Ships Unloading, New York

In Samuel Colman's Ships Unloading, New York, bales of cotton, their whiteness echoing the bleached sails of the ships at berth, are inspected on a wharf. On the left edge of the image, a banner proclaiming "London and New York," is suspended from the yard of an unseen vessel. The banner serves as a reminder of the role of raw American cotton for the English textile industry before the Civil War while simultaneously indicating the desire merchants had for a return to prosperity in the cotton trade after the war's end. According to the inscription on its sail, the foremost vessel is the packet-boat Glad Tidings. Built in New York in 1856, the Glad Tidings was active in transatlantic cotton shipping both before and after the war. Between 1856 and 1858 it sailed the Holmes Line between its home port of New York and New Orleans, carrying slave-labor cotton as its cargo. After the war, the Glad Tidings' 1865 arrival in Liverpool with a cargo of free-labor cotton was hailed by the Illustrated London News as an "auspicious token of future peace and liberty for America, as well as of prosperous commercial intercourse between America and Britain." Colman depicts ordinary activity on the wharf—men in conversation, a horse-drawn wagon being loaded, goods piled for transfer, and a steamboat puffing smoke in the background—as emblems of New York's prosperity as America's economic capital. Yet the vertical composition's tall expanse of cloud-filled sky and the relative distance from the viewer both of human activity and of the tall ships imposes a sense of orderly calm on the commercial hubbub.

Colman was a dedicated landscape painter, but his work often included architectural as well as natural elements. Near the beginning of his career, he painted scenes of ships and wharves in which he drew on the conventions of genre painting, the portrayal of generic figures engaged in everyday pursuits. With its carefully identified vessel, owned by William Nelson and Sons from 1856 until 1868 and William Nelson, Jr. from 1868 to 1874, Ships Unloading, New York may have been a commission from the Nelson family to commemorate the transfer of ownership of the vessel from father to son. As a "portrait" of a ship, however, Colman's painting is subtle in its casual rendering of wharf activity as an understated paean to the bounty of commerce. The work combines Colman's interest in maritime scenes with characteristics of the artist's early manner, which is indebted to the Hudson River school, America's first native landscape movement, in its exacting detail and broad vista. The emphasis on atmosphere, however, anticipates Colman's mature landscape painting in watercolor, in which topographical accuracy is sacrificed to subtle effects of light and compositional arrangements.

Painted in 1868, this post-war depiction of the port signifies a return to prosperity for American business. In the left foreground, an inscription on a barrel of oil reads "New York / Petroleum Company," identifying it as the property of that firm, founded in 1865 following the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania six years earlier. By the time Colman created Ships Unloading, New York, the booming petroleum industry would have made barrels of oil a common sight in ports such as this. After the war, the American cotton trade never regained the magnitude of its prewar output. As England developed new sources for raw cotton in Egypt, India, and Russia beginning in the early 1860s, Americans increasingly diverted the remaining southern cotton production toward the domestic textile industry. Colman's image thus memorializes a once thriving commercial enterprise whose importance would soon be supplanted by new commodities such as petroleum.

Masterworks in American Art from the Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, April 27–September 12, 1985.

Nineteenth Century Genre Painting from The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, November 15, 1985–January 12, 1986.

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Life in 19th Century America, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 24–September 6, 1987.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Americans at Home and Abroad, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 6–29, 1987.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1989.

Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Permanent collection installation, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 9–February 11, 2001.

Ships at Sea: Sailing Through Summer, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 6–August 26, 2001.

The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940 (Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains 1840–1940),Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–May 25, 2003; Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 8–August 17, 2003. [exh. cat.]

La Scène américaine, 1860-1930 (Americans at Home, 1860–1930),  Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, July 10–October 30, 2005.

La Scène américaine, 1860–1930 (Americans at Home, 1860–1930),  Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, April 1–October 29, 2006.

Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, September 26, 2013–March 24, 2014. [exh. cat]Terra Collection-in-Residence, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 29, 2022–December 31, 2026.

 

The Magazine Antiques 126:4 (October 1984): 658. Ill. p. 658 (color).

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Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Pl. T-32, p. 141 (color).

Ships Unloading, New York, Samuel Colman, Jr. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1989. Ill. (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 17, 26 (checklist); fig. 10, p. 17 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2000. Text pp. 17, 26 (checklist); fig. 10, p. 17 (black & white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text p. 27 (checklist); ill. p. 35 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text p. 27; ill. p. 35 (color).

Brownlee, Peter John, Sarah Burns, Diane Dillon, Daniel Greene, and Scott Manning Stevens.Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North with a foreword by Adam Goodheart.  (exh. cat., Terra Foundation for American Art and Newberry Library). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Text pp. 10, 15-16, 42-43, 160 (checklist); Fig. 11 p. 14 (color), fig. 24, p. 43 (color detail).

  Jaffe, Stephen H. and Jessica Lautin,Capital of capital: money, banking, and power in New York City. (exh. cat. Museum of the City of New York). New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.Ill. pp. 67-68 (detail) (black & white), p. 74 (color), Text p. 69, p. 74.

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 96; ill. p. 96 (color).