Picturesque America

Last updated April 21, 2022

Picturesque America was a two-volume set of books describing and illustrating the scenery of America, which grew out of an earlier series in Appleton's Journal . It was published by D. Appleton and Company of New York in 1872 and 1874 and edited by the romantic poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), who also edited the New York Evening Post. The layout and concept was similar to that of Picturesque Europe . The work's essays, together with its nine hundred wood engravings and fifty steel engravings, are considered to have had a profound influence on the growth of tourism and the historic preservation movement in the United States.^[1] The preface described "the design of this publication to present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. The wealth of material for this purpose is almost boundless."

This two-volume set and others of the same genre, achieved great popularity in the nineteenth century. Their illustrations provided a tour of nineteenth century America, unspoilt and pastoral, its centres of commerce, ports, architecture and natural treasures. In a modern (2001) treatment of the work, Sue Rainey, who is a historian of American graphic arts and has a particular interest in the artists who drew landscapes and cityscapes for periodical and book illustrations, wrote "As the first publication to celebrate the entire continental nation, it enabled Americans, after the trauma of the Civil War, to construct a national self-image based on reconciliation between North and South and incorporation of the West." (p. xiii) The volumes display both steel and wood engravings based on the paintings of some of the best American landscape painters of the nineteenth century, primarily Harry Fenn and his friend Douglas Woodward, but also including John Frederick Kensett, William Stanley Haseltine, James David Smillie, John William Casilear, Thomas Moran, A. C. Warren, David Johnson, Granville Perkins, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, Albert Fitch Bellows, James McDougal Hart, Casimir Clayton Griswold (1834-1918), Worthington Whittredge, Charles G. Rosenberg (1818 - 1879), William Ludwell Sheppard (1833-1912), Homer Dodge Martin, Alfred Rudolph Waud, William Hart, Robert Swain Gifford, Jules Tavernier, William Hamilton Gibson, and Thomas Cole.

Engravers included Robert Hinshelwood (1812-1885), Edward Paxman Brandard (1819-1898), Samuel Valentine Hunt (1803-1893), William Wellstood (1819-1900), William Chapin (1802-1888), Henry Bryan Hall (1808-1884). Robert Hinshelwood was born in Edinburgh in 1812 and emigrated to America in 1835 where he became renowned for his landscapes, etchings and engravings. His meticulous attention to detail was appreciated by publishing houses such as Appleton's and Harper's, and also by the Continental Bank Note Company who employed him to produce plates for the printing of currency. He died in New York.^[2]

Volume I engravings

On the Coast of Maine
St. John's and Ocklawaha Rivers
Up and Down the Columbia
Lookout Mountain and the Tennessee
Richmond, Scenic and Historic
Natural Bridge, Virginia
Delaware Water-Gap
Mauch Chunk
On the Savannah
The French Broad
The White Mountains
Neversink Highlands
St. Augustine, Florida
Charleston and its Suburbs
Weyer's Cave, Virginia
Scenes on the Brandywine
Cumberland Gap
Watkins Glen
Scenes on Eastern Long Island
The Lower Mississippi
Mackinac
Our Great National Park
Harper's Ferry
Scenes in Virginia
Newport
West Virginia
Lake Superior
Northern California
Niagara
Trenton Falls
The Yosemite Falls
Providence and Vicinity
South Shore of Lake Erie
On the Coast of California.

Volume II engravings

Highlands and Palisades of the Hudson
Philadelphia and its Suburbs
Northern New Jersey
Valley of the Connecticut
Baltimore and Environs
The Catskills
The Juniata
On the Ohio
The Plains and the Sierras
The Susquehanna
Boston
Lake George and Lake Champlain
Mount Mansfield
Valley of the Housatonic
The Upper Mississippi
Valley of the Genesee
St. Lawrence and the Saguenay
Eastern Shore
The Adirondack Region
The Connecticut Shore of the Sound
Lake Memphremagog
The Mohawk, Albany and Troy
The Upper Delaware
Water-Falls at Cayuga Lake
The Rocky Mountains
The Canons of the Colorado
Chicago and Milwaukee
A Glance at the Northwest
The Mammoth Cave
New York and Brooklyn
Washington

This ambitious work was published and delivered as a subscription; semi-monthly parts were sent out to subscribers. Once complete, the subscription would be bound into volumes. A variety of bindings were available, from cloth-bound with leather corners at the low end to full Morocco leather bindings with elaborate tooling. The stately, bound two volume set was proudly displayed in parlors of subscriber homes as a show of status. ^[3]

Nowadays, the publication frequently appears in antiquarian book collections; sometimes in pristine collection, but more frequently in poor condition. Lower-quality examples are frequently disassembled, their engravings removed and sold separately.^[4]

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References

Citations

↑ "LIU Cedar Swamp Historical Society Collection".
↑ "Antique prints from Picturesque America 1872".
↑ Rainey, Sue (1 January 2001). Creating Picturesque America: Monument to the Natural and Cultural Landscape. Applewood Books. ISBN 1557095345 – via Amazon.
↑ "Appleton's Picturesque America Or, The Land We Live In. - Lot #25244".

Bibliography

Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In. A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, Forests, Water-falls, Shores, Cañons, Valleys, Cities, and Other Picturesque Features of Our Country. With Illustrations on Steel and Wood, by Eminent American Artists, Vol. I, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872.
Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In. A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, Forests, Water-falls, Shores, Cañons, Valleys, Cities, and Other Picturesque Features of Our Country. With Illustrations on Steel and Wood, by Eminent American Artists, Vol. II, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1874.
Sue Rainey - Creating Picturesque America (Applewood Books, 2001) ISBN 978-1-55709-534-3

External links

Media related to Picturesque America at Wikimedia Commons

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[1] "LIU Cedar Swamp Historical Society Collection".

[2] "Antique prints from Picturesque America 1872".

[3] Rainey, Sue (1 January 2001). Creating Picturesque America: Monument to the Natural and Cultural Landscape. Applewood Books. ISBN 1557095345 – via Amazon.

[4] "Appleton's Picturesque America Or, The Land We Live In. - Lot #25244".

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