Hudson (No. 13 of The Hudson River Portfolio)
Etcher John Hill American, born England
after William Guy Wall Irish
Publisher Henry J. Megarey American
Not on view
The town of Hudson, seen here from across the river, sits on the east bank. John Agg's text records "five or six thousand inhabitants, amongst whom we discover much wealth and refinement...[with] facilities for acquiring wealth which many of our cities may envy: that there is a strong disposition to improve the good which Providence has bestowed." Active commerce was carried out with Albany, forty-five miles to the north, and New York, a hundred and twenty-five miles to the south. 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.
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