View from the Packet Wharf at Frenchtown Looking down Elk Creek

Benjamin Henry Latrobe American, born England
1806
Not on view
For most of his distinguished career as an architect, Latrobe, the designer of the original U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., kept an illustrated journal of his travels throughout the country. The journal, along with most of his watercolor drawings, is now in the Maryland Historical Society. This drawing depicts the confluence of Elk and Pates’s Creeks in northern Maryland, then a point of commercial and passenger exchange on the journey from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. For the most part, the lip service that the artist pays here to picturesque composition, manifested principally in the calligraphic tree in the foreground, yields to the artist’s curiosity about the landscape’s utilitarian, agricultural, and commercial functions.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: View from the Packet Wharf at Frenchtown Looking down Elk Creek
  • Artist: Benjamin Henry Latrobe (American (born England), Fulneck, Yorkshire 1764–1820 New Orleans, Louisiana)
  • Date: 1806
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Watercolor, pen and iron gall ink, and graphite on off-white wove paper
  • Dimensions: 8 1/2 x 12 in. (21.6 x 30.5 cm)
  • Credit Line: Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1993
  • Object Number: 1993.281
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

Research Resources

The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

Feedback

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.