Label Text:
William Guy Wall, trained as a professional artist, arrived in New York City in 1818 and worked in the United States until 1838, when he returned to Ireland. In this scene the artist presents New York City in the conventional pastoral mode. This traditional way of placing a town or city in the landscape derives from earlier models, clearly learned by Wall during his training in Great Britain. The foregrounds of the print contain trees that frame the views, as well as figures providing human interest and scale.
With a population of 123,700 (the nation’s largest city), New York at the time was most developed at the southern part of Manhattan. Brooklyn was clearly very rural, as was Weehawken, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. Maritime traffic on the Hudson and the East River is evident, indicative of the future bustling metropolis.
John Hill, the engraver, charged the publisher $150 for engraving the plates and for printing 500 impressions of each view, which cost consumers twelve dollars. The artist published the views in 1823. They were so popular that George M. Bourne issued new editions in 1828 and 1829 and sold them at his Depository of the Arts.
Georgia Barnhill, 2014
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1951.49 |
