Currently not on view
Niagara Falls with Rainbow,
1820
Alvan Fisher, American, 1792–1863
x1943-14
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.
Information
Title
Niagara Falls with Rainbow
Dates
1820
Maker
Medium
Black and gray wash over graphite on cream wove paper, squared for transfer in graphite
Dimensions
27.5 x 39.7 cm (10 13/16 x 15 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.
Object Number
x1943-14
Place Depicted
North America, Niagara Falls
Inscription
in graphite, center left: d/w
in graphite, center right: v v x
in graphite, on verso lower right: scetch [sic] by | Alvan Fisher
Culture
Type
Materials
Frank Jewett Mather Jr.;
- Barbara T. Ross, American Drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University: 130 Selected Examples (Princeton: Art Museum, Princeton University, 1976)., p. 132
- 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. 203, cat. no. 50; p. 205 (illus.); p. 346, checklist no. 957
