Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga, New York, after Thomas Cole, Storm Scene, circa 1850

This is an original antique steel engraving, uncolored, lettered below the view "RUINS OF FORT TICONDEROGA, NEW YORK." The view shows broken walls and a square tower of the ruined fort on a grassy rise, lit by a fork of lightning out of a dark storm sky. Rain sweeps across the left, where a stretch of water lies below wooded hills. A tall, windblown tree rises at left, sheep graze on the slope, and rough brush and rocks fill the foreground.

Above the view, the emblem vignette shows two soldiers with muskets and fixed bayonets standing beside two cannon on wheeled carriages behind an earthwork. Two round scenes are set into the lower corners of the border: at left armed men confronting officers in a doorway, one man sprawled on the ground, captioned "COLONEL ETHAN ALLEN SURPRISES TICONDEROGA. 1775."; at right riflemen firing from a bank at soldiers in boats, captioned "THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS REPULSE GENERAL CARLETON. 1775." The script credit under the lower left corner of the view reads "Painted by T. Cole." The imprint reads "J. & F. TALLIS, LONDON & NEW YORK." The number 21 is engraved at the top right corner of the view.

The plate comes from History of the United States of America, edited by John Howard Hinton (1791 to 1873), the English Baptist minister and author, and published by J. and F. Tallis about 1850. J. and F. Tallis were London publishers of illustrated works sold in parts around the middle of the nineteenth century. The plates of this edition set a central steel engraved view inside an engraved ornamental border with small lettered vignettes of episodes from American history, as here. The credit names T. Cole, that is Thomas Cole (1801 to 1848), the landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School. In May 1775 Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys took Fort Ticonderoga from its British garrison.

The storm lighting gives the sheet a dramatic presence on the wall.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.