Pennsylvania’s Forgotten Roseland: George Cochran Lambdin and Rose Culture in Germantown

Roses on Table Top (1872, oil on canvas, 10 x 17 in.) by George Cochran Lambdin.
Magnolia Cottage Collection / Photo by Craig A. Benner

Hugh Scott (1900–94), a Pennsylvania lawmaker and Republican who served in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1947–59, and the U.S. Senate, 1959–77, was an avid rosarian who actively worked to have the rose proclaimed as the official flower of the United States — a feat he accomplished when President Ronald Reagan signed appropriate legislation in 1986.

A resident of Philadelphia, Scott came from a region of the commonwealth with a strong tradition of rose culture. The Greater Philadelphia area, especially Chester County, was home to many large commercial greenhouses dedicated to raising roses for the floral trade. Conard-Pyle of West Grove, founded in 1855, was one of America’s premier growers of rose bushes for commercial and home plantings, and it was the supplier of the plants used in the creation of the Hershey Rose Garden, the vision of Milton Snavely Hershey (1857–1945), begun in 1936. Hershey’s well-financed request “to create a nice garden of roses,” turned a south-central Pennsylvania town into a pilgrimage site for rose lovers. Now called Hershey Gardens, the attraction has, over the years, diversified its plantings but still features the “Queen of Flowers.”

Pictorialist Henry Troth (1859–1945) photographed this view, facing southwest, of roses (probably Tausendshön) on the front trellis of Wyck, circa 1900.
Wikimedia Commons

Conard-Pyle, which later would become known as Star Roses & Plants/Conard-Pyle, has played an important and continuing role in American rose culture. It was their nursery manager, Antoine “Leon” Wintzer (d. 1930), born in Alsace, who in 1867 revolutionized the technology of propagating roses that led to large-scale rose bush production. The firm’s founder, Alfred Fellenberg Conard (1835–1906), knew what to do with an increased inventory. He became the first American to sell rose bushes through the mail. Eventually Conard-Pyle would be the firm to introduce the Peace rose to the United States in the 1940s. It remains the champion seller of hybrid tea roses in American history. Later the company launched Knock Out roses, which have revolutionized American rose culture.

Alfred Conard was a descendent of the Pietists who in 1683 settled Germantown, now part of Philadelphia. Germantown has a rich horticultural history beginning with its founder, Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651–1720). It was home to James Logan (1674–1751), William Penn’s colonial secretary who was also a noted botanist, and his son William (1717–76) and grandson George (1753–1821), who built and enlarged the greenhouse that is still standing on their family estate, Stenton, now a museum, its Colonial Revival landscape enhanced with vintage roses. By the mid-19th century the community was nationally recognized as a center of American horticulture as well as a rosarian’s paradise. Private gardens were alive with the flowers. Greenhouses devoted to growing roses for the flower trade, purveyors of rose bushes, and horticultural journals featuring articles on rose culture were abundant. Germantown was also home to America’s premier 19th-century painter of roses, George Cochran Lambdin (1830–96).

The grounds at Wyck, on Germantown Avenue, include America’s oldest documented rose garden, which was planted following a plan drawn up by its chatelaine, Jane Bowne Haines (1792–1843), between 1821 and 1827. The garden, which can be visited today, contains approximately 70 historical rose cultivars, with about 30 dating to the original planting. Several of Wyck’s roses were “rediscovered” in the garden in the late 20th century and have subsequently been returned to the nursery trade and to the world of rose lovers. During Lambdin’s lifetime, the garden was maintained by the seventh and eighth generations of family ownership, Jane Reuben Haines (1832–1911) and her daughter Jane Bowne Haines(1869–1937), a noted horticulturist and the founder of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (now the Ambler Campus of Temple University).

Girls and Flowers (1855, oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 18 1/8 in.) is a typical genre painting by Lambdin.
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Another impressive Germantown rose garden was on the estate Fern Hill (now Fernhill Park, devoid of its gardens), developed by French-born merchant Louis Clapier (1765–1838), which would be maintained under the direction of two generations of the Baumann family. Martin Baumann (d. 1865), the progenitor, was an Alsatian born and trained gardener who would also establish a multigenerational nursery offering rose bushes and other plants to the gardening community. Many other old gardens in Germantown had smaller rose collections as well as other horticultural treasures, including the Wistar family home, Grumblethorpe, which had a (still growing today) Wisteria vine — named for Dr. Caspar Wistar (1761–1818) by naturalist Thomas Nuthall. It was probably this plant that provided the model for Lambdin’s magnificent painting of Wisteria.

The post–Civil War era coincided with the introduction of an extraordinary amount of new rose materials for gardeners. Wichuriana roses, introduced from China, were among the first hardy climbing roses available in America. An early hybrid, the pink-flowered Tausendshön, was soon planted on a trellis on the front of Wyck. Even more exciting was the introduction by French rosarian Jean-Baptiste André Guillot (1827–93) of the La France rose, which is widely credited as being the first modern hybrid tea rose, a sensation sparking an increased passion for rose growing. Hybrid teas are not only large roses held on long stems but also perpetual bloomers. Rose hybridization exploded. The Miller and Hays nursery in neighboring Mount Airy offered 300 varieties of the “New Teas and Hybrid Perpetuals” in 1870. By 1876 they offered 500 varieties. This was an idyll before black spot disease caused by the fungus Diplocarpon rosae became widespread and the Japanese beetle arrived in America.

Germantown was also the home base of two landscape designers and nurserymen of national stature and influence. Scottish-born William Saunders (1822–1900) would design Germantown’s extant Awbery Arboretum and, most famously, the Gettysburg National Cemetery. He was also the United States Department of Agriculture’s first botanist and landscape designer. English-born Thomas Meehan (1826–1901) founded a firm that would outlive him and undertake major commissions over a large geographic range, including the now-restored Rose Garden on the Frederick Vanderbilt Estate, Hyde Park, in New York’s Hudson Valley. Meehan was even more significant as a horticultural journalist. Gardener’s Monthly, which he edited from 1859 to 1888, featured many articles on roses and rose culture.

George Cochran Lambdin in his Center City studio.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania Portrait Collection V88, reproduced with permission from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Into this center of what can be characterized as “Rose Mania” came its prime illustrator, an artist who would render the ephemeral rose eternal, George Cochran Lambdin. Before his appearance, still life painting was already an established art form in Philadelphia, thanks in large part to the amazing Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827) and his remarkable family. His talented sons, Rembrandt (1778–1860) and Raphaelle (1774–1825), were frequent visitors to Wyck, sharing horticultural and scientific interests with Reuben Haines (1786–1831). Others of Peale’s family who painted still lifes included his younger brother James (1749–1831) and James’ daughters Sarah Miriam (1800–85), Anna Claypoole (1791–1878), and Margaretta Angelica (1795–1882).

The congenial cultural atmosphere of Germantown, which the railroad would convert into one of the first suburban areas in America, encouraged noted portraitist James Reid Lambdin (1807–89) to move his young family from Pittsburgh, where his future artist son, George, had been born. The new family home at 211 Price Street is commodious and still survives — decayed and altered. The train made it very easy for the Lambdins to commute to the greater commercial and cultural life of Philadelphia. Although Germantown had become formally part of the Quaker City in the Consolidation Act of 1854, it has always retained its uniqueness. Both James and George would maintain studios in Center City. George’s last one would be in the fashionable Baker Building, a modern commercial structure, now demolished, which stood at 1520–22 Chestnut Street, a block where many other artists had studios.

George’s training had, quite naturally, begun with his father. He then studied at the well-established Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which was, as it remains today, both an art school and a museum. George’s métier was genre and religious paintings — narrative canvases, often in a small format. His first painting to be exhibited at the academy was is in 1847, when he was only 17 years old. He would continue to exhibit at the academy intermittently for the rest of his active life, and he would also be elected an academician of his alma mater.

In 1855 and 1856 Lambdin visited Europe, studying in the most important art centers of the Western world at that time, Paris and Munich. When the Civil War broke out, he worked for the United States Sanitary Commission, distributing medicine and bandages. He also made sketches depicting camp life, which he developed into full paintings after the war. Today these are among his most highly prized works.

Roses (1872, oil on wood, 24 x 11 3/4 in.) by Lambdin is painted with a black background, evocative of Japanese lacquer.
Yale University Art Gallery

In the late 1860s, wanting to be at the center of America’s art world, he moved to New York City, where he took up residence at the famed Tenth Street Studio Building, working among the city’s most prominent artists and those on the rise — most notably John La Farge (1835–1910), who painted many still lifes. It is believed that it was La Farge who influenced Lambdin toward flower painting. The Philadelphian would go on to paint many varieties including calla lilies, cyclamen, chrysanthemums, azalea and wisteria. But roses became his signature flower. La Farge and the others in his circle were also very interested in Asian objects and aesthetics, which would also influence Lambdin. George often showed flowers in Chinese and Japanese containers and many of his flower paintings were long and narrow, referencing the format of Japanese screens. In 1870 he was elected to the National Academy of Design and expected to remain in New York. But his health, which was always tenuous, took a turn for the worse. (There is no record of what his health problems were.) It was later, in 1870, that he returned to Germantown, and that same year he exhibited his first known rose painting at the Union League Club of Philadelphia.

Lambdin had moved home, returning to his father’s house on Price Street. Never marrying, he would spend the rest of his life there and at his Philadelphia studio. Always a successful artist, he became an active gardener, employing William Cochrane, who dug and tended his rose beds and built and maintained one small greenhouse, perhaps two, for him. The garden with the glasshouse(s) was the source for his models. But, “when roses were scarce,” fellow rosarian Edwin C. Tellet (1860–1929) recalled, “both Mr. Lambdin and Mr. Cochrane came to Baumann’s [nursery] where I was employed for specimens.” George’s favorite rose was the pioneering pink La France. It was quintessential. “I can think of nothing,” Lambdin wrote, “to equal its half-open flower.” He became a founding member of the Germantown Horticultural Society and, like his fellow member Thomas Meehan, occasionally presented programs to the group.

Many of his rose paintings were of flowers in vases or sometimes on a tabletop, but those that made him famous were of roses growing naturally — most commonly unsupported against the sky or against a stark black background evocative of Japanese lacquer. His blossoms are precisely painted, and a rosarian can identify the varieties. He, however, never incorporated varietal names into the titles of his paintings, which often show some influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and are usually radiant with ambient light. Despite his always delicate health, he was a prolific artist. His paintings were a sensation and sold very well.

Polish-born Bostonian Louis Prang (1824–1909) ran a firm producing lithographs. In 1864 he went to Germany to learn the most advanced chromolithographic process then known. He returned the following year to his Massachusetts home and added a new line to his business — creating high-quality reproductions of works of art for the rising middle classes who wanted sophisticated art but were unable to afford originals. He assembled a stable of accomplished artists and among the most successful of them was George Cochran Lambdin. “Lambdin Roses” became a phenomenon and sold briskly for many years, making a modest fortune for him. Lesser painters and print makers would emulate Lambdin and Prang’s work, but they reigned supreme within their genre.

June Morning (1878) was typical of the “Lambdin Roses” published by Louis Prang of Boston.
Wikimedia Commons / Boston Public Library, Print Department

Lambdin was active in a number of arts organizations in Philadelphia, including the Artists’ Fund Society, and was devoted to his church, St. Luke’s Episcopal in Germantown, where he was a vestryman and played a key role in planning for the church’s grand, still-used Gothic Revival structure designed by New York architect Henry Martyn Congdon (1834–1922) in 1875.

After his father’s death in 1889 George continued to live in the family home along with his maiden sister, Emma. A brother, Alfred, and his wife lived nearby, as did his sister, Annie, who married Augustus Snyder and provided George with a lively brood of nieces and nephews. Lambdin continued many activities and painted until about two years before his death, when he became bedridden. He was buried in St. Luke’s churchyard with many mourners present. Among the floral offerings was a wreath from the Artists’ Fund Society.

Today, Lambdin’s paintings, including those of his roses, are found in museums and private collections throughout the United States. He remains among Pennsylvania’s premier painters of flowers. His work is less formulaic than that of German-born Severin Roesen (1816–c.1872), who flourished in and about Williamsport, and more traditional than that of Charles Demuth (1883–1935), who painted his modernist watercolors mostly in Lancaster. Lambdin’s oeuvre remains a singular vision of his time and place . . . and his love of flowers.

Irwin Richman, a popular lecturer, author of more than 30 books, and avid art collector, lives with his wife Susan in Lancaster. He is a research associate at Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum and professor emeritus of American studies and history at Penn State Harrisburg. His most recent previous article for Pennsylvania Heritage, “After All: Charles Demuth, a Modernist in Lancaster,” appeared in the Winter 2019 issue.