Investigating Robert Donaldson’s Art Collection at Mid-19th Century Edgewater, Part I

By the time Robert Donaldson purchased Edgewater in 1852, he was a well-established collector and patron of the arts who had assembled an impressive personal collection of fine art over the preceding thirty years.  Period descriptions of Edgewater’s interior, family reminiscences, and the 1872 inventory all help us to better understand the works of art displayed throughout the house during his family’s fifty years of ownership. While Donaldson died in 1872, his children inherited Edgewater and resided there seasonally until 1902, when the property was sold out of the family. Descriptions of Donaldson’s earlier picture gallery at Blithewood, where he lived from 1840-1852, prior to purchasing Edgewater, further illuminate the subjects and artists represented in his personal collection of paintings, all of which were later displayed in Edgewater’s Octagon Library.

In one passage written after the visit to the Pennsylvania Academy, he noted that “unprejudiced connoisseurs must admit, that [Benjamin] West[’s] figures are as full of life & c—as can be ‘breathed into canvases by the magic fingers of the limner, –at all events West’s & his pupils (Charles R. Leslie, Washington Allston, & c) and Trumbull and Raphael Peale[‘]s productions, hurl back the groundless insinuation that Americans are defective in original Genius.” In another passage, he described the sublime experience of taking a moonlit journey down the Hudson River, suggesting his familiarity with philosopher Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

The painting was also mentioned in Willian Dunlap’s discussion of Donaldson’s collection in The History of the rise and progress of the arts of design in the United States (1834).During his time abroad, Donaldson also went to Paris and Scotland before returning to Fayetteville, North Carolina in February 1821. In addition to the Leslie paintings, he also purchased engravings of George Washington and William Shakespeare, each “in glass, over silver in black frames” and presumably additional paintings. The amount of Dutch artwork in his collection also suggests that he may have taken a foray into the Low Countries during the trip, though that’s purely speculative.  If he kept a detailed journal during his trip abroad as he did for his five-month tour of the eastern United States two years before, it did not survive.

Robert Donaldson used his newly acquired funds from his uncle’s bequest to improve the family’s Fayetteville, North Carolina, house, to travel, and to eventually relocate with his siblings to New York City. In 1826, Donaldson purchased a house at 15 State Street adjacent to Battery Park that was formerly owned by Archibald Gracie. Donaldson also began to establish himself as a patron of the arts, lending a painting from his personal collection, Leslie’s “Londoners Gypsying,” to the American Academy of Fine Arts for their 1829 exhibition.  In 1828, Donaldson married Susan Jane Gaston, daughter of North Carolina Supreme Court Justice and former Congressman, William Gaston. While the couple was living in New York City, Donaldson commissioned architect A.J. Davis to re-design the entrance to his State Street townhouse in 1831. Davis would become Donaldson’s life-long friend and collaborator, eventually designing picture galleries for the display of his client’s art collection at two of his later residences.

The Donaldsons entertained regularly in New York and later at their Hudson Valley estates, including artists, patrons of the arts, and musicians among their guests.  One such dinner party in 1833 was given at their State Street house during a visit from Donaldson’s father-in-law, Judge William Gaston. Attendee Philip Hone described the dinner in his diary and noted others present that evening, including Chancellor Kent, a noted legal scholar and former Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court; William Jay, another well-known jurist and son of Chief Justice John Jay; Congressman Edward Everett, a writer and scholar who later gained a reputation as a noted orator and president of Harvard College; and, finally, artist John Trumbull, who had recently completed commissions for the rotunda of the reconstructed United States Capitol Building and was serving as president of the American Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1836, Donaldson purchased Blithewood, an estate located 100 miles north of Manhattan in the Hudson River Valley.  His wife Susan wrote to her father, “Mr. D. has bought a beautiful country seat on the river…[his] long indulged wish for the country will be gratified.” Over the next few years, Donaldson worked with Davis and A.J. Downing to improve Blithewood, then a seasonal residence, adding buildings and ornamental features on the landscape.  In 1841, Donaldson moved his family permanently to Blithewood, selling the State Street house. That same year, Donaldson commissioned Davis to design a Picture Gallery at Blithewood to display his growing art collection.  The room was located on the side of the house facing the Hudson and featured a half-octagonal end.

The March 1846 issue of American Agriculturalist included a lengthy article about Blithewood and Donaldson’s improvements to the house and landscape. The house was described as “a low but most commodious structure, embosomed in trees, stuccoed and colored in imitation of freestone, with a deep verandah on three sides.” The room described in greatest detail was Donaldson’s Picture Room, noted as “an apartment on the river side of the house, 16 by 32 feet, of a high pitch, and receiving its strongest light through an ornamented sash in the ceiling.”  A key feature of the room was a plate-glass window surrounded by gilded molding that literally framed a view of the surrounding Hudson River landscape around which Donaldson’s “choice but limited collection” of paintings was hung. The framed window was described in 1846 as “a novelty introduced by Mr. D., which quite took us by surprise. It is an oval plate glass, 3 by 4 ½ feet, inserted in the wall, and surrounded by rich mouldings in imitation of a picture frame. One feels that the natural beauties here revealed surpass even the glowing compositions.”

Donaldson sold Blithewood and subsequently purchased Edgewater from Margaretta Livingston Brown in 1852. Mrs. Brown and her husband, Capt. Rawlins Lowndes Brown, had been given the property as a wedding present from her father, John R. Livingston, in 1824.  Both Mrs. Brown’s father and husband had died within several months of each other in the Fall of 1851, and she was further enticed to sell Edgewater after the Hudson River Railroad used right of eminent domain to construct railroad tracks less than sixty feet from the front door of the house.

Writing to architect A.J. Davis in 1853, Donaldson confessed that he didn’t plan to make another Blithewood of the property and recognized its commercial potential with an adjacent  dock and railroad access. He initially planned to construct a villa on the hills along the eastern side of the Edgewater property that would have provided a commanding view of the Hudson river. However, as he wrote to Davis on January 18, 1854, “You will be surprised (perhaps grieved) to learn that I have given up all purposes of Building a villa upon the Heights & intend to live & die in this Greek Temple! The fact is—I have not the requisite enthusiasm now—for going through the laborious & expensive process.”

Like his earlier Picture Gallery at Blithewood, the octagonal space featured high ceilings and an oculus skylight in the center of the ceiling, allowing the paintings to be illuminated by natural light. In 1866, a local newspaper reporter from The Red Hook Journal described Edgewater’s Octagon Library, noting “this portion of the building is octagonal in form and the books and gems of art are arranged after the style of the Vatican at Rome, the books occupying from the floor to a height of four or five feet, entirely around the room, whilst the walls are hung with choice paintings and caps of the library shelves are arranged with busts, statuettes, and curiosities of art from Herculaneum &c.” This description suggests that Donaldson’s artwork was hung salon-style, in the space above the bookcases that held his important library of books.

Robert Donaldson’s art collection offers a remarkable insight into the personality and tastes of a wealthy mid-19^th century collector in the Hudson River Valley. His collection was comprised of classical works, genre scenes, landscapes, and numerous works of Biblical subjects.  The assemblage of paintings included both original works and copies of earlier works like Raphael’s School of Athens that he commissioned Samuel F.B. Morse to copy in 1828. Displayed salon-style in Edgewater’s Octagon Library, the collection made an impression on anyone who entered the space.

Part II of this series will investigate each of the paintings on the list in greater detail, the artist responsible for the work, its provenance, and if known, its present location.  It will also examine some of the family portraits not found on the list that were known legacies in Donaldson’s will, including those that have returned to the CAHPT collection.

Paintings & c.