Andrew Jackson Poe
Andrew Jackson Poe was a landscape artist. He was born March 2, 1851, in Georgetown, Pennsylvania, a small village that sits high above the Ohio River near the border of Ohio and West Virginia. He was the sixth of eleven children born to Adam W., a steamboat captain, and Lucy Irene Todd Poe.[i] Poe’s great, great grandparents were George Jacob and Catharine Pfau. The Pfaus came from Alsace area of France and settled in Maryland. Their sons, Adam and Andrew, anglicized the name to Poe and relocated to western Pennsylvania. From 1771 to 1784, they were the “first and most fearless” responders to Indian raids. The story of their fabled fight with Bigfoot is legendary, and according to historians, differs with each new telling.[ii] Adam’s son, Thomas Washington Poe was father to Adam W, the father of Andrew Jackson Poe.
Poe began painting at an early age; his earliest known extant works were created in 1869.[iii] He painted mostly panoramic scenes in his hometown and nearby areas such as Midland, Pennsylvania, Yellow Creek, Frederick Town, and Cleveland, Ohio. In 1892, he went to St. Louis where, according to family members, he studied art and assisted in the painting of murals at Union Station. The murals depicted men working on the railroad and different types of trains. The station’s grand opening was in 1894. There is no documentation naming the artists who worked on the project. The website, Alamy.com (a vendor of stock images), sells a print of a very faded painting, allegedly painted by Poe onto his father’s desk, that is said to be a painting of the mural. The image, however, is a pastoral scene and not a railroad painting.[iv]
By 1894, Poe was back in the tri-state area. According to a Georgetown neighbor, John Porter, in an interview with Harold Barth in 1944, Poe created a panorama of western scenes depicting famous frontiersmen such as Daniel Boone. Poe used an abandoned church in Georgetown as a studio to create the panorama. These paintings were a popular form of entertainment at the end of the 1800s. They were created on rolls of canvas and were unreeled before an audience as a narrator described the scenes. One of Poe’s family members took his creation on tour to Ohio cities, but it was not a commercial success and was eventually destroyed by fire. After the death of both of Poe’s parents (Adam died in 1896), Poe moved in with his sister in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He had never married or had children. The sister acted as his agent as he continued to paint. According to Porter, Poe was “eccentric and indifferent to conduct,” and his sister eventually committed him to the Beaver County Home, Pennsylvania in 1901.[v]
The photos of the Beaver County Home show the original building (top) and the home after it was remodeled in 1916. Harriet Calhoon Ewing, daughter-in-law of J. H. Ewing, superintendent of the home at the time of Poe’s admittance, said he entered “with nothing but the clothes on his back and his painting kit.” There were approximately 100 residents of the home who were there for reasons such as being poor, alcoholic, ill, infirm, or simply because they had been abandoned. Poe was befriended by an administrator who provided him with paint and canvas. It’s estimated Poe created 40 paintings while residing at the poorhouse and all the paintings were left to the administrator after his death. He died there in 1920 and is buried in Georgetown.[vi] [vii]
THE ART OF POE
Wikipedia, Swetman, and other sources incorrectly describe Poe’s work as folk art or primitive. He also has been identified as a member of the little-known art subset called poorhouse or almshouse painters. Poe’s work is more accurately identified as Second Generation Hudson River School art. Thomas Cole, an English artist generally acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River school, lived in Steubenville, Ohio in the early 1820s and his earliest works are of the Ohio River. From there he traveled up the Hudson River and began creating landscape paintings of pastoral, autumn, and river scenes. After Cole’s death in 1848, artists including Frederick Edwin Church and Alfred Bierstadt carried on the romantic painting style as they traveled beyond the banks of the Hudson into the vast wilderness of the United States. Church and Bierstadt became celebrities of the time and did their greatest work between 1825 and 1860. It is likely that Poe was familiar with these artists and emulated their style as he painted landscapes of the Ohio Valley. The photos on the right illustrate the similarities with Poe’s work and that of Thomas Cole. On the top is Cole’s painting “The Oxbow” and Poe’s painting “Ohio River and East Liverpool at Babb’s Island” is below it. This Poe painting was a recent gift to the Museum of Ceramics from Jackman and Jane Vodrey. In it can be seen two potteries. One is a shed with a kiln and the other, possibly the Harker Pottery, has several kilns and a larger building.[viii] It is now part of the permanent exhibit at the Museum.
Poe also differs from the three Pennsylvania artists known as the “poorhouse painters” in that they painted, almost exclusively, paintings of life at the poorhouses in which they resided. Poe continued to paint landscapes during his residency but not one of his “productions appear to be a poorhouse scene.” [ix]
Poe paintings in the collection of The Museum of Ceramics are:
1. McNeil Farm Now Midland, Pa 1869
2. Ohio River and East Liverpool at Babb’s Island
3. Ohio River and East Liverpool at Babb’s Island
4. Ohio River and East Liverpool at Babb’s Island
5. Ohio River Below East Liverpool
6. Georgetown, PA
7. Old Faithful Oil Well, Georgetown 1889
Paintings 2, 3, and 4 on this list are nearly identical. Of the three, the Vodrey donated version is, by far, in the best condition. Each of the three paintings has slight differences and it is unknown which version was painted first. Poe was known to have repeated certain scenes and even copied landscapes of other artists. When he did so, he would identify, on the painting, the original artist as well.
[i] Artist Andrew Jackson Poe « (georgetownsteamboats.com) Accessed August 13, 2021.
[ii] For more information on Adam Poe and family, see Capt Adam W Poe « (georgetownsteamboats.com)
Accessed August 13, 2021.
[iii] The Museum of Ceramics’ collection has one painting, “McNeil Farm Now Midland” from 1869. The catalog by William H. Vodrey, “Andrew Jackson Poe: Artist,” East Liverpool Historical Society, 1971, identifies another painting of that year, “Ohio River Below Yellow Creek.”
[iv] Artist Andrew Jackson Poe « (georgetownsteamboats.com) http://alamy.com Accessed August 13, 2021.
[v] Popp, Robert, “A Line Island Summer Recalled.” Evening Review, 27 June 1970: 8..
[vi] Keefer, Marsha. “Local Historian Documents County’s Former Poorhouse.” The Times, March 1 2014. https://www.timesonline.com/article/20140301/Lifestyle/303019964 Accessed August 13, 2021.
[vii] Beaver County Almshouse. Beaver County Almshouse - Asylum Projects Accessed August 13, 2021.
[viii] Ferber, Linda and the New York Historical Society. The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision, (2009).
[ix] Swetnam, George. “Pittslyvania’s Poorhouse.” Pittsburgh Press, April 4, 1969: 10 – 11.ANDREW JACKSON POE
Andrew Jackson Poe
The Oxbow by Thomas Cole
Ohio River and East L:iverpool at Babb’s Island
by Andrew Jackson Poe