Beck Watercolor of Washington DC / Georgetown

BECK, George Jacob (1748-1812).
Georgetown and the City of Washington.
Gouache and watercolor on paper in gold-lead frame. c. 1795.
15 3/4" x 20 1/2" visible, 24" x 29" framed.

Provenance: Private collection, Philadelphia, PA; Dr. & Mrs. Irving Leavitt, Detroit, MI; Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY; Admiral & Mrs. E. P. Moore, Washington D.C.; Sotheby's, September 26, 2008 - $302,500.Exhibited: Washington on the Potomac, Washington D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, February 20-April 3, 1982, Illustrated on p. 2; A Nation Emergers, Washington D.C., Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, June 15, 2012 - January 27, 2013; Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment: Princeton University Art Museum - October 13, 2018 - January 6, 2019; Peabody Essex Museaum - Februaru 2, 2019 - May 5, 2019; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art - May 25, 2019 - September 9, 2019.The Earliest and Most Famous View of Washington D.C. - Widely Exhibited in many Museum shows.THE FIRST VIEW OF DC AND GEORGETOWN DRAWN BY GEORGE WASHINGTON’S FAVORITE ARTIST.This view is taken from above Georgetown on the district side, and shows Analostan Island (the former designation for Theodore Roosevelt Island) in the Potomac River, with Georgetown in the background on the left. George Beck was one of the earliest professional English-trained landscape painters in America, counting William Winstanley, William Groombridge, and Francis Guy as his contemporaries. Among “his pioneering depictions of the American wilderness” (Olsen), Georgetown and the City of Washington and A North View of the City of Washington, are important and evocative portraits of the Nation’s Capitol at its renaissance.Beck “was one of the first individuals to push beyond the representational limits of topographical draughtsmanship” (Olsen). These watercolor gouaches of Washington is clearly a companion in style as well as subject to The Potomac River Breaking through the Blue Ridge and Great Falls of the Potomac (ca.1796-1797), combining as it does topographical detail with a Romantic atmosphere. Both of these works were purchased by George Washington in January 1797, from Samuel Salter (1768-1834) as Beck’s agent, for $158.75. There were to be hung in the New Room that Washington had built at Mount Vernon following the Revolutionary War, where they can be viewed today. The original entry in Washington’s account book recording the acquisition can be seen amongst the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia.George Beck and his wife emigrated to America in 1795, drawn to the newly settled wilderness, which Beck was to portray so successfully in this paintings as well as his others. They settled in Baltimore where George first painted scenes of the Potomac, and achieved immediate success. Following Washington’s commission William Hamilton, “the well-known patron of English and American artists, commissioned Beck to paint a view of the Woodlands, Hamilton’s elaborately landscaped estate in Philadelphia. At Hamilton’s suggestion, in 1798 Beck settled in that city, then the capital of the country and its largest, most cultivated urban center; he opened drawing schools for men and women to subsidize his income, and his wife established a ladies’ seminary” (Olsen). However their time in Philadelphia was relatively short-lived. Beck first appears in the Philadelphia directory of 1798 as a landscape painter at 106 Walnut Street; in 1799 and 1800 on South Fifth Street near Chestnut; in 1801, 1802, 1803, at 51 South Fifth Street; and in 1804 ad 1805 as living near 51 South Fifth Street, all in very close proximity to Samuel Salter’s properties... he may well have been a tenant.The legendary beauty of the American west tempted the Becks to leave Philadelphia in 1804 and explore the western frontier: Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls, Ohio and Kentucky. “The newly settled wilderness held a great appeal for [Beck], providing the opportunity of exploring relatively unspoiled nature while living in a social milieu where he and his wife hoped to attract patrons and students. In Kentucky he developed a freer style, and his works increasingly celebrated the unspoiled richness of the frontier. They reveal his fascination with the subjective power and mystery of nature” (Roberta Olsen “Drawn by New York”, pages 63-66).