Neu Yorck–Vüe De La Nouvelle Yorck (View of New York)
Artist and engraver Balthasar Friedrich Leizel German
Publisher Academie Imperiale, Augsburg German
Not on view
This view imagines New York as a colonial city with a large ship under construction in the left foreground, rowboats and further ships moored along the bank and upon the water, a large customs house at left, and a distant church. The details are derived from European sources and the print belongs to a series engraved in Augsburg and sold internationally. Sold across Europe, such prints were known as Perspective Prints, or Vues d'optique in French, and Guckkastenbilder or Perspektivansichten in German. They were intended to be viewed through an optical device called a perspective glass or zograscope that contains a concave lens and a mirror that reversed the image and enhanced its three-dimensionality. Specially designed peepboxes were also made to contain them.
