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The artists stayed at the railroad’s hotel, El Tovar, which provided picturesque accommodations and a central location for enjoying the canyon. The railroad also provided the artists with studios. According to Nina Stevens Spalding from the Toledo Museum of Art who wrote about the trip, they were introduced rather dramatically to the canyon. “The artists were led to the rim with their eyes closed, that the vision might burst upon them for the first time in its entirety. All was still with the silence of infinity. … It was as though the earth had opened before them and heaven was spread at their feet.” She later described Daingerfield’s somewhat dumbfounded reaction: “Mr. Daingerfield was sometimes silent and sometimes colorful adjectives came tumbling from his lips in a passion of appreciation. Words which in his moments of ecstasy came nearer to describing the emotions of the Canyon than the most finished efforts of authors and poets.” [1]
The Spirit of the Storm measures four feet across and consists of a nude female in the left foreground gesturing toward a distant landscape of red rocks on the right. She leans against some gray-yellow boulders, has windswept hair that aligns visually with her upraised right arm, and is draped with a pink cloth around her lower body. A bush juts from the boulders above her and another darker green tree projects below her—all pointing, as she does, toward the right. She is separated from the red rocks by an abyss, covered with mist, and above her and in the distance dark storm clouds loom. The painting is dominated by a strong diagonal from left foreground to right background, with the only counterbalancing elements the small dark trees in the middle distance on the right. Overall the painting is somber, but the light areas of the nude’s body, the sky above her, and the brilliant reds of the canyon create highlighted focal points that help to convey the narrative.
Daingerfield painted several canvases following his trips to the canyon, many with nude allegorical figures. This one is titled The Spirit of the Storm, no doubt because of the turbulent skies and the windswept landscape. His first trip west was in November, when storms come quickly and forcefully to the area. In his autobiography, written in the third person, Daingerfield captured some of his impressions: “Or again, he will tell you of the vast age and somnolence of this great freak of nature, and we find carved into the rocks titan figures of vast proportions sleeping in the midst of silence, or if he calls a storm into being, he symbolizes the Storm Spirit.” [2]
Daingerfield was inspired to write poems in response to his visits to the Grand Canyon, and they, like the paintings, evoke a sense for the grandness and timelessness of nature and the insignificance of mankind.
Strip from the earth her crust
And see revealed the carven glory of the inner world
Templed—domed—silent: —
The while the Genius of the Canyon broods.
Nor counts the Ages of Mankind
A thought amid the everlasting calm. [3]
In The Spirit of the Storm, Daingerfield successfully captured the awe he felt at the Grand Canyon, as well as the sense of something primeval. He enhanced his image through the use of the rich glazing technique he learned from Inness, which gives the painting a moody and atmospheric quality. Ultimately, the process of alternating layers of varnish and pigment dates back to such Renaissance masters as Giorgione and Titian, who were famous for their portrayals of nudes in landscapes. By using a nude allegorical figure as the embodiment of the storm, he poetically conjures the character of the canyon, to him a “freak of nature.”
Notes:
[1] Nina Spalding Stevens, “Pilgrimage to the Artist’s Paradise,” Fine Arts Journal February 1911, 108 and 111, quoted in Estill Curtis Pennington and Richard Gruber, Victorian Visionary: The Art of Elliott Daingerfield (Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1994), 32.
[2] Daingerfield, "Sketch of His Life—Written by Elliott Daingerfield—in Response to a Request," undated manuscript, Elliott Daingerfield Papers. Center for the Study of Southern Painting, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, quoted in Pennington and Gruber, Victorian Visionary, 41.
[3] Daingerfield, quoted in Robert Hobbs, Elliott Daingerfield: Retrospective Exhibition (Charlotte, NC: Mint Museum of Art, 1971), 48.
ProvenanceSouth Shore Country Club, Chicago, IL. [1]
The Robert P. Coggins Collection, Marietta, GA. [2]
From 1980
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, purchased with funds from Barbara B. Millhouse from Berry Hill Galleries, Inc., New York on June 19, 1980.
Notes:
[1] Letter, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., June 2, 1984.
[2] See note 1.
[3] Invoice, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., June 19, 1980.
Exhibition History1976
Morgan County Cultural Center, Madison, GA (7/1976-10/1976)
1976 - 1977
Selection From The Robert P. Coggins Collection Of American Painting
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (12/1976-1/1977)
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (2/1977-4/1977)
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (5/1977-6/1977)
1990 - 1992
American Originals, Selections From Reynolda House, Museum Of American Art The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
2012
Mystical Visions, Divine Revelations: Religion and Spirituality in 19th Century Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (3/31/2012 – 11/25/2012)
Published ReferencesGruber, Richard & Pennington, Eslill C. The Art Of Daingerfield Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1994: 44-45.
Kinsey, Joni Louise. The Majesty Of The Grand Canyon: 150 Years In Art Cobb, California: First Glance Books, 1998: illus. 43.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 100-101.
“Selections from the Robert P. Coggins Collection of American Painting.” December 1976 – June 1977, catalogue, p. 36.
Wahl, Catherine Wade. "Elliott Daingerfield: Victorian Visionary." catalogue, Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1994.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 172, 173, 200, 224
DepartmentAmerican Art
The Spirit of the Storm
Artist
Elliott Daingerfield
(1859 - 1932)
Datecirca 1912
Mediumoil on canvas
DimensionsFrame: 49 1/2 x 61 1/2 in. (125.7 x 156.2 cm)
Canvas: 36 1/4 x 48 1/2 in. (92.1 x 123.2 cm)
Image (visible): 35 1/4 x 47 1/4 in. (89.5 x 120 cm)
SignedElliott Daingerfield
Credit LineMuseum Purchase with funds provided by Barbara B. Millhouse
CopyrightPublic domain
Object number1980.2.6
DescriptionSince the 1870s, the Santa Fe Railroad Company had employed painters and photographers to document and celebrate the Grand Canyon and its scenery. Thomas Moran, often credited with inspiring the idea of the National Park Service, traveled there as early as 1873, returned again in 1901 with George Inness, and ten years later, accompanied a group of five artists that included Elliott Daingerfield; they were to produce images suitable for chromolithographs that appeared on calendars. Moran’s spectacular large-scale and dramatically realistic paintings of the Yellowstone River and the Grand Canyon, contrast sharply Daingerfield’s more poetic, intimate, and atmospheric evocations.The artists stayed at the railroad’s hotel, El Tovar, which provided picturesque accommodations and a central location for enjoying the canyon. The railroad also provided the artists with studios. According to Nina Stevens Spalding from the Toledo Museum of Art who wrote about the trip, they were introduced rather dramatically to the canyon. “The artists were led to the rim with their eyes closed, that the vision might burst upon them for the first time in its entirety. All was still with the silence of infinity. … It was as though the earth had opened before them and heaven was spread at their feet.” She later described Daingerfield’s somewhat dumbfounded reaction: “Mr. Daingerfield was sometimes silent and sometimes colorful adjectives came tumbling from his lips in a passion of appreciation. Words which in his moments of ecstasy came nearer to describing the emotions of the Canyon than the most finished efforts of authors and poets.” [1]
The Spirit of the Storm measures four feet across and consists of a nude female in the left foreground gesturing toward a distant landscape of red rocks on the right. She leans against some gray-yellow boulders, has windswept hair that aligns visually with her upraised right arm, and is draped with a pink cloth around her lower body. A bush juts from the boulders above her and another darker green tree projects below her—all pointing, as she does, toward the right. She is separated from the red rocks by an abyss, covered with mist, and above her and in the distance dark storm clouds loom. The painting is dominated by a strong diagonal from left foreground to right background, with the only counterbalancing elements the small dark trees in the middle distance on the right. Overall the painting is somber, but the light areas of the nude’s body, the sky above her, and the brilliant reds of the canyon create highlighted focal points that help to convey the narrative.
Daingerfield painted several canvases following his trips to the canyon, many with nude allegorical figures. This one is titled The Spirit of the Storm, no doubt because of the turbulent skies and the windswept landscape. His first trip west was in November, when storms come quickly and forcefully to the area. In his autobiography, written in the third person, Daingerfield captured some of his impressions: “Or again, he will tell you of the vast age and somnolence of this great freak of nature, and we find carved into the rocks titan figures of vast proportions sleeping in the midst of silence, or if he calls a storm into being, he symbolizes the Storm Spirit.” [2]
Daingerfield was inspired to write poems in response to his visits to the Grand Canyon, and they, like the paintings, evoke a sense for the grandness and timelessness of nature and the insignificance of mankind.
Strip from the earth her crust
And see revealed the carven glory of the inner world
Templed—domed—silent: —
The while the Genius of the Canyon broods.
Nor counts the Ages of Mankind
A thought amid the everlasting calm. [3]
In The Spirit of the Storm, Daingerfield successfully captured the awe he felt at the Grand Canyon, as well as the sense of something primeval. He enhanced his image through the use of the rich glazing technique he learned from Inness, which gives the painting a moody and atmospheric quality. Ultimately, the process of alternating layers of varnish and pigment dates back to such Renaissance masters as Giorgione and Titian, who were famous for their portrayals of nudes in landscapes. By using a nude allegorical figure as the embodiment of the storm, he poetically conjures the character of the canyon, to him a “freak of nature.”
Notes:
[1] Nina Spalding Stevens, “Pilgrimage to the Artist’s Paradise,” Fine Arts Journal February 1911, 108 and 111, quoted in Estill Curtis Pennington and Richard Gruber, Victorian Visionary: The Art of Elliott Daingerfield (Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1994), 32.
[2] Daingerfield, "Sketch of His Life—Written by Elliott Daingerfield—in Response to a Request," undated manuscript, Elliott Daingerfield Papers. Center for the Study of Southern Painting, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, quoted in Pennington and Gruber, Victorian Visionary, 41.
[3] Daingerfield, quoted in Robert Hobbs, Elliott Daingerfield: Retrospective Exhibition (Charlotte, NC: Mint Museum of Art, 1971), 48.
ProvenanceSouth Shore Country Club, Chicago, IL. [1]
The Robert P. Coggins Collection, Marietta, GA. [2]
From 1980
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, purchased with funds from Barbara B. Millhouse from Berry Hill Galleries, Inc., New York on June 19, 1980.
Notes:
[1] Letter, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., June 2, 1984.
[2] See note 1.
[3] Invoice, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., June 19, 1980.
Exhibition History1976
Morgan County Cultural Center, Madison, GA (7/1976-10/1976)
1976 - 1977
Selection From The Robert P. Coggins Collection Of American Painting
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (12/1976-1/1977)
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY (2/1977-4/1977)
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (5/1977-6/1977)
1990 - 1992
American Originals, Selections From Reynolda House, Museum Of American Art The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
2012
Mystical Visions, Divine Revelations: Religion and Spirituality in 19th Century Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (3/31/2012 – 11/25/2012)
Published ReferencesGruber, Richard & Pennington, Eslill C. The Art Of Daingerfield Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1994: 44-45.
Kinsey, Joni Louise. The Majesty Of The Grand Canyon: 150 Years In Art Cobb, California: First Glance Books, 1998: illus. 43.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 100-101.
“Selections from the Robert P. Coggins Collection of American Painting.” December 1976 – June 1977, catalogue, p. 36.
Wahl, Catherine Wade. "Elliott Daingerfield: Victorian Visionary." catalogue, Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1994.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 172, 173, 200, 224
Status
Not on view