The Butler Hard Rubber Factory

The Butler Hard Rubber Factory is Edward Lamson Henry's meticulous portrait of the factory that dominated the town of Butler, New Jersey, for more than a century after it was built in 1869. The view is taken from a hill overlooking the factory, which spreads across the broad middle ground, its component buildings carefully and realistically detailed. Beyond it, the town's wood frame houses are scattered in the gently rolling hills of the autumnal landscape. A steaming locomotive—one of Henry's favorite devices—pauses on the tracks separating the mill from the more pastoral space of the foreground, and another train travels through the left distance. Steam rising from the plant's tall stacks, the small figures of villagers and workers, and such casually realized details as the randomly adjusted skylights of the factory's main building and fluttering laundry visible behind the house at lower left inject a note of everyday calm and contentment into a scene redolent of progress and prosperity. As if to emphasize the symbiotic relationship between town and factory, Henry portrays the plant buildings as both dominating the surrounding region and ensconced within it, with only the tops of its smokestacks rising above the horizon.

Henry painted this scene on commission from Richard K. Butler, a New York businessman who in 1879 assumed control of what had been the Rubber Comb and Jewelry Company. Butler quickly expanded its operations and with it the population of the town of West Bloomingdale, renamed in his honor in 1881. In these early decades the plant manufactured telephone parts, pipe stems, combs, jewelry, and other consumer products. Its rural siting and dependence on water-power (from the falls of the nearby Pequannock River) represent an earlier era in American industry, before manufacturing began to be located near urban centers, with their abundance of cheap labor and superior access to transportation. The Butler plant remained in continuous operation until 1974, although over the years the wood frame buildings Henry portrayed gradually were replaced by brick structures and the company underwent further name changes.

By the early 1880s Henry was well established as a painter of American scenes, many set in past eras viewed with affectionate nostalgia. He often incorporated architectural elements, such as country houses and railroad stations, and employed the panoramic perspective used here. The Butler Hard Rubber Factory may be Henry's only painting to show a modern industrial plant, a relatively rare subject for a substantial easel painting in the nineteenth century. Like any portraitist, Henry combined fidelity to appearances with strategies to show his subject to its best advantage. Seen from a commanding distance, the trim utilitarian buildings evoke rationality, order, and prosperity, with no suggestion of the conflict that often characterized labor relations of the time. Butler selected Henry to paint his plant perhaps because of his practice of thoroughly documenting and carefully detailing his subjects. Artist and patron likely were acquainted through the art world of New York, where both maintained residences. Butler was an art collector who beginning in the 1870s became a leader in the campaign to raise funds to build a pedestal in New York Harbor for the Statue of Liberty.

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.]

The Works of E. L. Henry: Recollections of a Time Gone By, The R. W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, Louisiana, September 13–November 8, 1987. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 1988.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 10–July 1, 2001.

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.

American Paintings III. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., 1985. Text p. 72; ill. p. 72.

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-57, p. 166 (color).

The Works of E. L. Henry: Recollections. (exh. cat., The R. W. Norton Art Gallery). Shreveport, Louisiana: The R. W. Norton Art Gallery, 1987. Ill. 22 (color).

The Butler Hard Rubber Factory, Edward Lamson Henry. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 1988. Ill. (black & white).

Society for Industrial Archeology Newsletter 21:4 (November 5–8, 1992): 8. Text p. 8; ill. p. 8 (black & white).