Dover Plains
This idyllic upstate New York landscape reproduces a painting by the leading Hudson River School painter Durand. The latter's "Dover Plains, Dutchess County, New York" (1848; Smithsonian American Art Museum) represents figures climbing onto a rocky outcrop to admire the view. Cows graze at right, fields cover the valley below, with an expansive mountain-backed vista in the distance. The print was published 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, finely engraved print and was entered in a lottery to win original artworks exhibited at the Art-Union's Free Gallery. Aimed at educating the public about contemporary American art, the group's distribution network reached every state. This 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 the Art-Union issued this work as part of a set of small engravings titled "Gallery of American Art," No. I."
Artwork Details
- Title: Dover Plains
- Series/Portfolio: Gallery of American Art, No. I
- Engraver: James Smillie (American, Edinburgh 1807–1885 Poughkeepsie, New York)
- Artist: After Asher Brown Durand (American, Jefferson, New Jersey 1796–1886 Maplewood, New Jersey)
- Publisher: American Art-Union, New York (1838–51)
- Date: 1851
- Medium: Etching and engraving
- Dimensions: Image: 6 7/8 × 10 3/8 in. (17.4 × 26.3 cm)
Sheet: 9 1/8 × 13 1/8 in. (23.2 × 33.3 cm) - Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Gertrude and Thomas Jefferson Mumford Collection, Gift of Dorothy Quick Mayer, 1942
- Object Number: 42.119.433
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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