Nelson Augustus Moore
Nelson Augustus Moore (1824-1903)
“A Hartford Biography"
© Gary W. Knoble, 2014
Although he was born in Southington, Connecticut and lived most of his life in Kensington, Moore certainly can be considered a Hartford painter. He lived in Hartford for many years, maintained various studios there, ran a photographic business with his brother on Main Street, and was a regular in the Nook Farms circle. He abandoned photography at age 38 and returned to Kensington to dedicate himself to painting. His landscapes are generally considered to be in the Hudson River School tradition, but he had his own distinct style, often mixing “Folk Art” techniques with sophistication. One critic called him a “truly American painter who never studied or painted abroad”.
Nelson Augustus Moore was born in his maternal grandparents’ house in Southington, Connecticut on August 2, 1824. He was the oldest child of Roswell (“Deacon”) Moore and Lucy Allen Moore. His father ran a network of mills. Lucy’s father was an engraver and craftsman with a shop in nearly Farmington. Moore’s ancestor, Deacon John Moore, first came to Windsor, Connecticut in 1635, two years after it was founded.
In 1830, the six-year old Moore moved with his family to a house on new High Road in Kensington. As a boy, he attended the Berlin Academy and studied privately with a Mr. Gulon in New Britain
H. W. French in his 1879 book, “Art and Artists in Connecticut” recounts a curious incident that occurred when Moore was 18, which resulted in his desire to become an artist. “His first impressions of art were gathered under peculiar circumstances, while holding a light for Milo Hotchkiss to paint the portrait of a child that had been killed by an accident and upon which he was obliged to work through the night. He obtained canvas, colors, and brushes, and at once began study by himself.”
In 1845 Moore went to work for the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad as a station agent at the depot in Berlin. He created a studio for himself in the station’s attic where he could paint when not attending to the station. His is said to have painted free portraits for his fellow workers. In 1847 he moved to New York City to study painting. He first studied drawing from casts for one winter with Thomas S. Cummings who was a founder of the National Academy of Design. He remembered visiting the National Academy show on 1848 where his near contemporary from Hartford, Frederick Edwin Church, had paintings. He later studied with Daniel Huntington, who was then President of the National Academy.
In 1850 he returned to Kensington to teach drawing at the New Britain Normal School where he taught until 1854. Around this time he bought a daguerrotype business in New Britain. In 1851 he exhibited at the Hartford County Agricultural Society County Fair, which was one of the few Hartford venues for exhibiting contemporary fine arts. Other participants in the fair that year included the Hartford painters and teachers Henry Charles Bryant, Julius Theodore Busch, and Joseph Ropes. By this time Moore had largely turned from painting portraits to landscapes.
In January of 1853 he married Ann Pickett of Morris, Connecticut. In 1854 he moved his daguerrotype business to Hartford, opening a shop at 275 Main Street, just south of Pearl Street with the intent to have the best daguerrotype business in the east. His brother Roswell joined him in the business in 1857. They were early adopters of the most recent technologies in the rapidly developing field of photography.
At the 1854 Hartford County Fair in October he again exhibited. This time he won a gold medal for “Sketches from Nature in Oil”. At the same event, Joseph Ropes also won a gold medal for “Sketches from Nature” and his near contemporary, Charles DeWolf Brownell, won a silver medal for “Crayon Sketches from Nature”. Moore’s earliest known and dated painting, “Housatonic River” was painted in this year
In 1855 there was concern over the deteriorating condition of the Charter Oak in Hartford so Moore photographed the tree, which did indeed fall during a storm on August 21. Brownell, who had a studio across from the Oak at the time, won a gold medal at the country fair in 1857 for his famous painting of the Charter Oak now located in the Wadsworth Atheneum.
In 1856, Moore rented out his Kensington house and bought a large house on Main Street in Hartford, which he operated as a rooming house to help bring in income. He again exhibited at the County Fair. This time he won a silver medal for “Superior Photography”. Bryant won a gold medal for “Original Works in Oil”, Brownell won a gold medal for “Best Original Landscape in Oil”, John Wells Stancliffe won a gold medal for “original Mechanical Drawing in Water Colors, Busch won a silver medal for “Landscape in Oil”, William Gedney Bunce got a “framed diploma” for “Colored Crayon Drawings”, and the Kellogg brothers got a “framed diploma” for “colored Printing on Stone”.
His son Edwin Augustus Moore, who would follow him in the painting business was born in Hartford in 1859.
Frustrated by the lack of time to pursue his painting and facing financial difficulties, in 1862 he sold his photography business to his brother Roswell and moved back to Kensington to devote himself full time to painting. He built a stone house on High Road that was one of the first houses in the country to be built of stone and cement poured into a wooden form. (His family was in cement business at the time.) In 1863 he designed and raised the money for a memorial to the Union soldiers that still stands near the Congregational church in Kensington. He also made his first trip to Lake George where he would summer for 25 years and paint many of his best-known paintings. His fellow Hartford painters Roswell Morse Shurtleff and John Lee Fitch were also frequent visitors to Lake George.
From 1863 to 1876 he exhibited at the National Academy. In light of the facts that his early teachers had been closely associated with the Academy and that he exhibited there for more than 13 years, it is curious that he never became a member.
In 1866, Moore, his brother Roswell, and the Reverend E. B. Hilliard published the book, “The Last Men of the Revolution”, and iconic photographic documentation of the last survivors of the Revolution that is much sought after by collectors.
In 1868 he is reported to have given a solo show at the New Britain Museum of American Art.
In 1878, he moved back to Hartford with his family. They lived on Sigourney Street and he maintained a studio in the Cheney building downtown. They remained in Hartford until 1884, when they moved back to “Stonehouse” in Kensington. The toddler Lillian Wescott Hale, who was born in 1880, also lived on Sigourney Street at the time. Moore was a friend of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) who lived nearby on Farmington Avenue in Nook Farms and Charles Dudley Warner, another noted writer who also lived in Hartford.
Struggling with finances again, in 1884 he held a sale of about ninety of his paintings at the Hill Building and moved with his family back to Kensington.
During the 1890’s he maintained a studio for a time in New York at the YMCA building at 4th Avenue and 23rd Street.
His daughter Ellen, and his son Edwin Augustus, both became painters. His son Ethelbert (Bert) worked for Stanley Works in New Britain and also took up painting late in his life. His youngest son A. J. Pickett, married Grace Robins Stanley. Bert was the only one of his children to have children.
In the last years of his life he traveled frequently to paint, often without his family, to Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts’ North Shore, Lake Mohonk in New York, and Saint Augustine Florida.
In addition to being a painter, Moore was a accomplished violinist and also wrote poetry
He died on November 30, 1902 in his home in Kensington.
Macbeth Gallery mounted his first New York show in 1934. The exhibition featured 28 of his paintings. The catalogue for the show called him a “truly American painter who never studied or painted abroad”.
Vose Gallery in Boston has mounted exhibitions in 1966, 1971, and 1991, drawing paintings from the family’s collection.
The New Britain Museum of American art held a show in 1938 featuring 32 landscapes. It was reviewed in the Hartford Courant by Theodore H. Parker who stated that he preferred Moore’s earlier works. “The mark of folk art is upon them, when the painters were not masters of drawing or painting by a long shot but when technical limitations were more than made up for in the almost fanciful ingenuousness of their vision.” The NBMAA held additional shows in 1980 and 2014.
In 1994 the Moore Picture Trust published a book drawn from materials in the family collection entitled “Nelson Augustus Moore”.
His painting easel is in the collection of the Connecticut Historical society. His papers are in The Stonehouse Archive. His paintings are held in the collections of the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Corcoran Gallery, the Mattatuck Museum, the Benton Museum in Storrs, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Connecticut Historical Society among others.
Cummings, Hildegard, “The Hartford Art Colony 1880-1900”, The Connecticut Gallery Inc., 1989, page 14
Dixon, Sierra, Connecticut History.org: “The Story of Nelson Augustus Moore”
Fletcher, Ellen, “Nelson Augustus Moore (1824-1902)”, Moore Picture Trust, 1994
French, H. W. “Art and Artists in Connecticut”, 1879, Page 122-3
Gerdts, William H., “The East and the Mid-Atlantic, Art Across America, Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710-1920”, 1990, page 106
The Hartford Courant Archives, 10/24/1854, 11/6/1856, 12/1/1902, 12/25/1938,
Kornhauser, Elizabeth M., “American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum”, 1996, pg. 562-566
O’Leary, Elaine Kidd, Taylor-Czapiewski, Connecticut Biographies Project website, May 2002 (drawn from “Commemorative Biographical Record of Hartford County Connecticut, J.H. Beers & Co., 1901, page 410-412)
Vose Gallery of Boston, “Mid Century Landscapes by N. A. Moore (1824-1902)”, 1971
