paintings were in prestigious museum and private collections throughout the world and he was known as one of America’s pre-eminent landscape painters.