Jervis McEntee was born in Rondout, New York, July 14, 1828. He had early literary and artistic aspirations and studied under Frederic E. Church, who had himself studied under the Hudson River School master, Thomas Cole. McEntee was to maintain a close relationship with Church for the rest of his life. After an unsuccessful stint as a businessman, McEntee settled in New York in 1857 as one of the charter residents of Richard Morris Hunt's Tenth Street Studio Building. Since many of the other occupants were either bachelors or commuters, and since Mrs. McEntee was a lively, sympathetic hostess, the couple became the center of a spontaneous salon frequented by some of the best-known artists, writers, and actors of the time. After his wife died in 1878, McEntee stayed on, an increasingly neglected widower until his death in 1891.
McEntee was identified with the Hudson River School and an accomplished and sensitive painter of autumnal landscapes. He wrote in 1874, "Perhaps what would mark my work among that of my brother artists is a preference for the soberer phases Nature, the gray days of November and its leafless trees." McEntee stood at the center of the interlocking directorate formed by the National Academy of Design, the Century Club, and the Tenth Street Studio Building. In the latter part of the 19th century, these formed a supreme art establishment whose membership was composed of the old guard American artists, such as McEntee's close friends Eastman Johnson, Sanford Gifford, John Ferguson Weir, Worthington Whittredge, and Church, who were fighting an ultimately futile battle against the encroachment of European influences among both artists and collectors.
The papers of Hudson River School painter Jervis McEntee measure 1.6 linear feet and date from 1796 and 1850 to 1905. Letters from close friends and family members to McEntee include many from his mentor Frederic Edwin Church, and fellow artists Samuel Putnam Avery, George Henry Boughton, Sanford Gifford, Richard Henry, Eastman Johnson, Elizabeth B. Stoddard, John Ferguson Weir, Worthington Whittredge, and others. Papers relating to the McEntee family include obituaries, a family genealogy, and letters from and regarding family members. There are also papers relating to the Vaux family (McEntee's brother-in-law's family) and American architect and landscape artist Calvert Vaux, who designed a studio for McEntee. Of special significance are five volumes of diaries dating from 1872 through 1890 which provide a detailed depiction of the American art world in the 1870s and 1880s.
The Jervis McEntee papers have been arranged into five series, based on material type.
The Adirondack Museum lent one diary for microfilming in 1964. The rest of the collection was acquired from several donors between 1959 and 1997. The noted collector Charles E. Feinberg donated letters in 1959 and, Mrs. Helen S. McEntee, who married the nephew of Jervis McEntee, donated the five volumes of diaries in 1964. William Gaffken, director of the insurance company that acquired the McEntee family insurance business, donated the remaining papers in 1997.
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel D9) including a diary dated June 12, 1851-August 17, 1851. This material was returned to the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York and is not described in the collection container inventory.
Use of original papers requires and appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the
Letters, family papers, and five volumes of diaries of Jervis McEntee in the Archives of American Art were digitized in 2007, 2017, and 2018, and are available on the Archives' website. Transcripts of the entries are available at https://www.aaa.si.edu/collection-features/jervis-mcentee-diaries.
Material lent for microfilming is available on 35mm microfilm reel D9 at the Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan.
Jervis McEntee papers, 1796, 1848-1905. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The Jervis McEntee papers were reprocessed in 2004 and a finding aid prepared. At that time all earlier accessions were merged. All of the papers, except for the five diares, were digitized in 2007 with funding provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. In 2017, the five volumes of diaries were professionally conserved. In 2017 and 2018, the diaries were digitized. Funding for the conservation and digitization of the diaries was provided by the Smithsonian Institution Collection Care Preservation Fund and Collections Care Initiative.
Letters in this series are from McEntee's close friends and family members, including his mentor Frederic E. Church, fellow artists Samuel Putnam Avery, Andrew Boardman, Sanford Gifford, Daniel Huntington, George Inness, Eastman Johnson, John Ferguson Weir, Worthington Whittredge, and numerous others.
First Name Only
Anthony, Andrew Varick Stout
Avery, Samuel Putnam
Baker, George A.
Bellows, Henry W.
Boardman, Andrew
Boughton, George Henry
Butler, Benjamin Franklin
Chapin, E.H. (Edwin Hubbell)
Church, Frederic Edwin
Church, Isabel
Cook, Martha Walker
Darley, Jenny G.
De Forest, H.G.
Derrenbacher, John
Donoho, Mrs. J.R.
Fitch, John
Gifford, Sanford Robinson
Hicks, Thomas
Hubbard, Richard William
Huntington, Daniel
Husted, James W.
Inness, George
Johnson, Eastman
Jones, Alfred
Long, Louis
McEntee, Gertrude (Mrs.-wife)
McEntee, Girard L. Jr.
McEntee, James S.
McEntee, Jervis (letters from Jervis to sister Mary Vaux)
McEntee, Maurice
McEntee, Mrs. (Jervis's Mother)
Meeks, Louisa
Osgood, J.R.
Richards, T. Addison (Thomas Addison)
Stedmen, Edmund and Laura
Stoddard, Elizabeth B.
Stoddard, Richard Henry
Stribling, C.K.
Sykes, Charles W.
Taylor, Marie
Thompson, Launt
Von Glumer, Francisca
Ward, John Quincy Adams
Weir, John F. (John Ferguson)
Whipple, M.J.
Whittredge, Worthington
Wickes, E.T.
Youmans, Kate
Zarnnhus, E. L.
Unidentified
Series Two includes letters from McEntee's sister Mary Vaux's family and her husband, American architect and landscape artist Calvert Vaux. This series relates largely to family matters, including letters from Vaux's mother, wife, brother Alfred, sisters Emily and Catharine, and children.
First Name Only
Blood, Alfred J.
Brickwood, J.D.
Browne, Lillian G.
Gifford, Mary
Olmstead, Mary C.
Stryker, Helen B.
Taylor, John N.
Vaux, Alfred
Vaux
Vaux
Vaux, Downing
Vaux, Emily Brickwood
Vaux, Marion
Vaux, Mary McEntee
Williams, Emily
Withers
Unidentified
Series Three houses third-party correspondence, largely letters addressed to Mrs. McEntee, Jervis' wife. Some writers include Girard McEntee, Maurice McEntee, and Alice Sawyer.
Gray, T.
Holland, J. G.
McEntee, Girard L.
McEntee, Maurice
Sawyer, Alice
Smith, M.
Tompkins, Augusta McEntee
Tompkins, Laura
Vanderlip, George M.
Unidentified
The fourth series houses scattered printed materials, manuscripts and writings, and several pages from McEntee's sketchbook. Family obituaries and genealogical material are also found in this series.
Calvert Vaux's "Villages and Cottages"
List
Manuscript "Sketch of John Vanderlyn's Life"
Material Concerning Calvert and Mrs. Vaux
McEntee Family Genealogies
Obituaries
Pages from Jervis McEntee's Sketchbook
Printed Material
Unidentified Photographs
Vaux/Brickwood Genealogy
Series Five consists of the five volumes that compose the Jervis McEntee Diaries. The diaries provide a vivid, accurate impression of the life of a typical New York painter during and after the Gilded Age. There is much first-hand information on the inner workings of the National Academy and the Century Club, on the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, on efforts to revive the Art Union idea, on the vigorous growth of art societies and exhibitions throughout the country. The diaries reveal the economy of art during the period - prices, patterns of collecting and patronage, the artists' dependence on personal contacts through clubs, social gatherings, and influential friends. Descriptions of major events include the opening of the Metropolitan Museum and of the Brooklyn Bridge, the first major exhibition of French Impressionism in New York ("simply absurd, foolish and unlovely from any point of view"), and the Beecher-Tilton scandal.
McEntee's diaries offer researchers a valuable view of the everyday existence of a reputable American artist towards the close of the 19th century - how he painted, whom he associated with, how and to whom he sold his work, what he did when he was not working, what he thought of art, artists, and collectors. McEntee provides an account of the ultimately futile battle against the encroachment of European influences among both artists and collectors during this period. He writes in March 1877, "The Munich students work prevails, and the genuinely American productions are put aside to give prominence to the foreign looking art." According to McEntee, a certain painting by Whistler depicts "a woman dead or drunk by what is apparently the seashore, strewn with fragments of stale pound cake." The diaries also offer some clear insights into the character of several major artists who were McEntee's intimate friends: "Whittredge came to my room and sat until midnight and we talked, or rather he did for Whittredge generally does the talking." He is astonished to receive an invitation to join the Frederic E. Churches at the theatre because "I thought they only went to prayer meetings."
The five volumes of diaries are filled with McEntee's detailed thoughts, observations, activities, and encounters. Long passages describe his overwhelming anxieties over money and family difficulties. He is frequently lonely and depressed and always worried about his status as an artist.
Diary, Volume I
Diary, Volume II
Diary, Volume III
Diary, Volume IV
Diary, Volume V