View from Fishkill Looking To West-Point (No. 15 of The Hudson River Portfolio)

John Agg's related text tells us that, "this part of the Hudson...a few miles south of Poughkeepsie and north of West-Point...exhibits some of the finest scenery of the Highlands, combining both beauty and sublimity...Such are the scenes of solitary magnificence through which, its broad channel sunk into the hollow of the mountains, and its varied surface covered with a thousand white sails glittering to the sun, this mighty river makes its tributary way to the vast Atlantic....It may excite some surprise, that immediately on the verge of a noble stream, communicating with the most populous and commercial city of the Union, such extensive tracts of land should yet be found, which have never known the touch of the ploughshare, nor yielded any growth but the forest oak and mountain pine." 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.