Mount Washington, from the Valley of Conway
Not on view
This New Hampshire landscape centered on Mount Washington is based on a painting by Kensett (1851; Davis Museum, Wellesley College). The image was engraved and distributed 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 subscriber-member received a large print and was entered in a lottery to win original artworks shown at the Art-Union's Free Gallery. Aimed at educating the public about contemporary American art, the group's distribution network reached every state and contributed to the creation of a national market for landscapes, genre paintings, and small bronze sculptures. The system flourished for a limited period, however, with no lottery taking place in 1851, the year that this print was announced as part of a set of small engravings titled "Gallery of American Art, No. II." It was not published until 1853, the year that the Art-Union was forced to dissolve.
