James G. Tyler, Marie Artist – Winter 1985
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Richard Palmer
One summer day in 1870, a 15-year-old boy was down on the waterfront in Oswego, New York, sketching a boat when his work caught the eye of Captain Morgan M. Wheeler, who owned several schooners on Lake Ontario. l
Young James G. Tyler told the captain he loved to draw boats. Captain Wheeler took him up town and bought him pencils, crayons and paper, and encouraged the lad.
As a school boy in Oswego, Tyler’s drawings and sketches won him accolades from his fellow students and teachers. He also won high praise and premiums at the county fair.
Mr. Tyler was born in Oswego February 15, 1855. His father, Rudolphus, was once police chief and his grandfather was a retired lakes captain.
Early painting by James G. Tyler of the ALANSON SUMMER. Copy of painting courtesy of Oswego County Historical Society Museum.
After being encouraged by Capt. Wheeler, for whom he made several sketches of his schooners, Tyler was getting $1 apiece. He spent four days on the first one but within three months he was doing three or four a day and getting $2 apiece for two-masted schooners, $3 for three-masted schooners, $1 for sloops and 50 cents for canal boats. These were pencil sketches, colored.
Anxious for formal art instruction, young Tyler managed to save $300 from making sketches of boats in Oswego harbor, some of which still exist. In January, 1871, he went to New York City and took lessons from A. Cary Smith, prominent marine artist of that day. Three months later, he went to Chicago, but lost everything in the great fire. He then returned to New York and painted pictures of virtually all the tug boats in the harbor, for which he received between $5 and $15.
A turn in fortunes came when his funds became so depleted that he had just an apple for breakfast. He then decided to borrow some money from a tug captain he knew in Hoboken. He also asked the captain permission to get something to eat from the steward on the tug.
Returning to New York, Tyler walked up Broadway and looked into the window of a shop where he had placed his first picture on sale. It had been painted in the center of a piece of mill board that had been through a fire and was heavily charred around the edges. It depicted a tug towing a brig. He noticed it was missing from the window. Surprised at its absence, Tyler went into the shop, only to learn that the picture had been sold to William Astor for $60. His career then took off and soon he was finding a ready sale for his paintings, particularly among the wealthy and famous.
A. Cary Smith, his mentor, said Tyler “has been chiefly successful for the reason that unlike some other marine painters, he has made of himself a sailor, and few yachtsmen and even professional seamen are better versed in the science of navigation and a technical knowledge of the handling of sailing craft,” Tyler’s work was hailed as “a representative collection of American marine paintings.” His work was first exhibited in the National Academy in 1880. As years passed, his ship and yacht paintings became familiar sights in New York City galleries, and were often on sale at the important auction rooms.
His reputation was greatly enhanced by paintings of many of the America’s Cup races. Large colored prints were made of some of his important paintings. Tyler’s other more noted works included “The Abandoning of the Jeanette,” painted for famed journalist James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald; “The Constitution,” “The Mayflower” and “The St. Paul’s Shipwreck.” He also illustrated for Harper’s, Century, Truth and other publications.
John G. Speed, an art critic, wrote in The Monthly Illustrator in New York in 1894 that Tyler’s paintings were “alive with enthusiasms.” Speed said.
Tyler “paints in just the way he thinks he ought to paint, without reference to what critics may say and other artists think, and he speaks out his mind with a manly freedom which seems to count silence as cowardly. One of his friends, commenting on this characteristic, said ‘Jim talks too much!”
In the 1880s and 1890s, Tyler’s canvasses brought from $200 to $350 each. His painting of the Mayflower was sold to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. for $1,200.
Oswego Harbor as seen by James G. Tyler in 1870. Copy of painting courtesy of Oswego County Historical Society Museum.
Mr. Tyler occasionally returned to Oswego, the scene of his boyhood, after he had become a famous marine painter. He was also fond of looking up old Oswego acquaintances who happened to be in New York, when he learned of their presence.
During some of his occasional visits “back home,” he did some painting. All of his mature work was done in New York. He turned out a vast quantity of paintings, a considerable number of which found their way back to Oswego. It is said he turned out more than 13,000 paintings in his lifetime. Mr. Tyler’s masterpiece, according to his own judgment, was a painting called “The Dawn of the New World,” that depicted the little fleet of Columbus just as land is discovered. He was truly an impressionist who sacrificed nothing to the finicky detail upon which many marine artists wasted all their time. He painted from within himself, instead of copying merely what he saw. Mr. Tyler died on January 29, 1931, at his home, The Oaks, in Pelham Manor, N.Y., in Westchester County north of New York City.
But James Gale Tyler has achieved a sort of immortality as his paintings and sketches adorn the walls of private homes and the Oswego City Library and Oswego County Historical Society.
The fine arts building on the campus of the State University of New York at Oswego is named in his honor. The world of the marine historian owes a great deal to James G. Tyler, who, over a period of 60 years, accurately depicted a variety of historic sailing ships and other vessels, as well as skippers, sailors and America’s Cup Race captains. He depicted scenes of every challenge race between 1880 and 1930.
Notes and Sources
1Captain Wheeler was born in Lyme, Jefferson County, N.Y., May 12, 1832 and died in Oswego March 25, 1877. At one time he owned the schooners Coquette, Bolivia, Jamaica, Nevada, Madeira and Samana; and the tugs J. H. Blower and Fred D. Wheeler.
Oswego Palladium Times March 18, 1825; Nov. 20, 1945; Dec. 12, 1967.
New York Herald-Tribune, January 30, 193 1.
Oswego County Painters by Daniel A. Williams. Read before the Oswego County Historical Society, April 18, 1943. Material furnished by Anthony M. Slosek, Oswego County Historian.
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