Dover Plains
Engraver James Smillie American
After Asher Brown Durand American
Publisher American Art-Union, New York American
Not on view
This idyllic upstate New York landscape reproduces a painting by the leading Hudson River School painter Durand. The latter's "Dover Plains, Dutchess County, New York" (1848: Smithsonian American Art Museum) represents figures climbing onto a rocky outcrop to admire the view. Cows graze at right, fields cover the valley below, and an expansive mountain-backed vista is seen in the distance. The print was published by the American Art-Union, a New York institution that boasted nearly nineteen thousand subscribers at its height in 1849-50. For an annual fee of five dollars, each member received a large, finely engraved, print and was entered in a lottery to win original artworks which were exhibited at the Art-Union's Free Gallery. Aimed at educating the public about contemporary American art, the group's distribution network reached members in every state. This contributed to the creation of a national market for landscapes and genre paintings. The system flourished for a limited period, however, with no lottery taking place in 1851, the year that the Art-Union issued this work as part of a set of small engravings titled "Gallery of American Art, No. I."
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