View Near Fishkill (No. 17 of The Hudson River Portfolio)

We here look north from Fishkill Landing, a few miles above West Point on the Hudson. John Agg's related text tells us that, "this section of country...is a hallowed spot to the historian; and clothed in all the sublime grandeur of her own inaccessible majesty, where Nature attracts, yet mocks, the puny efforts of human art, the painter and the poet will ever find their worthiest and most attractive models. There is a remarkable stillness and beauty in the view...the artist has contrived...to throw a sort of summer expression over the contour of the picture, which is almost sensible to the touch. The air seems to glow with it, and the glossy surface of the stream to catch its languid tranquility. The spirit of repose and retirement infused into the cottage scene in the foreground and the refreshing contrast exhibited in the dark wood which stretches beyond it, are inimitably true to nature." 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.