L. W. Currey, Inc.

(New York; Troy; Hudson River) Bartlett, William Henry. VIEW FROM MOUNT IDA [TROY, NEW YORK]. Original drawing. N.p., n.d. Circa 1836-1837. 5x7 inch sepia wash drawing on paper of the Hudson River from Mount Ida (now Prospect Park) in Troy, New York. Name "W. H. Bartlett" and title "View from Mount Ida" on old mat. Matted and framed under glass, with 11.8x17.8 cm (4 9/16 x 6 15/16 inches) of drawing visible; not examined out of frame. British landscape artist William Henry Bartlett (1809-1854) traveled extensively in Europe, North America and the Middle East making 5x7 inch sepia wash drawings the exact size to be engraved. Finely detailed steel engravings were made from Bartlett's drawings. "View from Mount Ida" was engraved in 1839 by Robert William Wallis (one of the ablest of the group of supremely skillful landscape-engravers who flourished during the second quarter of the nineteenth century). The engraved views were published uncolored with a text by Nathaniel Parker Willis as AMERICAN SCENERY; OR, LAND, LAKE, AND RIVER: ILLUSTRATIONS OF TRANSATLANTIC NATURE. FROM DRAWINGS BY W. H. BARTLETT ... AMERICAN SCENERY was published by George Virtue in London in 30 monthly installments from 1837 to 1839. Bound editions of the work were published from 1840 onward. "According to Britton['s autobiography, 1849-1850] and Beattie[s biography of Bartlett], Bartlett visited North America four times: 1836–1837, 1838, 1841, and 1852. From the summer of 1836 to July 1837 he was in the United States acquiring illustrations for Nathaniel Parker Willis’s AMERICAN SCENERY (1840), and in the summer and autumn of 1838 he was in the Canadas sketching for Willis’s CANADIAN SCENERY ILLUSTRATED (1842). Although little is known about Bartlett’s itinerary in North America, a map in AMERICAN SCENERY suggests that his travels during 1836–1837 began in New York City and took him north to the White Mountains, N. H., west to Niagara Falls, N. Y., and south to Washington, D. C. Willis’s texts for the two volumes [AMERICAN SCENERY and CANADIAN SCENERY ILLUSTRATED] are undistinguished ... However, the five-by-seven-inch sepia sketches which Bartlett provided have remained popular. Their popularity owes much to Bartlett’s attention to architectural detail as a result of his training in England, to his experiences during his travels, and to his own penchant for the picturesque and sublime in landscape. His was an art which appealed to viewers content to be passive spectators of engravings of scenes easily recognizable from their own experience or reading. It was an art which, reflecting the theories of William Gilpin and Edmund Burke, emphasized the irregular and rough, light and shadow, ruined buildings and vast mountains, wild river reaches and towering crags. William Henry Bartlett was a warmhearted, sensitive, rather reserved Englishman who was devoted to his family and to a small number of intimate friends among whom was his biographer, William Beattie. Because he was willing to subordinate his artistic talent to the needs of his major publisher, George Virtue, and to the contemporary taste for picturesque topographical illustration, Bartlett failed to achieve significant standing as an artist. Consequently his art seems inferior when compared with the best work of Cockburn, Heriot, or James D. Duncan. But his skill in sketching architectural detail, his love for picturesque landscape, and his interest in the life of the people of Canada gave to his illustrations in CANADIAN SCENERY ILLUSTRATED -- and also in AMERICAN SCENERY -- a historical importance that merits their survival" (Alexander M. Ross, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, volume 7). A touch of foxing and a bit of soiling, very good. Note: We have included in our illustrations an image of a hand-colored version of the steel engraving made by Wallis to show the final work as derived from the sketch made by Bartlett -- it is for informational purposes only and is not included with the offer of the original drawing. Bartlett's drawing differs in details (particularly structures) from the engraving, and is the more accurate rendering of the scene when drawn. (#167045).

Price: $1,250.00