James S. Bard

James Bard was a marine artist of the 19th century. He is known for his paintings of watercraft, particularly of steamboats. His works are sometimes characterized as naïve art. Although Bard died poor and almost forgotten, his works have since become valuable. Bard had a twin brother, John (1815–1856) and they collaborated on earlier works. James Bard and John Bard were born in 1815 in New York City. Their father was Joseph Bard, who had been born in England. Their mother was Nellie Purvis Bard, who had been born in Scotland. They had at least two brothers (Joseph and George), two older sisters (Ellen and Mary) and one younger sister, Margaret.[1] Sometime before 1843, Bard married Harriet DeGroot, who was six years older than he was. They had six children, but between 1843 and 1856 five of them died. Only their daughter Ellen survived.[2] Harriet's brother, Albert DeGroot, later became a steamboat captain and a wealthy man, who commissioned a number of works by James Bard. s Bard grew older, photography became increasingly used for marine as well as other subject areas, and steamboats themselves declined in importance in relation to the railroads. During Bard's life, Stanton, was the only artist who acknowledged Bard's influence, stating in his 1895 book American Steam Vessels that Bard was a gentleman who had begun the work of steamboat portraiture before 1830, and "to him the maritime world owes gratitude for his contributions to it of correct likenesses of many of the noted steamboats of early days".[9]

Most of the Bard works were done for persons in the steamboat or maritime trades, and as these persons died or went out of business, the works were lost or destroyed. In the earlier part of the 20th century, historians began relying on the surviving Bard works as references. Three of these historians, Francis F.C. Bradlee, George W. Murdock, and Edwin M. Eldredge collected steamboat art and other materials, and they came to acquire many of the Bard works. In time, all three of these collections came into the hands of museums, in particular the Eldredge collection, the most extensive one, went to the Mariners' Museum in Newport News in 1940.

In 1924, for the first time since 1842, two of Bard's works were featured at an art exhibition.[10] After the 1897 obituary, nothing was written about the Bards as artists until 1949, when Alexander Crosby Brown and Harold Sniffen wrote an article published in Art in America which focused on the output of the Bard brothers, the accuracy of their drawings, and their importance for marine historians.[10]

REFERENCES:

Mariner's Museum and Peluso, Anthony J., Jr., The Bard Brothers—Painting America under Steam and Sail, Abrams, New York 1997 ISBN 0-8109-1240-6

James Bard at American Art Gallery

Stanton, Samuel Ward, American Steam Vessels, Stanton, NY 1895, republished as American Steam Vessels—The Classic Illustrations, New York, Dover 2003, ISBN 0-486-42330-1