View from Mount Washington after Thomas Cole, Mountain Landscape, circa 1850

This is an original antique steel engraving, uncolored, lettered below the view "VIEW FROM MOUNT WASHINGTON." The view looks out from high, rocky ground across a deep valley to a steep, double peaked ridge, with range after range of paler mountains fading toward a low sun on the horizon. In the left foreground a large boulder rises beside two small figures, one holding a tall staff, the other pointing out across the valley. Two large birds wheel over the slope at right, and dark rocks close the foreground.

The border is a rustic frame of lashed branches twined with vine leaves. Above the view, the emblem vignette shows a covered canal boat towed by a horse led by a man along a towpath, with wooded hills and a rocky outcrop beyond. Set into the lower corners of the border are two small scenes: at left, men harvesting maize and carrying baskets of it, captioned "NEGROES GATHERING MAIZE."; at right, workers seated before an open timber shed, handling leaves, captioned "SORTING AND DRYING THE TOBACCO LEAF." The script credit under the lower left corner of the view reads "Painted by T. Cole." The imprint at the foot of the sheet reads "J. & F. TALLIS, LONDON & NEW YORK." The number 68 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.

The dark mountain masses against the pale sky give the sheet a strong tonal design that reads well from across a room.

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