Artist. The younger brother of William Hart, James moved with his family from Kilmarnock, Scotland to Albany, New York in 1830. There he was apprenticed to a sign painter and developed an interest in art. In 1851 he went to Dusseldorf, Germany to study and remained for three years. He returned to Albany and opened a studio. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1848, became an associate in 1857 and a full member in 1859. After the 1870s, he and his brother William opened studios in Keene Valley, NY, in the heart of the Adirondacks. James Hart was particularly devoted to the National Academy, exhibiting there over a period of more than forty years, and serving as vice president late in his life from 1895 to 1899. Like his brother, James also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association (he lived for a time in Brooklyn) and at major exhibitions around the country. Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, James based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While James and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in Düsseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. His children, Robert, Mary, and Letitia were artists, as was his wife, Marie Thereas Gorsuch, and his sister, Julie Hart Beers Kempson. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York State Historical Assocation, the Corcoran Gallery, and Vassar College.