page_title: Picturesque America
hierarchical_section_title: Picturesque America
caption_attribution_description: English: The Upper Yellowstone Falls
context_page_description: Picturesque America was a two-volume set of books describing and illustrating the scenery of America, which grew out of an earlier series in Appleton's Journal. It was published by D. Appleton and Company of New York in 1872 and 1874 and edited by the romantic poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant, who also edited the New York Evening Post. The layout and concept was similar to that of Picturesque Europe. The work's essays, together with its nine hundred wood engravings and fifty steel engravings, are considered to have had a profound influence on the growth of tourism and the historic preservation movement in the United States.
  The preface described "the design of this publication to present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. The wealth of material for this purpose is almost boundless."
  This two-volume set and others of the same genre, achieved great popularity in the nineteenth century. Their illustrations provided a tour of nineteenth century America, unspoilt and pastoral, its centres of commerce, ports, architecture and natural treasures.
context_section_description: Picturesque America was a two-volume set of books describing and illustrating the scenery of America, which grew out of an earlier series in Appleton's Journal. It was published by D. Appleton and Company of New York in 1872 and 1874 and edited by the romantic poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), who also edited the New York Evening Post. The layout and concept was similar to that of Picturesque Europe. The work's essays, together with its nine hundred wood engravings and fifty steel engravings, are considered to have had a profound influence on the growth of tourism and the historic preservation movement in the United States.
  The preface described "the design of this publication to present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. The wealth of material for this purpose is almost boundless."
  This two-volume set and others of the same genre, achieved great popularity in the nineteenth century. Their illustrations provided a tour of nineteenth century America, unspoilt and pastoral, its centres of commerce, ports, architecture and natural treasures. In a modern (2001) treatment of the work, Sue Rainey, who is a historian of American graphic arts and has a particular interest in the artists who drew landscapes and cityscapes for periodical and book illustrations,  wrote "As the first publication to celebrate the entire continental nation, it enabled Americans, after the trauma of the Civil War, to construct a national self-image based on reconciliation between North and South and incorporation of the West." (p. xiii) The volumes display both steel and wood engravings based on the paintings of some of the best American landscape painters of the nineteenth century, primarily Harry Fenn and his friend Douglas Woodward, but also including John Frederick Kensett, William Stanley Haseltine, James David Smillie, John William Casilear, Thomas Moran, A. C. Warren, David Johnson, Granville Perkins, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, Albert Fitch Bellows, James McDougal Hart, Casimir Clayton Griswold (1834-1918), Worthington Whittredge, Charles G. Rosenberg (1818 - 1879), William Ludwell Sheppard (1833-1912), Homer Dodge Martin, Alfred Rudolph Waud, William Hart, Robert Swain Gifford, Jules Tavernier, William Hamilton Gibson, and Thomas Cole.
  Engravers included Robert Hinshelwood (1812-1885), Edward Paxman Brandard (1819-1898), Samuel Valentine Hunt (1803-1893), William Wellstood (1819-1900), William Chapin (1802-1888), Henry Bryan Hall (1808-1884).
  Robert Hinshelwood was born in Edinburgh in 1812 and emigrated to America in 1835 where he became renowned for his landscapes, etchings and engravings. His meticulous attention to detail was appreciated by publishing houses such as Appleton's and Harper's, and also by the Continental Bank Note Company who employed him to produce plates for the printing of currency. He died in New York.
  Volume I engravings
  On the Coast of Maine
  St. John's and Ocklawaha Rivers
  Up and Down the Columbia
  Lookout Mountain and the Tennessee
  Richmond, Scenic and Historic
  Natural Bridge, Virginia
  Delaware Water-Gap
  Mauch Chunk
  On the Savannah
  The French Broad
  The White Mountains
  Neversink Highlands
  St. Augustine, Florida
  Charleston and its Suburbs
  Weyer's Cave, Virginia
  Scenes on the Brandywine
  Cumberland Gap
  Watkins Glen
  Scenes on Eastern Long Island
  The Lower Mississippi
  Mackinac
  Our Great National Park
  Harper's Ferry
  Scenes in Virginia
  Newport
  West Virginia
  Lake Superior
  Northern California
  Niagara
  Trenton Falls
  The Yosemite Falls
  Providence and Vicinity
  South Shore of Lake Erie
  On the Coast of California.
  Volume II engravings
  Highlands and Palisades of the Hudson
  Philadelphia and its Suburbs
  Northern New Jersey
  Valley of the Connecticut
  Baltimore and Environs
  The Catskills
  The Juniata
  On the Ohio
  The Plains and the Sierras
  The Susquehanna
  Boston
  Lake George and Lake Champlain
  Mount Mansfield
  Valley of the Housatonic
  The Upper Mississippi
  Valley of the Genesee
  St. Lawrence and the Saguenay
  Eastern Shore
  The Adironda
caption: Upper Yellowstone Falls
  by Thomas Moran
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