Lot 35: George Jacob Beck 1748-1812 , McCall's Ferry on the Susquehannah and Schuykill Below the Falls: Two works watercolor on paper

In the original frames with the original églomisé mats. watercolor on paper

measurements each 13 1/2 in. by 18 3/4 in. alternate measurements 34.3 cm by 47.6 cm

"Reality, Romanticism, Realism", The Kennedy Quarterly, December 1967, page 242, number 254.
"George Beck, An Eighteenth Century Painter" by Edna Talbott Whitley, The Register, Kentucky Historical Society, January 1969, page 36, footnote 58.
"Reality, Romanticism, Realism", The Kennedy Quarterly, December 1967, page 243.

Private Collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York

George Jacob Beck (1748-50-1812), listed as a portrait painter in the 1806 Lexington, Kentucky directory, was better known for his landscapes which unquestionably contributed to the popularity of American views. Born at Ellford, England, Beck was the youngest son of a Staffordshire farmer. In 1795 he set forth for America, landing in Norfolk, Virginia. He lived successfully in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Ohio and ultimately, around 1804/5, in Lexington where he died on December 14, 1812. "Among all the foreign-trained who came here in the Federal era, George Beck had the most substantial and the best mastered landscape style...Beck's superiority in craft enabled him to render the rocks with a strength sufficient to withstand the turbulent rush and falling weight of water...[and] to construct the forms of rock and tree, to give the solidity of earth, and even...to modulate values toward a distant horizon." (Excerpted from: Virgil Barker, American Painting, The MacMillan Co., New York, 1950, page 290) During the 18th century, ferry boats were a popular means of transversing rivers. The ferries charged for the trip which connected the shores of the river, usually at the closest points. McCalls Ferry crossed the Susquehannah River with both people and cattle, probably in Pennsylvania, in the Appalachian country.