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The introduction to this series, about the Wadsworth family and the Wadsworth Atheneum, is here. For all posts in the series, click here.

Niagara Falls was considered the greatest natural wonder in North America throughout most of the nineteenth century. The Wadsworth has three wonderful paintings of the Falls. For this post, because I’m addicted to setting context, I’m adding some paintings not at the Wadsworth.

To get us oriented spatially: a panoramic view of Niagara Falls in 2016. At the left is the Rainbow bridge, then the American and Bridal Veil Falls, and (on the Canadian side) Horseshoe Falls.

1697: Hennepin

The first ever depiction of Niagara Falls is in Father Louis Hennepin’s Nouvelle decouverte d’un tres grand pays situé dans l’Amérique, entre le Nouveau Mexique, et la Mer Glaciale (A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America), originally published in 1697. The image of the Falls is inaccurate, except for the fact that it shows a divided waterfall. It was probably executed by an artist at Hennepin’s publisher, based on Hennepin’s description. For more on Hennepin’s illustration, see here.

1762: Thomas Davies

An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara (13 x 20 inches, watercolor) is the first eyewitness depiction of Niagara Falls; it includes a rainbow and a pair of Iroquois Indians. Thomas Davies (ca. 1737-1812) was a captain in the British Royal Artillery. This painting is in private hands following a sale at Christie’s in 2015.

1807: John Trumbull

Niagara Falls from an Upper Bank on the British Side (25 x 36 inches) is by John Trumbull. He’s best known for his huge canvases of significant events in American history, including The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, 1820; but he was also one of the first American artists to paint Niagara Falls. It doesn’t have much oomph, though, does it? The Falls are barely visible.

This painting was owned by Daniel Wadsworth, who established the Wadsworth Atheneum, and whose portrait was painted by Trumbull many years earlier.

1820: Alvan Fisher

A General View of the Falls of Niagara (34 x 48 inches) is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Alvan Fisher (1792-1863), born in Massachusetts, was painting landscapes of the Northeast even before Thomas Cole and the painters of the Hudson River School became prominent. This painting is more impressive than Trumbull’s, by virtue of the fact that we can see more of the Falls.

1830: Thomas Cole

Distant View of Niagara Falls (19 x 24 inches), at the Art Institute of Chicago. Cole (1801-1848), the founder of the Hudson River School, was in his prime when he created this work. It carries more impact than Fisher’s (done a mere decade earlier) because of the sweeping panoramic view, dramatic lighting, and towering clouds. You can see why Cole inspired more followers and imitators than Fisher. On Cole, see here.

1837: Roux de Rochelle

Niagara Falls (hand-colored print from a steel engraving) is a scant 3.5 x 5.5 inches, but the point of view conveys a sense of the size of the Falls and the power of the cascade. The image was published in Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard Roux de Rochelle’s Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Paris, [1837], which was also published in Italian, German, and Spanish editions. Roux de Rochelle was French minister to the United States in Washington, D.C., from 1830 to 1831. Wikipedia doesn’t say if this particular image was done by an artist who had visited Niagara Falls. It reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, which few Americans had probably seen by the 1830s.

Ca. 1843-1860: Thomas Chambers

Niagara Falls (22 x 30 inches), at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Thomas Chambers, a self-taught artist, specialized in seascapes and landscapes. This painting has the charm of an old picture postcard: the flow of the falls and the puffs of mist are so stylized that they don’t look like water. The Wadsworth label notes that Chambers probably based his painting on etchings or engravings, since he apparently never visited the Falls.

1850s?: Albert Bierstadt

Falls of Niagara from Below (36 x 26 inches). Bierstadt is most famous for his views of the West … but this is a spectacular view of the Falls, and the first that we’ve seen that catches the mistiness pervading the area. I’m guessing Bierstadt painted it in the 1850s, before he turned to the Western scenes that made his fame and fortune. SIRIS lists 28 views of Niagara Falls by Bierstadt, but most are from auction catalogues and might be the same painting being sold and resold.

1856: Frederic Church

Niagara Falls (12 x 18 inches), at the Wadsworth Atheneum. By this time, Frederic Church had succeeded Thomas Cole as leader of the Hudson River School. Church visited Niagara Falls in 1856, where he made a number of small sketches such as this one. Barely visible in this photo is a rainbow linking the sky and water. This sketch is probably roughly contemporary with Bierstadt’s version of the Falls. Like Bierstadt, Church has chosen a dramatic point of view, and has tried to show the characteristic behavior of water in the Falls.

1857: Frederic Church

Niagara (40 x 90 inches), at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. In this painting, using studies done on the site in 1856, Church became the first to depict Niagara Falls on a monumental scale: the canvas is about 7.5 feet wide. The absence of land in the foreground makes us feel we might topple into the Falls.

In 1857, Church displayed this painting at a New York City gallery. Within two weeks, more than 100,000 visitors paid 25 cents each to see it. It had equal success in other American cities, in two tours in Britain, and at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1867. For more, see here and here.

1867: Frederic Church

Niagara Falls, from the American Side (101 x 89 inches), at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Another spectacular view by Church. It’s also one of his largest paintings, at 8.5 x 7.5 feet. Commissioned by New York art dealer Michael Knoedler in 1866, it was eventually sold to John S. Kennedy, who donated it to his native Scotland. See here.

1878: William Morris Hunt

Niagara Falls (62 x 99 inches), at the Williams College Museum of Art. William Morris Hunt (1824-1879), a native of Vermont, was a leading portrait painter in nineteenth-century New England and brother of noted architect Richard Morris Hunt. He was commissioned to paint Niagara Falls for the New York State Capitol Assembly Chamber. So taken was he with Church’s 1857 view (see above) that he chose the same vantage point and nearly the same size canvas. See here for the painting in its proper frame and here for more information. On Hunt vs. Church, see here.

2000s: Ylli Haruni

Paintings of Niagara Falls fell out of favor in the early twentieth century, partly because styles changed (to Impressionism, Pointillism, etc.) and partly because the wonders of the West were becoming familiar from artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. But some modern artists still paint the Falls. Of those I’ve run across, my favorite is Niagara Falls Nocturne (36 x 24 inches), by Ylli Haruni, an Albanian-born artist. For copyright reasons, I’m not including an image here.

Next week: more highlights from the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Wadsworth posts on American art

When I visited the Wadsworth, visitors were sent through the galleries in reverse chronological order due to social distancing. If you’d rather read the posts in order (seventeenth through twentieth centuries), the sequence would be as follows. Part 1 is the introduction to the series.

• part 12: 16th to early 19th centuries, including Copley, Trumbull, and Earl
• part 2: late 18th c., including Copley and Earl

• part 3: early and mid-19th c., early Hudson River School, including Cole and Church
• part 11: mid-19th c., including the Colt legacy and the Charter Oak
• part 4: mid-19th c., including Church and Bierstadt
• part 6: late 19th c. painting and sculpture, including Church, Remington, and Bierstadt
• part 5: late 19th c. painting, including Church and Heade
• part 9: late 19th and early 20th c. painting and sculpture
• part 10: late 19th and early 20th c. sculpture, including MacMonnies and Frishmuth
• part 8: early and mid-20th c. painting and sculpture, including Andrew Wyeth
• Part 7: survey of images of Niagara Falls, from the 17th to 21st centuries, including Trumbull, Cole, Bierstadt, and Church.

More

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