View Near Jessup's Landing (No. 3 of The Hudson River Portfolio)

This Hudson landscape, a few miles upriver from Glens Falls, looks back towards the Adirondacks, with stumps at right the result of recent logging. John Agg's related text tells us that, "the contour of this part of the country is rude, woody, and mountainous: human industry has done but little to soften and qualify the rugged asperity of nature; the lands are partially cleared and still more partially cultivated." The work 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 William Guy 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.