Series II: American Work

Series II. American Work includes 102 prints, representing fifty-five of Hill's engravings from the time after he moved to Philadelphia in 1816. In 1961, Richard J. Koke compiled A Checklist of American Engravings of John Hill, a chronological list of 161 prints made by Hill between 1816 and 1838. In the inventory that follows, the numbers Koke assigned to each of Hill's prints have been noted in brackets.

This series includes one complete set of twenty colored plates from Picturesque Views of American Scenery and other colored and uncolored copies of many of the plates. Wrappers from the first three issues are included in the collection, as are the text pages that accompanied plates 3 through 20. In addition, there are three plates from a reissue of the book in 1835 by Thomas T. Ash, a Philadelphia printer.

Ten of the twenty plates of the Hudson River Portfolio (1821-25) are represented here, as are engravings from Fielding Lucas' Lucas' Progressive Drawing Book (1827-28) and Hill's own Drawing Book of Landscape Scenery (1821). Other prints include views of New York City, Niagara Falls (after paintings by William James Bennett) and the United States Military Academy at West Point.

An original print of "Fairmount Waterworks" is not present in the collection. However, after the aquistion of the original plate, The New-York Historical Society pulled two restrikes from that plate in 1960. The first of these was pulled from the uncleaned plate. After the plate was cleaned, a second print was made, but the engraved tones in the sky were lost.

Several prints, mostly proofs before letters, are after John William Hill's five Erie Canal watercolors. These include three stages of "Unidentified Town and Canal Lock;"a stage two trial proof after the plate was etched in line, with the addition of figures and objects in the foreground; a stage three trial proof with a watercolor wash as guide for the aquatint tones; and a stage four print taken from the copperplate after the tonal aquating ground had been bitten into the plate.

"Broadway, New York," the last print in this collection, was drawn and etched in line by Thomas Hornor. It is one of only a few American plates on which John Hill did only the tonal aquatinting.

Hill line engraved, aquatinted and often colored the following prints. All prints are uncolored and first state unless otherwise noted.