View of New York, Brooklyn, and the Navy Yard, from the Heights Near Williamsburg
c. 1835 -1840
Nicolino V. Calyo (1799 -1884)
Gouache on paper, 28 X 36
Signed on barrel at right: N C
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Douglas Farquhar, 87.41

 

This vantage point, popular with artists in New York during the first half of the nineteenth century, encompasses landscape elements, water, and the drama of one of North America's busiest working harbors. In this scene, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the distant city fringed with ships' masts attest to the growing vibrancy and importance of the Port of New York after the War of 1812 and the subsequent opening of the Erie Canal. The artist's main focus, however, is the activity taking place at the pier in the lower-right foreground, where a schooner is being prepared for launching. Two men aboard the ship raise the anchor, while another unfurls one of the sails in preparation for raising it.

Nicolino Calyo, employing a meticulously rendered topographical style learned at the Academy in his native Naples, frequently painted richly colored scenes of New York City seen across water. Often, these were based on drawings made on the spot. A series of Calyo's New York City views are from the vantage point of Williamsburg, whereas others are from New Jersey, but all share the format of a foreground genre scene with figures engaged in various activities against a cityscape background. While the ship-laden shorelines of Brooklyn and Manhattan emphasize New York's active port, the intimate quality of the foreground figures -a hunter with his dogs on the left and the three men launching the boat on the right -convey the still-bucolic nature of Williamsburg. Like many Neapolitan vedute (view painters), Calyo's preferred medium was gouache, an opaque watercolor heavily applied to paper in the manner of oil paint.¹

The painting was originally owned by Admiral James E. Jouett, who entered the navy in 1841, graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1847, and took part in both the Mexican War and the revolt in Panama. Jouett gave the work to his neighbor in Sandy Hook, Maryland, Miss Ellen Farquhar, from whom it descended to the donor.

Notes:

 1  Further biographical information about Calyo is in the entry for Burning of the Merchants' Exchange, New York, December 16th & 17th, 1835 (plate 11).