1830s
American
Oil on canvas
Unframed: 36 1/2 × 51 3/4 in. (92.71 × 131.45 cm)
Framed: 42 3/8 × 58 1/8 in. (107.63 × 147.64 cm)
51.14
Not on view
At the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now Harpers Ferry, West Virginia), was a site greatly admired for its natural beauty. Thomas Jefferson described the view from a natural outcropping near the location of this painting as “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.” Generations of settlers migrates through the town following the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley and into Georgia. A painting by George Harvey in the neighboring Antebellum Era gallery highlights the site’s importance as a locus of modern river and rail transportation, which in this work is secondary to the natural splendor.
not signed or dated
John Barton Payne Fund
2019: Loan to Art in Embassies Program, Ambassador's residence, Vienna, Austria, November 11, 2019 - July 1, 2022.

Home Front, 1861, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va., May 12 – September 24, 1961

Lynchburg Fine Arts Center, Lynchburg, Va., September 23 – October 15, 1962

Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Va., October 6 – 30, 1967
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC

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