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At the Waterfall

ca. 1850
Not on view
Johnston built a reputation as a political cartoonist and book illustrator but, in his later career, he increasingly produced and regularly exhibited landscapes. In contrast to the more naturalistic work of New York’s Hudson River School of landscape painters, “At the Waterfall” possesses the largely synthetic look of the landscapes of Thomas Doughty, Johnston’s colleague successively in Philadelphia and Boston. More than Doughty, however, Johnston indulges here the vocabulary of the Sublime favored by Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School, especially in the massive rock forms pressing into the foreground at right and left, suggesting, along with the figures poised at its edge, the fatal depth of the chasm into which the waterfall drops.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: At the Waterfall
  • Artist: David Claypoole Johnston (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1799–1865 Dorchester, Massachusetts)
  • Date: ca. 1850
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Watercolor, gum arabic, and gouache on off-white wove paper
  • Dimensions: 8 5/8 x 12 3/4 in. (21.9 x 32.4 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart P. Feld, 1978
  • Object Number: 1978.512
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

More Artwork
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A New Method of Macarony Making, as Practised at Boston, David Claypoole Johnston American, Lithograph
A New Method of Macarony Making, as Practised at Boston
David Claypoole Johnston
Pendleton's Lithography
1830
The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering, David Claypoole Johnston American, Lithograph
The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering
David Claypoole Johnston
Pendleton's Lithography
1830
A Rain-Bow, Great Cry and Little Wool, etc.
David Claypoole Johnston
1832
Lock on the Understanding, Heavy Wet, etc., David Claypoole Johnston American, Etching
Lock on the Understanding, Heavy Wet, etc.
David Claypoole Johnston
1832
Grand Fantastical Parade, New-York, December 2, 1833, David Claypoole Johnston American, Hand-colored lithograph
Grand Fantastical Parade, New-York, December 2, 1833
David Claypoole Johnston
Endicott & Swett
1833

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