Mountain Stream
John William Hill
American Art
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.
MEDIUM
Watercolor over graphite on wove paper
DATES
1863
DIMENSIONS
Sheet: 13 3/16 × 17 in. (33.5 × 43.2 cm) (show scale)
MARKINGS
Watermark: J Whatman TURKEY MILL
SIGNATURE
Signed and dated lower right: "J. W. Hill 1863"
COLLECTIONS
American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
1991.44.1
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Mary Stewart Bierstadt, by exchange
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
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, 1991.44.1_SL3.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 1991.44.1_SL3.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2018
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