View of New Orleans (Engraving)
Artist/Maker: John L. Boqueta de Woiseri (active in America 1797-1815)
Created: 1803
Origin/Purchase: Jefferson's engraving is unlocated. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation currently owns a modern copy courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Materials: colored aquatint
Dimensions: 29.5 × 54.5 (11 5/8 × 21 7/16 in.)
Location: Dining Room
Historical Notes: A View of New Orleans and its companion plan celebrated the acquisition of New Orleans by the United States. The print was dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, the engineer of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase that more than doubled the size of the United States and also prevented a potential war with France over port rights at the mouth of the Mississippi River.[1]
While negotiations were still under way, Jefferson sent out queries about the Louisiana Territory to government officials in the area requesting maps and graphic representations of the region. The lack of available images may have encouraged Boqueta de Woiseri to undertake his painting of the view from Marigny's estate and its companion piece, a plan of the city. Both were advertised by de Woiseri in the February 21, 1804 General Advertiser.[2] These engravings (now missing), the only ones available, were probably those listed by Jefferson in his Catalogue of Paintings. They hung on the lower tier in the Dining Room.[3]
- Text from Stein, Worlds, 186
Further Sources
- The Historic New Orleans Collection. "A View of New Orleans Taken from the Plantation of Marigny."
References
- ^ Wendy Shadwell and Museum of Graphic Art, American Printmaking: The First 150 Years (New York: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969), 48.
- ^ Ibid.; Jessie J. Poesch, The Art of the Old South: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture & the Products of Craftsmen, 1560-1860 (New York: Knopf, 1983), 180-82.
- ^ Jefferson's Catalogue of Paintings, The Thomas Jefferson Papers, Accession #2958-b, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. For a transcription of Jefferson's catalogue, see Seymour Howard, "Thomas Jefferson's Art Gallery for Monticello," The Art Bulletin 59, no. 4 (1977): 583-600.