Painting the Town -- Museum of the City of New York

The busy mid-nineteenth-century New York Harbor is viewed here from the Fulton Ferry terminal in Brooklyn. The craft arrayed on the water, their sheer numbers suggesting the harbor's activity, include a small fisherman's rowboat, a ferry headed from Brooklyn to Manhattan and another nearing Governors Island, several pilot boats, and a number of packet ships, including the one at the center. The preponderance of sailing ships illustrates their continued popularity in New York long after steam-powered vessels replaced sailing craft in most other places.

Along the horizon near the painting's left side can be discerned Castle William's round shape and other military buildings on Governors Island, an army post dating from the Revolution. At right, clusters of tall masts partially obscure the mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan "skyline." The fourth tall structure from the right is the United States Hotel (formerly Holt's), its six stories qualifying it as Manhattan's highest building.¹

The crisp delineation of vessels and shore elements, the low horizon, and closely observed skies reveal Thomas Thompson to be an artist versed in the tradition of marine painting introduced to his native England by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. He studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds and regularly exhibited his artworks (largely portraits and miniatures) at the Royal Academy, London, between 1797 and 1810. In 1818 he moved his family to the United States.

After living for some years in the Susquehanna Valley, Thompson moved to Baltimore and then to Philadelphia before settling in New York in 1831, the year he is first recorded to have exhibited at the National Academy of Design. Three years later he became an associate member of the Academy and continued showing in almost every annual exhibition there until his death. His prodigious output of sixty-five paintings during those years included a few portraits, several landscapes, and many marines, including this work, which was shown the year he painted it.² Thompson also exhibited frequently at New York's American Art-Union from 1833 until its demise in 1853, and also showed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. In 1848, the year he painted this view, Thompson moved to Brooklyn, where he lived for the rest of his life. In addition to being a painter, he was a lithographer and the publisher of one of the largest early American lithographs known, Battery and New York Harbor, based on his own painting of the same name.³

Notes:

1 I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1926), vol. 5, p. 1718.

2 Bartlett Cowdrey, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826 -1860 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1943), pp. 159 -162.

3 Nina Fletcher Little, "Thomas Thompson: Artist-Observer of the American Scene," Magazine Antiques 57, no. 2 (February 1949): 122. The print is plate 100 A in I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1918), vol. 3.


New-York from Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn 1848 Thomas Thompson (1776 -1860) Oil on canvas, 181/2 X771/2 Museum purchase from the Thompson family, 56.33
The busy mid-nineteenth-century New York Harbor is viewed here from the Fulton Ferry terminal in Brooklyn. The craft arrayed on the water, their sheer numbers suggesting the harbor's activity, include a small fisherman's rowboat, a ferry headed from Brooklyn to Manhattan and another nearing Governors Island, several pilot boats, and a number of packet ships, including the one at the center. The preponderance of sailing ships illustrates their continued popularity in New York long after steam-powered vessels replaced sailing craft in most other places. Along the horizon near the painting's left side can be discerned Castle William's round shape and other military buildings on Governors Island, an army post dating from the Revolution. At right, clusters of tall masts partially obscure the mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan "skyline." The fourth tall structure from the right is the United States Hotel (formerly Holt's), its six stories qualifying it as Manhattan's highest building.¹ The crisp delineation of vessels and shore elements, the low horizon, and closely observed skies reveal Thomas Thompson to be an artist versed in the tradition of marine painting introduced to his native England by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. He studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds and regularly exhibited his artworks (largely portraits and miniatures) at the Royal Academy, London, between 1797 and 1810. In 1818 he moved his family to the United States. After living for some years in the Susquehanna Valley, Thompson moved to Baltimore and then to Philadelphia before settling in New York in 1831, the year he is first recorded to have exhibited at the National Academy of Design. Three years later he became an associate member of the Academy and continued showing in almost every annual exhibition there until his death. His prodigious output of sixty-five paintings during those years included a few portraits, several landscapes, and many marines, including this work, which was shown the year he painted it.² Thompson also exhibited frequently at New York's American Art-Union from 1833 until its demise in 1853, and also showed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. In 1848, the year he painted this view, Thompson moved to Brooklyn, where he lived for the rest of his life. In addition to being a painter, he was a lithographer and the publisher of one of the largest early American lithographs known, Battery and New York Harbor, based on his own painting of the same name.³ Notes: 1 I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1926), vol. 5, p. 1718. 2 Bartlett Cowdrey, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826 -1860 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1943), pp. 159 -162. 3 Nina Fletcher Little, "Thomas Thompson: Artist-Observer of the American Scene," Magazine Antiques 57, no. 2 (February 1949): 122. The print is plate 100 A in I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1918), vol. 3.