The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]

The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]

Samuel Seymour

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

By 1803, New York had recovered from losses caused by the British occupation during the American Revolution. The Philadelphia-based artist Birch worked with the engraver Seymour to create two variations of the present image from a single plate. This second version replaced a grazing horse in the foreground with picnickers on Brooklyn Heights; the view of ships on the river and masts moored along the New York side remained the same. Spires and towers dotting the skyline represent different places of worship and suggest a population from diverse backgrounds. From left to right, these include Trinity Church, First Presbyterian Church, Middle Dutch Church, St. Paul’s Chapel, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, North Dutch Church, Brick Church, and St. George’s—the first, fourth, and last serving Anglican congregations of British origin.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]The City of New York, in the State of New York, North America [The Birch View with the Picnic Party]

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.