View of Niagara Falls

Description

Traveling eastward from Vincennes, Indiana, Maximilian and his party arrived again on the Ohio opposite Louisville, Kentucky, took a ship to Cincinnati and Portsmouth, and from Portsmouth followed the route of the Ohio Canal along the Scioto River northward to Cleveland on Lake Erie. A view by Bodmer, now lost, depicting a steamboat on Lake Erie in the vicinity of the Cleveland lighthouse was reproduced as Vignette XXXII in the atlas of aquatints published in Europe. From Cleveland they made their way to Buffalo, New York, where Bodmer had the opportunity to observe one of North America's best known scenic wonders, Niagara Falls. He later executed a finished watercolor of this scene which appeared as Tableau 39 in the aquatint series. Bodmer saw Niagara Falls for the first time on June 28,1834. A description of the falls is found in Maximilian's journal for this date. The subject of one of Bodmer's finest scenic views, Niagara Falls remained popular with painters throughout the first half of the nineteenth century until the landscapes of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran brought the splendors of the Rockies, the Yellowstone country, and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado to the attention of an admiring public.