The Palisades

John William Hill

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

By the 1860s Hill had adopted the hatching and stippling technique used by the British and Ameri¬can Pre-Raphaelites. Dictated by John Ruskin’s prescription for “truth to nature,” Hill also began to work outdoors in broad daylight, which produced a tonal equivalence between foreground and background in his watercolors. For this reason—and because the Pre-Raphaelite artists suppressed evidence of brushstrokes—his work often appears photographic. As a Pre-Raphaelite, Hill favored a high, nearly unbroken, horizon that emphasized topographical features at the expense of sky and atmosphere. The viewpoint of this watercolor is said to be the former estate of Christian H. Lilienthal of Yonkers, looking north to the house and property of William S. Cochran at right, with the Palisades across the Hudson River at left.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art