Wednesday 10 December 2008 Drawn by New York: rare and novel insights into a remarkable collection

Published in September 2008 by D Giles Limited in association with the New-York Historical Society, Drawn by New York: Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society is the first extensive catalogue of the Society’s unique but previously little-known holdings of original works on paper, the focus of a major new travelling exhibition (September 19, 2009 through February 2010).

“An embarrassment of riches” —which includes major works by John James Audubon, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, John Singer Sargent, and Louis Comfort Tiffany—this new publication is not only an essential acquisition for every serious library, gallery, and museum interested in American art and the artistic exchanges between Europe and America, but for those who wish to trace the history of the American nation through a vivid and remarkable gathering of historically significant drawings.

The New-York Historical Society’s drawing collection is one of the earliest assembled in the United States, yet its trove of over 8,000 sheets and 75 rare sketchbooks and albums is surprisingly little known. The Society acquired its first two drawings, portraits in pastel, in 1816 through donation. Since they depicted eminent American men, they were considered to be of historic significance, but it was not until 1855 that the concentration on portraiture waned and the Society acquired its first landscape drawing, a view of Kingston in the Hudson Valley. The Society’s holdings are now particularly strong in portraits and landscape/cityscape views from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, collected initially to preserve works of documentary and historical importance and increasingly valued for their aesthetic interest as well.

The collection spans six centuries, from over 200 sixteenth-century avian watercolours and a Dutch view of New York City (1650), then known as New Amsterdam, to a complex view of the façade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral captured from inside Rockefeller Center by Richard Haas (2002) and representations of the World Trade Center, both before and after September 11 2001. Drawn by New York presents a rich sampler of over 200 highlights from these vast holdings, many of which are clustered around individual artists. In addition to the cache of nearly 500 original watercolours by Audubon (including his spectacular bird watercolours for The Birds of America, (1827-38), together with studies for his Quadrupeds of North America (1844-48), there are many other jewels in the Society’s crown. Works by key luminaries, such as Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, feature alongside works by lesser lights, such as the 123 sheets by the Baroness Hyde de Neuville that preserve the face of a bygone America, its landscape, people, and customs. Other hoards include sheets by members of the Hudson River School, the first indigenous American group of landscape painters—among them sheets by Cole and John Frederick Kensett, as well 10 sketchbooks and around 300 individual drawings by Asher B. Durand, part of the largest collection of Durand material in the world.

As one would expect, the collection encompasses many extraordinary views of the New York urban scene, most of which depict the city’s landmarks, many no longer standing. Among these are seven large gouaches by Nicolino Calyo illustrating the Great Fire of 1835, and Archibald Robertson’s early topographical views, including a 1798 watercolour of Federal Hall (demolished), which became the first home of the New-York Historical Society from 1804 to 1809. There are over 100 drawings that intimately document the Civil War, and newly-discovered works which include the ten earliest known portraits of John Singer Sargent by James Carroll Beckwith, who shared a studio with Sargent in Paris, as well as six drawings by Sargent himself. Other concentrations include over 200 “Outline Drawings” by George Catlin, Osage portraits by Saint-Mémin, and watercolours by one of the first identifiable Native American artist, David Cusick, recording long-vanished indigenous cultures, silhouettes, folk art, and watercolours by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios. These offerings reflect America’s evolving self-image—initially, as a dependent colony maturing into a still-young country with a seemingly limitless frontier, and ultimately to a world power with great urban centres

This new major volume has two key components; the first is the main catalogue, which features highlights of the most historically and artistically noteworthy works. The catalogue entries are organized chronologically by the artists’ birth dates, and each features a biography and selected bibliography devoted to each individual. These precede full technical entries on every work, which include the work’s title, date, media, measurements, inscriptions, provenance, and a selected bibliography. Finally, an entry essay with footnotes discusses each work’s artistic importance, its historical and contextual significance, and its role in material culture. The other component of this volume is an interpretive historiographic essay about the collection and the major forces behind its evolution. Setting the scene, this discussion also studies the larger sociological and historical phenomena that influenced the art produced, as well as changes in media and technology used by artists over the two centuries of the collection’s growth.

After the New-York Historical Society, the exhibition will travel to two additional venues: the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (August 14-November 1, 2009) and the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio (November 20, 2009-February 7, 2010).

Dr. Roberta J.M. Olson is curator of Drawings at the New-York Historical Society

DRAWN BY NEW YORK:
Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society

448 pages, 9” x 11 ½” (292 x 229mm)
235 colour and 30 black and white illustrations, hardback
Text: Up to 12,000 words
ISBN: 978 1 904832 34 8 (13 digit)
ISBN: 1 904832 34 2 (10 digit)

Price: US$84.95/UK£44.95
Publication date: September 2008
Publisher: D. Giles Limited, London

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