Rainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, Connecticut

Rainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, Connecticut

George Harvey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harvey executed this watercolor as one of forty so-called Atmospheric Landscapes of North America, which he began making about 1836 and first exhibited as a discrete group in New York in 1843. The pictures form the only series of American drawings devoted to geographical regions observed at specific times of day and under specific weather conditions; more important, they are the earliest topographical watercolors executed in America using a stipple technique, developed by Harvey as a painter of miniatures on ivory. Though there are a few broad areas of wash, as in the rendering of the barn, most other passages are carefully hatched or stippled in.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, ConnecticutRainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, ConnecticutRainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, ConnecticutRainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, ConnecticutRainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, Connecticut

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.