Artist Thomas Alexander Hamilton (1840 - 1900)

Newburyport Harbor

Date1865-1875

DimensionsSight: 19 1/2 × 32 in. (49.5 × 81.3 cm)

Object numberN0053.1961

Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Gift of Stephen C. Clark

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextThe tidy houses and prosperous businesses of a busy port indicate the lively commerce which attended America's maritime enterprising the nineteenth century. The artist, who might not have felt competent to draw a full-rigged ship, hid several behind buildings, showing us only pieces of their spars and rigging lines. In the center of the visible patch of river is a steamboat of the kind which eventually supplanted the full-rigged ships. The maritime images of ships, steamboats, and a thriving port appear often in nineteenth-century American painting.

Exhibition History“Uncommon Quilts: Treasures of the New York State Historical Association,” Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO, June 4, 1998 – July 19, 1998; Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY, June 17, 1997 – August 31, 1997; Fenimore House Museum, Cooperstown, NY, April 1, 1996 – December 31, 1996.

“American Folk Art: Collection from the Fenimore Art Museum,” Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris, France, January 25, 2001 – March 24, 2001.

On View

Not on view