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Mount Auburn Cemetery by Chambers, Thomas

Chambers, Thomas · mid 19th century

View the artwork: Mount Auburn Cemetery →

Thomas Chambers' 'Mount Auburn Cemetery' is a painting of a burial ground that refuses to look like one. Painted in the mid-19th century, this small oil on canvas depicts America's first rural cemetery, founded in 1831 in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, as a lush and inviting public park. Chambers, a largely self-taught immigrant from Yorkshire, treats the grounds as a landscape for the living, flooded with sunlight and strolling couples, rather than a place of mourning.

Look closely at the clearing just right of center. A tiny white classical pavilion, barely an inch tall on the canvas, is the one architectural whisper that you are in a cemetery. The two women in Victorian dress walk the winding gravel path as if on a social promenade, and the arching trees form a natural green vault above them, a cathedral of leaves rather than stone. Every other signal reads: pleasure garden.

Chambers painted this while he was active in Boston, working from popular prints and developing a flat, boldly patterned style that would later earn him the posthumous nickname 'America's first modern'. He died in a poorhouse in Whitby, England, in 1869, largely unknown. The painting was acquired by the collectors Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch in 1949 and donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1958.

Mount Auburn was designed as a place for contemplation and leisure, not sorrow. Chambers understood that assignment perfectly. Next time you see this painting, find the white pavilion first, then notice how easily you might have missed it.

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Details

A theatrical coulisse framing the scene; Chambers' signature flat, rhythmic patterning is most visible in its stylized silhouetted foliage, revealing his self-taught decorative hand.
A theatrical coulisse framing the scene; Chambers' signature flat, rhythmic patterning is most visible in its stylized silhouetted foliage, revealing his self-taught decorative hand.
The painting's sole human presence; their dark silhouettes and period costumes anchor the scene as leisure rather than mourning, embodying the rural cemetery movement's social ideal.
The painting's sole human presence; their dark silhouettes and period costumes anchor the scene as leisure rather than mourning, embodying the rural cemetery movement's social ideal.
The brightest passage in the painting; Chambers uses it to flood the composition with optimism rather than elegiac shadow, defying expectations for a cemetery scene.
The brightest passage in the painting; Chambers uses it to flood the composition with optimism rather than elegiac shadow, defying expectations for a cemetery scene.
The compositional fulcrum; its precise ellipse contrasts with the wild tree canopy above and signals the manicured, park-like philosophy of Mount Auburn's designers.
The compositional fulcrum; its precise ellipse contrasts with the wild tree canopy above and signals the manicured, park-like philosophy of Mount Auburn's designers.
The trees meet overhead to form a natural cathedral , a visual metaphor for the transcendental aspirations of the rural cemetery movement.
The trees meet overhead to form a natural cathedral , a visual metaphor for the transcendental aspirations of the rural cemetery movement.
Transcript

It looks like a park on a summer afternoon. But this is a cemetery. America's first rural cemetery, in fact. Two women stroll the grounds as if in a pleasure garden. The painter, Thomas Chambers, was a self-taught English immigrant. His flat, rhythmic style earned him the title 'America's first modern.' But the real surprise is back here, tucked among the trees. A white classical pavilion, only an inch tall on the canvas. It is the one quiet marker that you are among the dead.