Gallery of American Art, No. I
Publisher American Art-Union, New York American
Not on view
Incorporated in 1840, the American Art-Union boasted nearly nineteen thousand subscribers at its height in 1849-50. For an annual fee of five dollars, each member received a large engraving and was entered in a lottery to win a work exhibited at the Art-Union's Free Gallery. Aimed at educating the public about contemporary American art, the institution established an impressive distribution network that 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 set of five small engravings.
The works in the set are:
1: James Smillie after Asher B. Durand, Dover Plains [1993.1083(2)]
2: James Smillie after Thomas Cole, Dream of Arcadia [1993.1083(2)]
3: Alfred Jones after Emanuel Leutze, The Image Breaker [1993.1083(4)]
4: Alfred Jones after Francis William Edmonds, The New Scholar [1993.1083(5)]
5: Charles Burt after Richard Caton Woodville, The Card Players [1993.1083(6)]
