Falls of the Passaic
ca. 1820
William Guy Wall
American, 1792-after 1864
American Art
The Irish-born William Guy Wall arrived in New York City in 1818 and quickly established himself as a successful landscapist. His watercolors often served as the basis for engraved reproductions that helped to popularize American landscape imagery. This work depicts a distant view of the seventy-foot-high waterfall on New Jersey’s Passaic River, a landmark renowned for its aesthetic beauty and awesome force (hydropowered manufacturing first developed along this river). In the English tradition, Wall applied layers of wash to capture reflections on the river, and he added human figures to provide scale to the scene.
- Maker/Artist
- Wall, William Guy
- Classification
- Watercolor
- Formatted Medium
- Transparent watercolor with touches of opaque watercolor over graphite on cream, moderately thick, moderately textured wove paper mounted to Japanese paper
- Medium
- transparent, watercolor, touches, opaque, over, graphite, cream, moderately, thick, textured, wove, paper, mounted, japanese
- Dimensions
- 17 3/8 x 24 in. (44.1 x 61 cm) Frame: 28 x 36 x 1 1/2 in. (71.1 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm)
- Departments
- American Art
- Accession Number
- 42.108
- Credit Line
- Dick S. Ramsay Fund
- Exhibitions
- Brushed with Light: American Landscape Watercolors from the Collection, Masters of Color and Light: Homer, Sargent and the American Watercolor Movement
- Rights Statement
- No known copyright restrictions
- Museum Location
- This item is not on view
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