Niagaras of Ink by Jamie M. Carr;

Author:Jamie M. Carr;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Words of Art

Can words or images better capture the Falls? “Already you see the world-famous green, baffling painters, baffling poets, shining on the lip of the precipice,” wrote Henry James in 1871. That “already” represented nearly two centuries since the first written experience of the Falls had been published by Fr. Louis Hennepin in the late seventeenth century, from which the first illustration of the Falls was created. Since then, artists, like writers, have tried to represent this wonder of the natural world. No small task that, as even Hennepin’s written depiction of the Falls, and its visual accompaniment—sketched only from Hennepin’s words rather than the first-person experience of the Dutch artist who had not traveled to see it—have been found to exaggerate its scale and characteristics.1

Occasionally, writers tested their skills not only in words but in their own visual sketches of the Falls, as did Washington Irving. (See figure 5, chapter 2.) Sometimes writers and artists were close friends, such as James Fenimore Cooper and Thomas Cole, the Hudson River School painter whose images of the Falls are among the most famous. More often, it seems, writers encountered artists at the Falls. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Anthony Trollope, and William Dean Howells all make mention of seeing artists at work during their visits. Trollope’s encounter with an artist highlights a friendly competition in the skills and tools of representation. Trollope writes:

I came across an artist at Niagara who was attempting to draw the spray of the waters. “You have a difficult subject,” said I. “All subjects are difficult,” he replied, “to a man who desires to do well.” “But yours, I fear is impossible,” I said. “You have no right to say so till I have finished my picture,” he replied. … I began to reflect whether I did not intend to try a task as difficult in describing the falls. …

Like Trollope, William Dean Howells and Henry James make an attempt to describe in words what they saw and felt at the Falls. Though friends, their styles could not be more different. Howells finds he can only “suggest” the Falls. With tongue-in-cheek, he asks, “Shall I add myself to the number of absurd people who have attempted to describe Niagara?” It is left to James to illustrate, who perceived that “the line of beauty” had been drawn “on the brow of Niagara.”

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