Brooklyn Museum: American Art: Mountain Stream

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Mountain Stream

John William Hill began his career as a topographical painter and printmaker. About 1855 he read John Ruskin’s Modern Painters and, under the English critic’s influence, altered his style to produce highly detailed landscapes like this one. Mountain Stream was painted in 1863 at the high-water mark of the short-lived campaign of the American Ruskinians to reform American landscape painting. These radicals, of whom Hill was the elder statesman, turned away from the more painterly, idealized Catskill views of Thomas Cole in favor of small, intricately detailed landscape visions in oil and watercolor.

Artist: John William Hill, American, 1812-1879
Medium: Watercolor over black chalk on paper
Dates: 1863
Dimensions: 13 1/16 x 17 1/16 in. (33.2 x 43.3 cm)
Markings: Watermark: J Whatman TURKEY MILL
Signature: Signed and dated lower right: "J. W. Hill 1863"
Collections: American Art
Museum Location: This item is not on view
Accession Number: 1991.44.1
Credit Line: Gift of Mary Stewart Bierstadt, by exchange
Image: Overall, 1991.44.1_transp390.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph