Mountain Stream

Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
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.
Caption
John William Hill (American, 1812–1879). Mountain Stream, 1863. Watercolor over graphite on wove paper, Sheet: 13 3/16 × 17 in. (33.5 × 43.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mary Stewart Bierstadt, by exchange, 1991.44.1. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Mountain Stream
Date
1863
Medium
Watercolor over graphite on wove paper
Classification
Dimensions
Sheet: 13 3/16 × 17 in. (33.5 × 43.2 cm)
Signatures
Signed and dated lower right: "J. W. Hill 1863"
Markings
Watermark: J Whatman TURKEY MILL
Credit Line
Gift of Mary Stewart Bierstadt, by exchange
Accession Number
1991.44.1
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