19th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2004 by DeCourcy E. McIntosh

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From Baltimore to Broadway (Pl. I), from the Capitol in Washington (Pl. VII) to Congress Spring in Saratoga, New York, Kollner and Goupil provided a cross section of picturesque views to mid-nineteenth-century Americans and to those abroad eager to glimpse the developing American scene. The Literary World declared the Kollner views "the most extensive series of lithographic views of various points of interest in our landscapes and cities ever undertaken for popular circulation" (23) and commended Goupil for "cheap but well executed lithographs ... made with care and fidelity, and brought within the price [thirty cents plain; eighty cents colored] necessary to secure them wide dissemination." (24) The series remained commercially viable at least until 1857, (25) advertised in Goupil catalogues alongside such comparably durable material as The Seaports of France, a Picturesque Tour in the Grand Duchy of Baden, eighteen plates depicting The Scenery and Homes of Switzerland, and views of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. The world was becoming a larger place, and as far as Goupil was concerned, the United States was part of it.

The most picturesque natural site in the eastern United States was Niagara Falls. Kollner's eight projected Niagara lithographs notwithstanding, the Literary World disclosed that Schaus was planning to issue "on a rare style of elegance ... a series of lithographic views, executed by the most eminent artists of Paris ... after original paintings by M. Regis de Trobriand [1816-1897], the employment of last summer." (26) Eight watercolors of Niagara, the fruit of the baron de Trobriand's sketching trip in the summer of 1848, (27) hung at Goupil, Vibert and Company that fall. When it materialized the following spring, Trobriand's General View of the Falls of Niagara, hailed by the Literary World as a "costly engraving," (28) was actually a lithograph by Eugene Ciceri (1813-1890), one of the best of Goupil's painter-lithographers and, incidentally, a nephew and the namesake of the eminent genre and marine painter Eugene Isabey (1803-1886). (29) Its price was $3 colored, and it was followed in 1850 by another Trobriand Niagara, The Falls of Niagara, which, lithographed by Leon Jean Baptiste Sabatier, cost only $2.50 colored. The remaining six of Trobriand's Niagara watercolors were never reproduced, as far as we know.

The market still unsaturated, Schaus quickly commissioned two additional views from another French artist, Hippolyte Victor Valentin Sebron. (30) Rendered in aquatint by Salathe, the first of these appeared in 1852 over the title, Les Chutes du Niagara. Vue Generale; Niagara Falls. General View (Pl. IX), the second, in 1853, as Les Chutes du Niagara. Vue du fer a cheval. Niagara Falls. View of Horseshoe Falls (Pl. VIII). They were large--approximately twenty-three by thirty-seven inches--and, true to the economics of aquatint, twice as expensive as the lithographs after Trobriand. (31)

It seems that Goupil and Company hardly dared be caught without a Niagara view or two in stock. As soon as the Sebron inventory dwindled, Knoedler, who had by this time replaced Schaus as the New York manager, commissioned lithographs of the American and Canadian sides of the falls from John Bornet (w. 1850-c. 1860) and Thomas Benecke (w. 1850s), respectively. As large as the Sebron aquatints, they sold for the same price, even though they were the product of a less expensive technique. (32)