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Forts Montgomery & Clinton/ Hudson River/ Revolutionary War. DES BARRES, J. F. W. [London, c. 1778-1781] Three Untitled Aquatints with Etching on a Single Sheet Showing the above forts from three different perspectives. Image area: 26 x 18 ½ inches. Light staining along vertical fold, else excellent condition. Extremely rare as well as beautiful aquatints depicting the critical Hudson River Highlands forts shortly after their capture by the British in the fall of 1777. Possibly a proof example; see below. We have not found records of other examples of this plate previously on the market. It may have been created to accompany Des Barres’s plan of the taking of the forts by the British (Nebenzahl, Bibliog. Of Printed Plans, no. 54), which does appear now and then market; however, Nebenzahl does not mention this work. (The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, which does hold an example of these views, catalogues the plan and this plate together—see below.) The plate lacks an imprint with a date, but the views must have been executed shortly after the British captured the forts from colonial defenders in October of 1777. Fort Montgomery, the largest of the two, and Fort Clinton were located on the west bank of the Hudson, just north of Anthony’s Nose, and about five miles south of West Point. The capture of the forts was a British priority from the beginning of the war, as control of the Hudson River was the linchpin of the overall British strategy; the idea being that with control of the Hudson, New England, the hotbed of the Revolution, could be cut off from the rest of the colonies. Recognizing this, Americans had strongly garrisoned the forts and laid the across the river from Fort Montgomery the first of the three chains Americans ingeniously employed to blockade enemy ships on the river. On October 6, 1777, a British force of 2100 attacked the fort from the west thus circumventing the chain, which the British later destroyed. However, the victory was a pyrrhic one, as this action drew necessary British forces from Saratoga, which would be the turning point of the war. The three aquatints show the forts from three different perspective: the top one from slightly down river; the middle one from pretty much directly across the river; and the bottom image from yet farther down river thus including Anthony’s nose. Well-detailed ships of different types in each of the views heighten their realism. Several figures can be seen in an open long boat at lower left in the bottom view, perhaps a “self-portrait” of the drafting crew that produced the view, as one figure appears to be sketching. The depth created by the subtle shading of the aquatint process combined with the fine detail of the etched areas, create highly realistic images that capture the unmistakable look of the Hudson Highlands. Since there are no titles beneath the individual images, which was Des Barres’s usual practice, and there is no imprint as well, this example is possibly a proof copy. The only other example of this print that we have thus far found is in the atlas held by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It too lacks both titles and imprints, suggesting the print was never finished for commercial publication, thus also explaining its great rarity. Aquatint was at the time of the publication of the Atlantic Neptune a relatively new technology, and the Des Barres’s Atlantic Neptune was the earliest publication in English to make extensive use of it. Aquatint produces gradient tones rather than lines and is especially effective at evoking light and shadow, which is certainly the case in this work; engravings for this process thus often have the look of watercolors. Only a handful of the views in Des Barres's Atlantic Neptune used aquatint—sometimes combined with etching as here--the rest being line engravings. In fact, to make the Neptune more commercially attractive, Des Barres replaced a few line-engraved views with aquatint versions. Joseph F. W. Des Barres’s Atlantic Neptune was a precedent-shattering work that both charted the eastern seaboard of North America with never-seen-before accuracy, as well as lifted the aesthetics of the nautical chart to a level arguably never reached before or since. The Neptune was funded by the British government, itself an unusual circumstance in the production of maps in England to that date, for the use of the British Navy in America during the Revolution. Judging by the result, clearly no expense was spared in its creation; it has been described as “the most splendid collection of charts, plans, and views ever published.” (Rich, Bibliotheca Americana Nova, as cited by Sabin). National Maritime Museum Catalogue, p. 384; nos. 128-129; these views and a sheet with plans of the fort are here catalogued together; Not in Cresswell, The American Revolution in Drawings and Prints.
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