The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 20, 2024

On the Harlem River

On the Harlem River

1855
(American, 1818–1893)
America, 19th century
watercolor with gouache, over graphite, framing lines in graphite
Sheet: 37.8 x 51.4 cm (14 7/8 x 20 1/4 in.)
Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1997.6
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

The tall trees at the center of Miller’s composition appear to be American sycamores, deciduous trees with creamy bark and spiky round fruit that grow in moist soil near streams and riverbanks.

Description

When William Rickarby Miller arrived in America from England in 1845, he found watercolor painting in a dismal state—“a branch of Painting scarcely at all cultivated here.” Nonetheless, Miller made his living producing watercolors for print publications, depicting picturesque American woodlands with the staid British technique of his training. In On the Harlem River, Miller overlays delicate graphite line work with tints of luminous watercolor and dense gouache, capturing the color and light effects of a crisp autumn day. His meticulous transcription of individual leaves, branches, and stones displays his technical finesse, as well as his interest in documenting the particularities of nature. He shared this preoccupation with the Hudson River School, a mid-century American landscape painting movement whose members used detailed, on-site drawings of natural subjects as aids in making oil paintings. Miller’s great innovation was to marry the Hudson River manner to the medium of watercolor, anticipating the landscapes of American watercolorists in the decades to follow.
  • ? (after 1855)-1997
    Private Collection, New Jersey.
    ?-1997
    (Mary Lublin Fine Arts, New York, NY)
    March 4, 1997
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
  • The Cleveland Museum of Art, Annual Report 1997, September 25, 1998. Mentioned: p. 44
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. Mentioned: cat. no. 84. pp. 204-5, p. 295; Reproduced: p. 205
  • Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).
    American Drawings from the Permanent Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 19-July 12, 1998).
  • {{cite web|title=On the Harlem River|url=false|author=William Rickarby Miller|year=1855|access-date=20 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1997.6