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2009, Museum Exhibition, Home on the Hudson, Boscobel House, Garrison, New York, Currier and Ives Print
Home on the Hudson: Women and Men Painting Landscapes 1825-1875 Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York Curator: Katherine E. Manthorne June 7 – September 7, 2009
The print shown here was loaned by George Glazer Gallery to the historic house museum Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York for the special exhibition Home on the Hudson: Women and Men Painting Landscapes 1825-1875, and is reproduced and described in the accompanying exhibition catalogue. Art historian Katherine E. Manthorne of the Graduate Center at City University of New York served as guest curator and as lead author and editor of the catalogue. The show, on view from June 7 to September 7, 2009, looked at the Hudson River School of painting by focusing on the residences of female and male painters, known and unknown, and examining the art created in and around them. See the print with full description and detail images on our website.
The catalogue entry for Palmer’s lithograph, written by Whitney Thompson, provides background information about her artistic process and places her work in historical context:
It is usually claimed that Palmer worked from photographs for her knowledge of locations she was assigned to draw. Examination of the drawings she did preliminary to the prints and other evidence suggests that she likely boarded train or steamer to arrive at sites along the Hudson, where she sketched the scenery onsite. Her knowledge of the British picturesque tradition provided the scaffolding, but observed detail was necessary to give viewers a sense of the authentic. Whatever its precise source, Palmer indisputably discovered a formula that pleased her audience, and it has been claimed that her work decorated the homes of more average Americans than any other artist. It is this same connection to the ordinary — as an image maker who helped define American popular culture — that gives her prints of the Hudson River their powerful and lasting appeal (p. 10).
