Currently not on view
Niagara Falls with Night Fishermen,
1820
Alvan Fisher, American, 1792–1863
x1943-13
Trained as a portrait painter in Boston in 1815, Fisher built a career painting New England genre scenes, animal portraits, and popular landscape views, such as the Niagara River’s majestic Horseshoe Falls, that appealed to the tastes of middle-class collectors. Drawn on location and squared for transfer, the topographically accurate drawing seen above became a study for a painting now in the collection of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, while in the drawing underneath, Fisher reimagined the falls as the nocturnal setting for a poetic genre scene, with clusters of men fishing by torchlight and a full moon reflected in the river below.
Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, while in the drawing underneath, Fisher reimagined the falls as the nocturnal setting for a poetic genre scene, with clusters of men fishing by torchlight and a full moon reflected in the river below.
Information
Title
Niagara Falls with Night Fishermen
Dates
1820
Maker
Medium
Black and gray wash heightened with white gouache over graphite
Dimensions
21.5 x 37.3 cm (8 7/16 x 14 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
Object Number
x1943-13
Place Depicted
North America, Niagara Falls
Inscription
in graphite, on verso lower right: sketch by | Alvan Fisher [in unknown hand]
Culture
Type
Materials
- Barbara T. Ross, American Drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University: 130 Selected Examples (Princeton: Art Museum, Princeton University, 1976)., Appendix pp. 133-134
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 87, fig. 1; pp. 301–302, checklist no. 140; p. 302 (left half of verso, rotated illus.)
