Lot 126: PROPERTY FROM A NEW ENGLAND PRIVATE COLLECTION GEORGE HARVEY 1800-1878 PITTSFORD ON THE ERIE CANAL

signed G. Harvey and dated 1837, l.r.

oil on panel

A head of a woman is painted on the reverse.
PROVENANCE

Victor Spark, New York
Private Collection, New England, circa 1946 (acquired from the above)
By descent to the present owner
EXHIBITED

New York, Old Print Shop, before 1943
New York, The New-York Historical Society, March-April 1948
Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, American Processional, July-December 1950
Rochester, New York, The Memorial Art Gallery, Rediscovered Painters of Upstate New York, before 1953
Rochester, New York, The Memorial Art Gallery, The Erie Canal: Thruway of Yesterday, October-December 1953 (as Afternoon-Dead Calm)
Rochester, New York, The Memorial Art Gallery, The Genessee Country, January-February 1976, illustrated (as Late Afternoon-Calm on the Erie Canal)
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

"The Home Forum," The Christian Science Monitor, December 6, 1943, p. 12, illustrated
Brooklyn Museum Bulletin, vol. 9, 1948, pp. 2-3, illustrated
American Heritage Magazine, 1963, illustrated (as Late Afternoon-Calm on the Erie Canal)

CATALOGUE NOTE

"George Harvey was born in England. Soon after his arrival in New York in 1820, he set out for the 'remote wilds of the New World,' hunting and trapping, writing poetry and prose, and, what is more important, sketching and painting.

"By 1828 he was elected an Associate National Academician, indicating that his standing among his peers was considerable before he was thirty. In 1829 he moved to Boston where he was best known for his miniature portraits. After a trip to England in 1833, he settled in Hastings-on-Hudson, near his friend Washington Irving.

"He now began work on a major project which he was destined never to see completed, This was to be a series of engravings after his forty watercolors of American Scenes, in which the emphasis is on the intangible factor of 'atmosphere.' The plan called for the engraving of these and their sale in England and America, but it proved to be economically impractical. The majority of the watercolors are in the collections of The New-York Historical Society, New York.

"Harvey is not, properly speaking, part of the Hudson River School but he was a contemporary of its leaders and was one more force in awakening Americans to the beauty with which nature had endowed their environment" (Agnes Halsey Jones, Hudson River School, Geneva, New York, 1968, p. 138)

A watercolor of the same subject titled A Sultry Calm: Pitsford [sic] on the Erie Canal is in the collection of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.

17 1/2 by 23 1/2 in.<br><br>(44.5 by 59.7 cm)