James Salisbury Burt (active 1835-1849)

The present work is based upon a print of the same subject by the English artist and printmaker William Henry Bartlett. By 1840 an appreciation for the American countryside had grown to such a degree abroad that a two-volume set titled American Scenery, published in London and illustrated with prints by Bartlett, was a resounding success. According to Dr. Kenneth W. Maddox: "The Bartlett prints (in American Scenery) were responsible for a proliferation of images by artists of various skills, who using the engravings as a source, produced their own landscape views on canvas. Among the finest of these paintings, if not the finest, is James Salisbury Burt's, View of Mt. Taurus and Cold Spring from Fort Putnam...Burt's painting, while meticulously following his print source, transcends the small black and white image of the Highlands by conveying an atmospheric intensity to his dramatic and colorful composition." (The Glorious Scenery Must Ever Excite: Nineteenth-century American Paintings of the Hudson Highlands, New York, 2008, n.p.)