Drawn by New York: Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society

This catalog, written by Roberta J.M. Olson, with the assistance of Alexandra Mazzitelli, provides us with insight into the history of drawing and watercolor in New York State. The exhibition and its catalogue celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s famed river voyage. The New-York Historical Society holds one of the nation’s earliest assembled public drawings collections and includes a special concentration of works that reflect New York’s scenery, settlements, and citizens.

This exhibition of around eighty works features one of the first-known views of New York Harbor, from 1650, and an early birds-eye-view of Niagara Falls. The development of landscape art, especially in the regions bordering the Hudson River, is a focal point, featuring works by Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Cropsey, and George Harvey. Works by American artists from the Civil War through the Gilded Age cover developments in American draftsmanship, including the founding of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors and the advent of the American Pre-Raphaelites. Drawings by illustrators, such as Charles Dana Gibson, are also included. Modern and contemporary currents are represented with drawings by Oscar Bluemner, Raphael Soyer, Eve Ashheim, and several others. The exhibition was organized by the New-York Historical Society.