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Lot Essay
'...FOUR ADMIRABLE AND SPLENDID VIEWS...'
‘The public ... for a comparatively trifling sum ... may procure four admirable and splendid views of Niagara Falls ... from paintings by Bennett, and published by H.I. Megarey. We have seldom met among the numerous delineators of this stupendous wonder of nature, any conveying a more forcible impression. The sweep of the immense body of water over the precipitous ledges or rocks … the volumes of foam floating away with the breeze, and every thing but the deafening thunder, are represented to the life. These prints would form valuable morceaux for travelers from Europe, desirous of carrying home with them correct sketches of American scenery.’ (New York Mirror)
‘Among the most handsome prints of the period were the four large aquatint engravings after watercolors by W.J. Bennett, which were actually on sale at the Falls in the 1830s. The first two, published in 1828, pictured the waterfalls from conventional locations below while the second pair, published in 1831, depicted them from less familiar vantage points on Goat Island. They reveal a new complacency towards the cataracts’ once-astonishing grandeur. The attitude is most apparent in Bennett’s View of the British Fall from Goat Island, in which four visitors are enjoying a picnic and only one bothers to look at the nearby cataract. The four picnickers reflect a growing anthropocentric sentimental reaction to the Falls in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Increasingly, the cataracts were pushed into the distance to become simply a magnificent backdrop for human action. (J.E. Adamson, Niagara Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697-1901 (Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue), Washington, DC, 1985, pp.37-8).
‘The public ... for a comparatively trifling sum ... may procure four admirable and splendid views of Niagara Falls ... from paintings by Bennett, and published by H.I. Megarey. We have seldom met among the numerous delineators of this stupendous wonder of nature, any conveying a more forcible impression. The sweep of the immense body of water over the precipitous ledges or rocks … the volumes of foam floating away with the breeze, and every thing but the deafening thunder, are represented to the life. These prints would form valuable morceaux for travelers from Europe, desirous of carrying home with them correct sketches of American scenery.’ (New York Mirror)
‘Among the most handsome prints of the period were the four large aquatint engravings after watercolors by W.J. Bennett, which were actually on sale at the Falls in the 1830s. The first two, published in 1828, pictured the waterfalls from conventional locations below while the second pair, published in 1831, depicted them from less familiar vantage points on Goat Island. They reveal a new complacency towards the cataracts’ once-astonishing grandeur. The attitude is most apparent in Bennett’s View of the British Fall from Goat Island, in which four visitors are enjoying a picnic and only one bothers to look at the nearby cataract. The four picnickers reflect a growing anthropocentric sentimental reaction to the Falls in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Increasingly, the cataracts were pushed into the distance to become simply a magnificent backdrop for human action. (J.E. Adamson, Niagara Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697-1901 (Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue), Washington, DC, 1985, pp.37-8).