Charles Codman: from limner to landscape painter.

In 1838, the first exhibition and fair of the Maine Charitable Mechanic Association in Portland included a fine arts display, the centerpiece of which was a group of thirty-six oils, the majority of them landscapes, by Charles Codman (Pl. II). Next to them were four copies after Codman by K. W. Davis, (1) "a common house-painter," according to the exhibition catalogue written by John Neal (1793-1876), a Portland based art critic. In the catalogue Neal cautioned the aspiring artist not to give up the certainty of his trade, even for the glorious uncertainty of a name. It is a thankless calling, and at best a precarious one, that of a landscape-painter in our day." (2)

This observation reveals a moment in history when artisan painters regularly aspired to and assumed the mantle of fine artist. Given the context of the remarks, the characterization of landscape painting as a "thankless calling" appears to be a commentary on the difficulties Codman, an ornamental painter by training, had encountered in embracing the new mode of landscape painting and endeavoring to create a market for it. Indeed, the story of Codman's artistic career illuminates the experiences of American artists in the early years of the new Republic and the precarious emergence 0f landscape painting, a genre that came to dominate nineteenth-century American art.

Codman's origins are obscure. Even his obituary in the Portland Tribune stared: "Codman was born--we know not where--in Boston, perhaps." (3) Based on the age of forty-one given on his gravestone in Portland's Eastern Cemetery, he was born in 1800 or 1801, but no birth record has been located for him. (4) Accounts of his artistic training place him in Boston by his mid-teens, when he entered into a painting apprenticeship. The most detailed discussion of the artist's background states:

Mr. Codman was formerly an apprentice to Mr. Penniman, the celebrated Boston painter of signs, fire buckets, militia standards, and the ten thousand other etceterns of 'Ornamental Painting,' in all its branches. (5)

A posthumous account by Neal noted that Codman "had been apprenticed to Willard, the clock-maker of Roxbury, where he did paint nothing but clock-faces; and that after this, he worked for Penniman, the sign-painter of Boston," (6) suggesting that he had first been apprenticed to the renowned clockmakers Simon (1753-1848) and Aaron Willard (1767-1844) and then to John Ritto Penniman (1782-1841), who operated a successful decorative painting business first in Roxbury and then Boston from 1804 to 1827. (7)

Penniman routinely employed apprentices to help meet the heavy demand for his painting services, while they learned the techniques of the trade. Among the artists who began their careers in Penniman's shop were the portraitist Thomas Badger (1792-1868) and Alvan Fisher (1792-1863), who, like Codman, became an important early landscape painter. Of his apprenticeship Fisher wrote:

I was placed with a Mr. Pennyman, who was an excellent ornamental painter...From him I acquired a style which required years to shake off-I mean a mechanical ornamental touch, and manner of colouring. (8)