Natural Bridge, Virginia
Framed: 32 7/8 x 40 15/16 x 3 1/2 inches (83.49 x 103.96 x 8.89 cm)
First Fall Exhibition of the Works of Modern Artists at the Apollo Gallery, Apollo Gallery, New York, October 1838, no. 143 (as View of the Natural Bridge, Virginia).
Third Exhibition, Albany Gallery of Fine Arts, N.Y., 1848, no. 117 (as Natural Bridge in Virginia).
[“American Landscapes”], William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., July–August 1939, no cat.
[“Nineteenth Century American Landscape Exhibition”], Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Ala., November 1–30, 1960, no cat.
Nineteenth Century American Painting, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., February 17–March 31, 1974, no cat.
Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., December 2, 1977– January 22, 1978, no. 41.
So Beautiful an Arch: Images of the Natural Bridge, 1787–1890, duPont Gallery, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., January 4–29, 1982, no. 16.
The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque: British Influences on American Landscape Painting, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, February 19–April 8, 1984, no. 48.
During the early 19th century, many artists rendered the Natural Bridge because the site ranked with Niagara Falls as one of the new nation's most inspiring landmarks and tourist attractions. Such natural monuments were thought to distinguish America from Europe. Ward was one of America's first landscape painters and among the first contributors to exhibitions at the National Academy of Design in New York.
Grant Thorburn, Esq., New York, by 1840;
John S. Walsh, Albany, N.Y., by 1848;
(Newhouse Galleries, New York);
to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., 1933.
Catalogue of Pictures and Sculpture Exhibited by the American Academy of the Fine Arts, exh. cat. (New York: C. Vinten, 1835), 6 (as The Natural Bridge).
First Fall Exhibition of the Works of Modern Artists at the Apollo Gallery, exh. cat. (New York: J. M. Marsh, 1838), 15 (as View of the Natural Bridge, Virginia).
“Our
Landscape Painters,” New-York Mirror: A
Weekly Journal of Literature and the Fine Arts, July 25, 1840, 38 (as Natural Bridge).
Catalogue of the Third Exhibition, exh. cat. (Albany, N.Y.: C. Van Benthuysen,
1848), 15 (as Natural Bridge in Virginia).
“Death
of Jacob C. Ward,” [1891], clipping, NAMA curatorial files (as Natural Bridge).
I. N.
Phelps Stokes and Daniel C. Haskell, American
Historical Prints: Early Views of American Cities, etc. from the Phelps Stokes and Other Collections (New York: New York Public Library,
1932), 133.
“The
Acquisitions,” Art Digest 8 (December
1, 1933), 22.
“The
William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art: Complete Catalogue of Paintings and
Drawings,” Art News 32 (December 9, 1933),
28.
Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson
Gallery of Art (Kansas
City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of
Fine Arts, 1933), 126, 138.
“Art,” Kansas City Star, August 30, 1936, 10A
(as Natural Bridge).
“American
Group of Landscapes at Art Gallery,” Kansas
City Journal-Post, July 23, 1939, 14.
The
William Rockhill Nelson Collection,
2nd ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art
and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 166.
E. P.
Richardson, American Romantic Painting
(New York: Weyhe, 1944), 49, pl. 120.
Mary
Bartlett Cowdrey, American Academy of
Fine Arts and American Art Union, Exhibition Record, 1816–1852 (New York:
New-York Historical Society, 1953), 380.
Handbook of the Collections in the William
Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.:
William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts,
1959), 258.
William
Dunlap, A History of the Rise and
Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (1834; New York: Dover
Publications, 1969), 2: fig. 300.
Ross E.
Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook
of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary
Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed.
(Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum
of Fine Arts, 1973), 173, 255.
Lynn
Wall Smith and Nancy Dustin Moore, Index
to Reproductions of American Paintings appearing in more than 400 books, mostly
published since 1960 (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1977), 596.
Kaleidoscope of American Painting:
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary
Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1977), 38.
Ross E.
Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November
1982), 1031, 1033.
Pamela
H. Simpson, So Beautiful an Arch: Images
of the Natural Bridge, 1787–1890, exh. cat. (Lexington, Va.: Washington and
Lee University, 1982), 20.
R. Lewis
Wright, Artists in Virginia before 1900:
An Annotated Checklist (Charlottesville: Virginia Historical Society and University of Virginia Press, 1983), 171.
The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque:
British Influences on American Landscape Painting, exh. cat. (St. Louis: Washington University
Gallery of Art, 1984), 66.
Gloria
Gilda Deák, Picturing America, 1497–1899:
Prints, Maps, and Drawings Bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the
Development of the Territory That Is Now the United States (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 1:296–97.
Hugh
Brogan, “Picturing America, 1497–1899,” New
York Times, March 19, 1989, BR10.
Henry
Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art, 1991), 84–85.
Roger Ward and Patricia J.
Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6th ed. (New York: Hudson
Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 233.
Barbara
Crawford and Royster Lyle Jr., Rockbridge
County Artists and Artisans (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
1995), 40.
James C. Kelly and William M. S. Rasmussen, The Virginia Landscape: A Cultural History (Charlottesville, Va.: Howell Press, 2000), 74, 200n132.
