Description
- Abstract:
- View of Market Square in Providence, Rhode Island (identifiable by distinctive buildings and the sign of William Wilkinson's Book store at far right) at the height of the gale. The square is entirely and deeply flooded by the storm surge and in a state of chaos: debris flies through the air, fessels have been cst adrift and smash into one another and surrounding buildings, and barns and barns and sheds have been lifted off their foundations and are being carried along by the waves and wind. Two figures are seen on a small boat at left, and three in another at right; between them a lone figure in the water clings to a timber
- Notes:
- Painted and engraved by J. Kidder
- Comparison of exemplars in the collections of the John Nicholas Brown Center, Brown University, and the Rhode Island Historical Society, with the exemplar held by the John Hay Library, Brown University, shows the latter to have been printed from a later state of the plate, expecially noticeable in the treatment of the windows of bidings in the far background, where linear reinforcement has been added to compensate for loss of contrast in the aquatint.
- The painting on which the print is based, unsigned by identified as very likely the original, is in the collections of Historic New England, Boston, Mass., and is described and reproduced in Cherished possessions (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 2003), p. 80-83. The storm itself, Kidder's print, and related prints and paintings, are discussed in Robert Emlen's article "The Great Gale of 1815: artifactual evidence of Rhode Island's first hurricane", in Rhode Island history, v. 48, no. 2 (May 1990), p. 51-61. The Historic New England painting and the print correspond very closely; comparison between them indicates that the painting almost certainly cannot have been copied from the print. Another painting, made ca. 1835 by J.R. Bartlett, now at the Rhode Island Historical Society, which differs in architectural and other details, appears to have been based on the earlier painting, and certainly not on the print. The Bartlett painting is reproduced in American paintings in the Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence: RIHS, 1974); an illustration of the 1815 hurricane in Patrick T. Conley, Providence: a pictorial history (1982), reproduces the Kidder print, not the Bartlett painting as stated in the caption
- Hay Prints copy: Sheet size 300 x 502 mm, within the plate mark all round; the trim has removed the blank space between the image and linear frame at right, and 2-3 mm of the image at left (leaving only a trace of the leftmost chimney on the building at left). From a later state of the plate as noted; the aquatint contrast overall is less than that in the JNBC and RIHS copies. An irregular ca. 15-cm horizontal tear from the middle left edge has been repaired; it appears that the Hay copy may have been removed from a darkened mount, as indicated a few stains on the back, and by thinning and small holes (also repaire) visible with back lighting; perhaps also washed and pressed, which may have contributed to the reduced contrast
Access Conditions
- Rights
- No Copyright - United States
- Restrictions on Use
- Collection is open for research.
Citation
"A representation of the great storm at Providence Sept. 23rd 1815"
(1816).
Rhode Island, Brown Olio.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:410651/
Relations
Collections:
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Rhode Island
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