View on the Hudson River

Thomas Creswick, 1811–1869

ca. 1843

oil on mahogany panel

Yale Center for British Art

Thomas Creswick never visited the United States. He probably based this painting on a now-lost drawing by the English topographical artist William Henry Bartlett, who first traveled to America in 1836 with the English writer Nathaniel Parker Willis. While journeying through the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, Bartlett made drawings of cities, towns, and scenery, which were reproduced in steel engravings for Willis’s book on American Scenery. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund