Jervis McEntee was born on July 14, 1828 at Rondout, New York. He was the eldest child of James S. and Sarah Jane (Goetcheus) McEntee, came of Irish and Huguenot stock. His father, an engineer, had charge of the construction of the Delaware & Hudson canal and the terminal docks at Rondout.
Jervis McEntee received his early education at Clinton Institute, Clinton, N. Y. , and soon after leaving this school he became (1850 - 51) a pupil of Frederick E. Church in New York City.
For three or four years he engaged in business at Rondout, but without much success, and in 1858, at the age of thirty, he definitely turned to art and opened a studio in the metropolis. In 1859, with his friend Sanford R. Gifford, he went to Europe, visited all the leading art galleries, and sketched from nature in Italy and Switzerland. In 1861 his "Melancholy Days" was bought by James A. Suydam, N. A. , who left it to the National Academy. McEntee was elected an Academician the same year. As a rule he spent his summers and autumns at Rondout, whence he made frequent painting excursions to the nearby Catskills. A place especially endeared to him was Lanesville, where many of his best studies were made. He soon became noted for his winter and autumn scenes, which were his best productions and have a marked poetic character. Tuckerman found in his landscapes "a subtle feeling, a latent sentiment, and a delicate touch rarely found even among the most skilful scenic limners"; but Isham, less lenient, wrote that he "had no thorough training, and his works sometimes show the lack of it". It is perhaps just to say that he shared the technical weaknesses as well as the engaging personal qualities of the men of the Hudson River school. Their work, in spite of its lack of substance and depth, has a historic significance. In the eyes of their compatriots, at least, it was peculiarly winning because of its native ingenuousness.
At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he exhibited two landscapes. At the Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 1876, he was represented by eight pictures. He exhibited also at the Royal Academy, London, 1872, and at the Paris Exposition of 1878. His "Eastern Sunset Sky" was in the Thomas B. Clarke collection, and his "November Days" was in the J. Taylor Johnston collection. The "Autumn Landscape with Figures, " from the Borden collection, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A work of dramatic interest, outside the customary range of his subjects, was "The Danger Signal. " In a driving snow-storm a passenger train has been brought to a sudden stop by a red lantern swung by a track-walker in the foreground. The snow lies in drifts on the track, and the glare of the locomotive headlight illuminates the wintry scene with strong effect. McEntee died at his old homestead at Rondout, at the age of sixty-two.
McEntee is a somewhat lesser-known figure of the 19th-century American art world, but was the close friend and traveling companion of several of the important Hudson River School artists. Aside from his paintings, McEntee's journals are an enduring legacy, documenting the life of a New York painter during and after the Gilded Age.
McEntee had many warm friends and ardent patrons in the New York of the late nineteenth century.
In 1854 McEntee married Gertrude, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Jefferson Sawyer. He left no children. His wife had died some twelve years before him.
21 March 1800 - 30 June 1887
21 January 1805 - 2 November 1883
30 January 1835 - 14 June 1883
8 June 1847 - 1 June 1913
November 1844 - 6 January 1931
1837 - 8 July 1903
25 January 1830 - 6 August 1892
29 January 1834 - 14 October 1878
