Beschreibung:

Victor de Grailly American, 1804-1889 View Near Anthony's Nose Oil on canvas 21 1/4 x 28 3/4 inches Although Victor de Grailly is famous for his appealing views of popular American landmarks and tourist destinations, it is now believed that he never actually visited the United States. Instead, he spent his life in France, producing formal compositions for exhibition in the Salons, but also creating a body of American scenes destined for the American market. These images, often executed by de Grailly in multiples, were largely inspired by American Scenery: or Land, Lake, and River Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature, issued in two volumes in January 1840. The book contained engravings made after studies by William Henry Bartlett a British landscape artist famous for his views of all parts of the world, together with detailed descriptions of American landmarks written by Nathaniel P. Willis. Bartlett made several trips to the United States to gather sketches for American Scenery. He followed the popular tourist route from New York City, up the Hudson and then west to Niagara Falls. Also visiting New England and the mid-Atlantic region, Bartlett produced images of most of the major sites of interest to European and American sightseers. This collection of prints captures the look and feel of the United States in the 1830s as no other and they remain some of the most popular and pleasing images of America ever disseminated. Although the present work was at one time identified as Passamaquoddy Bay, it in fact depicts an area in the Hudson Highlands near what is now Bear Mountain State Park. It is very close to a print by William Henry Bartlett View Near Anthony's Nose. The geological forms and the boats sailing on the Hudson are nearly identical to those in the print, but in the left foreground, De Grailly repositioned Bartlett's solitary herdsman with his sheep, and added a fashionably attired couple strolling with their dog. The introduction of figure groupings into a foreground section of a composition, set apart from an expansive view receding into the distance, stems from the English landscape tradition as popularized by John Wilson. Interestingly, Bartlett was not the only British painter/printmaker whose Hudson River views evoke that English prototype. Robert Havell Jr., the principal engraver of Audubon's Birds of America, emigrated to America in 1839; he devoted the remainder of his life to painting Hudson River landscapes from Ossining to Tarrytown that often included a similar compositional device. C
Wax lined, stretchers not original. Flattened craquelure. Vertical pattern of craquelure suggests that canvas may have been rolled. Scattered inpaint in the sky and at the edges but little in the rest of the composition.