.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Depicting the towing steamboat Austin along New York's Hudson River, Bard displays a strong patriotic exuberance that is a hallmark of his work. The over-sized scale of the boat in relation to the river, the meticulously drafted profile of the ship against a flat landscape and the whimsically caricatured crew are some of the details for which Bard is regarded as the premier nineteenth-century American ship painter. Born in 1815, just eight years after Robert Fulton sent the Clermont up the Hudson River for its maiden voyage, Bard witnessed the birth and growth of America's industrialization that the steamboat came to embody.
The Austin was built in 1853 by the Austin & Gillespie towing company of Albany for the purpose of hauling barges. She was refitted and rebuilt over her lifetime before ultimately being broken up at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1898 (Anthony J. Peluso, Jr., The Bard Brothers: Painting America Under Steam and Sail (New York, 1997), p. 41). Bard painted the Austin a total of four times; this version is the only one to remain in private hands. The other three versions are part of public collections: the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia; the Senate House State Historic Site, Kingston, New York; and the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. (Peluso, Jr., 1977, p. 113).
The Austin was built in 1853 by the Austin & Gillespie towing company of Albany for the purpose of hauling barges. She was refitted and rebuilt over her lifetime before ultimately being broken up at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1898 (Anthony J. Peluso, Jr., The Bard Brothers: Painting America Under Steam and Sail (New York, 1997), p. 41). Bard painted the Austin a total of four times; this version is the only one to remain in private hands. The other three versions are part of public collections: the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia; the Senate House State Historic Site, Kingston, New York; and the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. (Peluso, Jr., 1977, p. 113).