The Palisades (No. 19 of The Hudson River Portfolio)
John Hill
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
John Agg's related text tells us that, "the Pallisadoes consist of a line of rugged and perpendicular bluffs, which at a few miles distance from the city of New-York, margin for a considerable distance and overlook the bed of the Hudson river...Rising in savage grandeur, and stretching their tree-crowned summits far as the vision can compass, these rocks are too prominent a feature in the scenery of the Hudson to be overlooked. The shore...is abrupt, and the water sufficiently deep to allow vessels, even of considerable burthen, to approach within a short distance...The height of these bluffs....rising from 400 to 800 feet, exhibiting...steep and solid masses of stupendous stone, and presenting here and there deep cavities, where the eagle builds his nest among the cliffs." The print 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.