Letters from a Landscape Painter

by Charles Lanman

From the London Literary Gazette.

“This is a second edition, and the matter well deserves to run through many more; for we have met with nothing of the kind in Transatlantic polite literature in which so fresh and pure a spirit prevails. It is far away from the worldly, trading, and money-making go-a-head passion, which rules the multitude both there and here.”

TO THE
HON. GEORGE PERKINS MARSH,
BURLINGTON, VERMONT.

My Dear Sir,

To you, in testimony of my regard for you, as a Statesman, a Scholar, and a Lover of the Fine Arts, do I dedicate this little volume.

Had not my maiden effort in the world of letters been received by the public with such marked favor, I should not venture to publish again. The same motives, however, which prompted the first, have also prompted the present collection of my productions, and I desire no other reward than the one already bestowed upon me in the approving smile of honest and sincere hearts.

As my title-page implies, I am now a professional Landscape Painter, my inclinations having compelled me to relinquish the “cotton trade and sugar line,” and these letters, originally written to a literary friend in New York, are but the offspring of one who claims the only merit of being a lover of Nature and his fellow men. I confess myself to be a creature of impulse, and each paper that I now publish, I would have considered as a mere record of my thoughts and feelings during the hour it may have been indited. Having been a sojourner in various portions of the country during the past summer, in search of the picturesque, you must not be surprised to find yourself one moment scrambling through a mountain gorge, and the next on the margin of the boundless sea. With this preliminary, I lay aside my pen, and return to my palette and pencils. Your sincere friend, CHARLES LANMAN.

New York, Autumn of 1844.

CONTENTS.

[TROUTING AMONG THE CATSKILLS,] 1 [A SPRING DAY,] 19 [SOUTH PEAK MOUNTAIN,] 34 [A SLEEPLESS NIGHT,] 52 [COLE’S IMAGINATIVE PAINTINGS,] 64 [LAKE HORICON,] 83 [BURLINGTON,] 103 [TRIP TO PORTLAND,] 122 [MOOSEHEAD LAKE AND THE KENNEBECK,] 143 [LILLY LARNARD,] 157 [LOUIS L. NOBLE,] 172 [THE UNHAPPY STRANGER,] 190 [A WEEK IN A FISHING SMACK,] 197 [TRIP TO WATCH HILL,] 214 [OUR NEW YORK PAINTERS,] 233 [A SONG OF MEMORY,] 256