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View of the Celebrated Rock Springs at Saratoga.
Boston: Pendleton’s Lithography, [ca. 1830]. Lithograph, 8” x 9.25”. CONDITION: Very good, faint toning to top edge, not affecting print. A rare lithograph by a Saratoga artist, showing the famous High Rock Spring, with its distinctive mineral deposit. The strange, shell-shaped mineral deposit of High Rock Spring appears in the foreground, its healing waters distributed to two fashionable visitors by a dipper-bearing woman extending a mug to a fashionable gentleman as his parasol-toting lady waits beside him. A small, arched pavilion stands to the left, and stairs behind them lead to open countryside and, on the right, a larger building with a fenced enclosure. Little is known for certain of the early life of painter and lithographer Henry Walton (1804–1865). Some sources identify him as the son of Judge Henry Walton (1768–1844) of Saratoga Springs, New York, where Judge Walton was a driving force in the excavation and tubing of several mineral springs and the construction of the Chinese pagoda over the Flat Rock Spring (of which the young Walton made a print), as well as the Pavilion Hotel. In the 1820s Walton produced drawings for Pendleton’s in Boston, as well as Rawdon, Clark & Co. in Albany and Rawdon, Wright & Co. in New York. Subsequently, he moved to Ithaca, where he spent about twelve years, created the majority of his known works, and took up portrait painting. In 1851 he joined the Gold Rush, and later settled in Michigan with his wife Jane Orr. Lithographer and painter Moses Swett (1804–1838) spent his early years in Boston, working for several early lithographic firms, including Pendleton’s—from which he splintered off to form Senefelder, and then rejoined—and Annin and Smith, which, founded in 1814, became closely associated with Senefelder. In 1830 he relocated to Baltimore, where he founded Endicott & Swett with George Endicott. In 1831 the two relocated to New York, and in 1836 Swett left for Washington, D.C., where he produced several political cartoons. He died soon after returning to Boston in 1838. An early and leading lithographic firm operating from 1825 to 1836, Pendleton’s was founded by brothers William Pendleton (1795–1879) and John Pendleton (1798–1866) and was located at Harvard Place in Boston—the city’s first shop of its kind. Swett and Thomas Edwards founded Senefelder Lithographic Co. in 1828 in Boston, but by 1831 the firm was absorbed by Pendleton Lithography. A range of artists—some of whom would become quite prominent—learned the art of lithography while working at Pendleton’s, including Fitz Henry Lane, John H. Bufford, Nathaniel Currier, Benjamin Champney, David Claypoole Johnston, Robert Cooke, and John W. A. Scott. These artists created a variety of materials: maps, plans, portraits, fashion plates, topographical views, sheet-music covers, advertisements, and historical prints. In 1826, the brothers won a silver medal for the “Best Specimen of Lithography” at the annual exhibition of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. In 1829 John Pendleton went to Philadelphia to start the firm of Pendleton, Kearney & Childs, and moved later in the same year to New York to start his own company. REFERENCES: Rehner, Leigh. Artist of Ithaca: Henry Walton and his Odyssey (Cornell UP, 2009), p. 16; Groce & Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America, pp. 617, 659; Last, Jay. The Color Explosion : Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (Santa Ana, California, 2005), pp. 122–23, 161; Pierce, Sally and Catharina Slautterback. Boston Lithography, 1825–1880 (Boston, 1991), pp. 146–47, 175.
Item #7436
Price: $750.00
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