Glenns Falls (No. 6 of The Hudson River Portfolio)
John Hill
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Text published with this print tells us that the falls "present to the eye of the spectator immense masses of water, rushing down over broad platforms of rock, in a hundred rival cataracts, and as many different directions...the Hudson in this place, descends, by an almost regular series of capacious steps, forming a variety of cascades of an imposing extent, and of incomparable beauty. The height of the entire fall is estimated at near seventy feet; although, to a superficial observer, this calculation may appear exaggerated, as the number and magnitude of the stoney masses which interrupt the course of the waters, detract considerably from its apparent altitude." This view was taken near a toll bridge that spans the river below the village at Glens Falls, with the Adirondacks visible at the horizon, and comes from the Hudson River Portfolio, a monument of American printmaking produced through the collaboration of artists, a writer, and publishers. In the summer of 1820, the Irish-born Wall toured and sketched along the Hudson, then painted a series of large watercolors. Prints of equal scale were proposed—to be issued to subscribers in sets of four—and John Rubens Smith hired to work the plates. Almost immediately, Smith was replaced by the skilled London-trained aquatint engraver John Hill, who finished the first four plates, and produced sixteen more by 1825. Over the next decade, the popularity of the Portfolio stimulated new appreciation for American landscape, and prepared the way for the Hudson River School.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
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.