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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
John William Hill

View of New York from Brooklyn Heights

ca. 1836
Watercolor on Paper.
48.3 x 85 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1982.49
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
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Level 2
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1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
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30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
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Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
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A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
View of New York from Brooklyn Heights, after John William Hill's watercolour, was engraved by William James Bennett and published by L. P. Clover in 1837 as part of a series of nineteen views of American cities. The aquatint in colour is known as the Pigeon View of New York, referring to the rooftop birds in the foreground, an ironic reference to the popular bird's-eye view prints that commonly depicted lower Manhattan. The connoisseur of American prints, I. N. Phelps Stokes, considered it "one of the most beautiful New York views of the period."

Hill's watercolour, done when he was only 24, was probably made the previous year. His view depicts lower Manhattan from Wall Street to Canal Street, then the most populous part of the city that had a population at the time of around 250, 000. It shows anticipatory views of the Merchants Exchange-the domed building to the left-designed by Isaiah Rogers that was built from 1836-1842, which replaced the building that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835, as well as the new Custom House -to the center of the composition- designed by Ithiel Town and Andrew Jackson Davis, which was built from 1833-1842. At this time fifteen of the twenty-nine banks in Manhattan were located on or just off Wall Street. Other structures shown are City Hall, Holt's Hotel, Fulton Market and the Astor House. Of the approximately 150 churches in New York, the title key of the print identifies eleven, including Grace Church, Trinity Church, St. Paul's Chapel and St. John's Chapel.

The scene is viewed from a suburban residence in Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. Below in the foreground are seen the warehouses flanking Furman Street along the East River. In 1834 Brooklyn had received its city charter, opening the borough to real estate speculation. The fundamental change that had taken place in Brooklyn within a relatively short period of time can be seen by comparing John William Hill's watercolour with New York from Heights near Brooklyn, an aquatint published in 1823 by his father, John Hill, after a watercolour by William Guy Wall, which shows Brooklyn as a bucolic country retreat.

A sense of order and well-being pervades Hill's watercolour, but by the time Bennett's print was published, chaos and economic upheaval had again overtaken the city. Several years of land speculation led to the Panic of 1837. New York, which had been the centre of the nation's burgeoning prosperity, suffered the most. Thousand of labourers lost their jobs as shipping lay idle and construction came to a halt. Against this economic upheaval, Hill's precise and elegant view of the city -a monument of a more halcyon time- offers an image of stability and prosperity which was sandwiched between two periods of monumental disruption for lower Manhattan, the Great Fire of 1835 and the Panic of 1837.

Kenneth W. Maddox

19th Century19th Century. North American Painting. LuminismWork on paperWatercolorPaper
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Private and/or didactic use
View of New York from Brooklyn Heights. Vista de Nueva York desde Brooklyn Heights, c. 1836
View of New York from Brooklyn Heights
John William Hill

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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View of New York from Brooklyn Heights. Vista de Nueva York desde Brooklyn Heights, c. 1836
View of New York from Brooklyn Heights
John William Hill

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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