E. C. Coats

E. (Edmund) C. Coates
English/American
(1816-1872)

Landscape with Mill, oil on canvas, signed lower right and dated 1863,
12" x 15" (image), 20" x 23" with frame.

One of the more enigmatic figures of American art history, E. C. Coates has emerged only in recent decades as an important figure in the Hudson River School. Apparently of English birth, Coates was active in the New York City area between the late 1830’s and his death in 1872. Although a prolific painter, little is known of his life, and few exhibition records exist. Several of his paintings were shown at the Apollo Association – a forerunner of the American Art Union – in 1839 and 1840, and the Association purchased one of his works for distribution to its subscribers. Another of his paintings, “Landscape View on the Hudson,” was loaned to the National Academy of Design in 1841. Coates executed many views of historic places along the Hudson and in the NYC environ, his 1867 painting Washington’s Headquarters at Newburgh being among the best known. Yet he also painted scenes from such disparate places as the Connecticut River valley, the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, and even Canada. One of he most fascinating aspects of Coates’ style is that he alternated between an academic style and a folk idiom . As noted in a catalogue of American paintings in the Metropolitan Museum, Coates “appears to have practiced both modes concurrently with no consistent development from one to the other.” Many of Coates paintings are based upon popular prints of the time, and he seems to have had a particular fascination with the work of J.M.W. Turner. (Source: American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. II, Natalie Spassky et. al., Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 8-12)

Coates’ work can be found in he Everson Museum (Syracuse, NY), the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute, the Yale University Art gallery, the New York Historical Society, the Mead Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

Panoramic Lakeside View, o/c, 24"x32", s.l.l. "E. C. Coates 1853"

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