Growing up in England during the 1950s and ’60s, steam locomotives were omnipresent and, as they did for many of his peers, captivated a young Peter Mosse.
“I liked the railroad environment, the activity, the iconography and the romance of travel trains represented," says Mosse. “I never grew out of it but I never dreamt it would grow into an art collection of this size—or take over my life.”
In the early 1980s, Mosse walked by an antique shop in New York City and was taken by a painting of an early-1900s British steam locomotive in the window.
Allan Mardon, The Golden Spike, 1997, mixed media, 45½ x 72⅝ in.
“I was very shy but got up the courage to go back and inquire about it,” says Mosse. “Several days later I realized I could actually buy that painting. It never occurred to me until that moment that I was someone who would purchase a painting.”
Since then, Mosse has amassed roughly 250 works of train art, a collection he and his wife Christine have recently promised to the Center for Railroad Photography & Art (CRP&A) in Madison, Wisconsin. In celebration of the gift, Hirschl & Adler Galleries has mounted a show of 22 of those paintings in the first showing of railroad art in New York City in more than 50 years. Eric Baumgartner, senior vice president of Hirschl & Adler and a fellow railroad enthusiast, curated the exhibition. “It was a challenge to select a representative set of works that would sum up both the extraordinary breadth of the collection and 40 years of collecting,” says Baumgartner.
Karen Clarkson (Choctaw), The Choctaw Route, ca. 2018, watercolor and gouache on enlarged print of a stock certificate, 11 x 17 in.
Cultivating a collection defined by diversity has been a conscious effort on Mosse’s part and is one of the reasons he wants to preserve it as a single collection. He explains, “I collect solely by the subject of railroads and interpreting that as broadly as possible without any restrictions on period or style or country of origin. If it were to be split up, it would lose one of its most important elements.”
Featuring historic, Western, Native American art and contemporary realism, the eclectic nature of the collection persists within each subgenre.
David Halbach, Track Inspectors, 2003, watercolor on paper, 21 x 29 in.
For Mosse, one of the most significant Western works is The Golden Spike, a piece Mosse commissioned from Allan Mardon in 1997. The title of the work refers to the ceremonial gold spike used join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad in May 1869 but the painting’s focus is the impact the railroad had on Native Americans.
Another work of note is Karen Clarkson’s The Choctaw Route. “I found it absolutely fascinating because this is not the kind of painting one thinks of as a railroad painting,” says Mosse. “It’s an interesting twist on ledger art and I liked the idea of collecting a work by a Native American artist and a woman artist as well.” While visiting a gallery in Santa Fe, he learned that Chocktaw Routewas still available. “That painting was destined for this collection,” Mosse says.
Dennis Ziemienski, The Sunset over the Arroyo, 2008, oil on canvas, 34¾ x 41¼ in.
The Mosse Collection will be transferred to the CRP&A gradually over time, lessening the blow of saying farewell to so many beloved paintings all at once.
“I always miss good paintings when they go, but I really get the most satisfaction when they go to the best possible home,” says Mosse. “And I have total confidence that the center will be very good stewards of the collection far into the future.”
The Art of Trains is on view through August 23. —
Hirschl & Adler Galleries 41 E. 57th Street, Ninth floor » New York, NY 10022 » (212) 535-8810 » www.hirschlandadler.com
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