NEW ORLEANS FROM ST. PATRICK'S CHURCH, 1852

Drawn by John W. Hill, published by Smith Brothers & Co., New York
Black and white original; image size 26x40 inches

A rare and magnificent stone lithograph of New Orleans, looking downriver from one of the city's highest vantage points, taking in the American Sector of the city and much more. Examples are held by the Library of Congress (which sells a reproduction on its website), The Historic New Orleans Collection and the New York Public Library, among others. Although dated 1852, the original sketch would have been made in 1851 or earlier, since the colonnaded dome of the famous St. Charles Hotel is shown. The hotel burned in 1851 and was rebuilt with a different dome. John W. Hill, born 1812, was a skilled engraver and printmaker, later a painter. One of his views of New York hangs in the renowned Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Works of Benjamin F. Smith, the lithographer, are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He and Hill collaborated on large-scale images of other cities as well, including a companion piece to this titled "New Orleans from the Lower Cotton Press." Both New Orleans prints can be found on pages 298 and 299 of "Charting Louisiana," a publication of The Historic New Orleans Collection. References imply a first state of this print. However, we could find no direct reference to a first state nor any reproduction, although one may well exist. Poorly repaired tears go into the top and top left of the image; there is another, not visible, into the image at mid-left.

$7,500 (SO43)