Baker's Falls (No. 8 of The Hudson River Portfolio)

Text published with this print notes that these falls are "situated within a mile of the beautiful village of Sandy Hill [now Hudson Falls]...their total height...estimated at upwards of seventy feet...There is no perpendicular cataract, neither do the waters rush over such regular and massive platforms as at Glen's Falls: a long ledge of rock crosses the fall about midway, which breaks the main body of the torrent, and scatters it into a variety of picturesque forms and directions...The best view of them is obtained from the foot of the rocks, and descent to which is, in many respects, calculated to deter the traveller, except him who, disdaining superficial views of the wonders of nature, pursues them through all varieties of toil and difficulty." 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.