Artist/Maker Alexander Robertson (1772 – 1841)

View of Poughkeepsie, New York; verso: sketch of landscape with house

1796

Place madePoughkeepsie, New York, United States, North America

Black ink over traces of graphite on paper, formerly bound into a sketchbook; graphite

Overall: 8 3/4 x 11 1/2 in. (22.2 x 29.2 cm)

Purchase, Abbott-Lenox Fund

1967.4

The son of a Scottish architect and draftsman, Alexander Robertson and his brother, Archibald, took courses at London’s Royal Academy of Arts before studying miniature painting under artist Samuel Shelley. After immigrating to New York City in 1792, Alexander joined Archibald, who had recently founded the Columbian Academy of Painting (at 79 Liberty Street), one of the first art schools in the United States which was also notable for instructing both men and women. Its curriculum covered drawing, chalks, and painting in watercolors on paper, tiffany, and silks; drawing plaster casts, landscapes, and flowers; architecture; and perspective. The brothers were partners and frequent artistic collaborators for a decade until a personal disagreement in 1802 ended with Alexander establishing his own competing school, the Academy of Painting and Drawing. Though better known as an educator, Alexander Robertson exhibited regularly, had a number of his works engraved, and traveled throughout the northeast. Like his brother, Alexander was a member of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, where he held a number of important positions and was active in the New York art community. The style of Alexander Robertson’s View of Poughkeepsie exemplifies the one he and his brother Archibald taught their students to master in order to produce a landscape quickly and easily. The foliage of the trees is drawn in round, looping outlines, while volume and shadow are achieved with a strong, linear, zigzag pattern, and the most distant forms are indicated by a very light outline simulating atmospheric perspective. The result, while convincing, produces a generalized view of nature. The drawing is from a sketchbook the artist used on sketching trips in the New York region between September 1796 and September 1798, as underlined by the traces of binding at the left of the sheet. In aggregate, the sketches contained therein reflect the fledgling interest in American landscape, and several contain the earliest views of the Catskills.

InscribedInscribed at lower center outside image in black ink: "POUGHKEEPSIE."; at lower right outside image: "2d September 1796."

ClassificationsDRAWINGS