Fort Edward (No. 10 of The Hudson River Portfolio)
John Hill
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
We look upriver in this print from a turnpike road that descends towards the Hudson, eleven miles north of the Fort Miller Bridge (the work is out of order in the Portfolio, and should follow plate 7 to replicate an accurate descent of the reiver). The related text emphasizes the region's tumultuous history, noting that although, "the ploughshare now peacefully turns up the soil moistened by the blood of thousands...the memory of days of glorious enterprise remains vigorous...and the scene of their operation will be held sacred to remotest ages." The print comes from a monument of American printmaking produced through the collaboration of artists, a writer, and publishers. In the summer of 1820, the Irish-born William Guy Wall toured and sketched along the Hudson then painted large watercolors. Prints of equal scale were proposed—to be issued to subscribers in sets of four—and John Rubens Smith hired to work the plates. Almost immediately, Smith was replaced by the skilled London-trained aquatint engraver John Hill, who finished the first four plates, and produced sixteen more by 1825. Over the next decade, the popularity of the Portfolio stimulated new appreciation for American landscape, and prepared the way for the Hudson River School.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.