View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City

View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City

William James Bennett

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born and trained in London, Bennett learned well the conventions of the architectural and street views perfected by the Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto, who worked in England in the mid-eighteenth century. Immigrating to the United States about 1826, Bennett adapted the conventions to New York, then undergoing rapid urbanization with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. Unlike the Bennett watercolor, “Weehawken from Turtle Grove” (54.90.107) the topography here is entirely man-made, with the bustle of South Street mediating the forest of masts and the opposing palisade of warehouses. Bennett engraved this watercolor for “Megarey’s Street Views in the City of New-York” (1834).

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York CityView of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York CityView of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York CityView of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York CityView of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.