The Musicale, Barber Shop, Trenton Falls, New York

In The Musicale, Barber Shop, Trenton Falls, New York (cover), a string band performs on a summer evening for the guests and staff of the Trenton Falls Hotel. City life in 1866 America was crowded, dirty, and dangerous, but affluent travelers could get away from it all at this rustic resort in upstate New York. It stood at the edge of a pine forest, surrounded by rose gardens, a greenhouse, and an open-air pavilion for dancing. Most guests arrived by train and were driven from the depot to the hotel in a four-horse coach called the “Tally-Ho.” Up the steps from the porte cochere and across the broad veranda was the hotel office, where guests would sign the register and be shown to their rooms, furnished with pine beds, chairs, chiffonieres, mirrors, pitchers of water, and bound copies of the Psalms. After refreshing themselves from the journey, they could tour the Falls or relax in the parlor, which displayed a life-size portrait of Michael Moore, the proprietor of the hotel, with his wife Maria and their nine children, superimposed on a picture of the Falls. It was painted by the fashionable and prosperous Thomas Hicks (1823-1890), who also made portraits of the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, the author Harriet Beecher Stowe, and presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln.

As a teenager, Hicks was apprenticed to his cousin, the painter Edward Hicks. He studied art in Philadelphia and New York, spent four years visiting European galleries and studios, and for a time was part of an artists' colony in Rome. He was admired for his wit and charm as well as for his talent. After his marriage to Angelina King in 1853, Hicks purchased a country home called Thornwood about a mile from the Trenton Falls Hotel in the township of Russia, New York. He painted at least six commissions for Michael Moore, including landscapes of Trenton Falls in the style of the Hudson River School ( JAMA cover, April 28, 2010).

The falls at Trenton were six major cascades and cataracts along West Canada Creek, a tributary of the Mohawk River. In comparison with Niagara, they were less massive but no less dramatic. Just a short walk from the hotel, past the barber shop and billiards hall, was a staircase leading down to the gorge. At the bottom of the staircase, a rocky path skirted a series of whirlpools, drop-offs, and rainbows of mist. The turbulence of the creek was deafening. Adventurous hikers could follow the path for almost two miles, but women in petticoats were advised not to venture so far. Back at the hotel, lemonade was served on the veranda, and after a lavish dinner, some of the guests might stroll down to the barber shop and billiards parlor to hear William Brister sing.

In The Musicale, two of the performers are African American and two are white. It was rare for 19th-century paintings to show people of different races enjoying music together. For example, in The Power of Music by William Sydney Mount, a white man plays the fiddle for two other white men in a barn, while a black man stands outside, listening with a smile on his face. Clearly, he does not expect to be invited in. By contrast, the cover painting has blacks and whites performing and listening to music together, and a black man is the central figure in the composition. Two boys and six women sit or stand on the lawn just outside the door, perhaps to avoid stray hair clippings and the smell of sweat and tobacco. The tall woman in white is Angie Hicks, the artist's wife, and the artist himself stands just inside the doorway to the left, sketching the musicians. Michael Moore, owner of the hotel, is behind him, and sitting on a crate in the foreground is Charles Tefft, who commissioned the painting. On the far side of the room is William Brister in his barber's apron, singing. Behind him the guitarist smiles through the window at a young woman. He could reach out and touch her, but he has to keep his hands on his strings and frets.

It is tempting to guess what music they are playing: perhaps The Battle Cry of Freedom, in honor of Moore's son, who was wounded serving with the Union Army. Brister might also know a slave spiritual such as Rock O’ My Soul or Don't Be Weary, Traveller ; the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who helped slaves escape to Canada, was active in central New York, and fugitive slaves could have shared their songs with local sympathizers as they were passing through the area. Music has the power to bring together people of different races and social backgrounds, if only for a little while. The audience at the Trenton Falls barber shop and billiards hall might request a popular song by Stephen Foster, such as Oh! Susanna, Beautiful Dreamer, or Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair, so they can hum along, far away in their own reflections but feeling a close connection to the band, until the music stops.