Our Sweetest Songs are Those That Tell of Saddest Thoughts

No Image Available

ExpandFavorite

TitleOur Sweetest Songs are Those That Tell of Saddest Thoughts

Artist George Cochran Lambdin (1830 - 1896)

Date1857

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 17 1/4 × 14 in.

SignedSigned lower left: "1857"

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of James A. Suydam, 1865

Object number723-P

Label TextThis painting, one of the artist's earliest exhibted genre works, was inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem 'To a Skylark,' a passage from which was reprinted in the catalogue for the Academy's annual exhibition of 1857:

We look before and after
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter with some pain is frought;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.

The painting received generally favorable criticism in the press and brought the young Lambdin his first national attention. A writer for the New York Times, for whom Lamdbin's was a new name, thought the subject of the picture to be 'rather old, for it is the oldest subjects which make the newest pictures, the newest poems, the newest of all new things that are good.' The Crayon reported that the figures here 'are carefully studied, generally well drawn, and the entire picture conscientiously painted, and the color is good according to our eye. The subject is poetically treated.' The writer had the 'strongest faith' in Lambdin's 'future efforts.' Anne Wharton, writing at a much later date, believed that the Academy's picture was actually an oil study for a presumably larger work, but corroborating evidence for that statement has not been found.
It seems likely that James Suydam bought Our Sweetest Songsdirectly from Lambdin shortly after 1857 when the artist, who still owned the work, sent it to the Academy for exhibition.