Lake of Uri and Brunnen, from Picturesque Selections
Medium
Lithograph on paper
Dimensions
Image, primary support: 38.1 × 27.4 cm (15 × 10 13/16 in.); Secondary support: 56 × 43 cm (22 1/16 × 16 15/16 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
127768
Art Historical Context
James Duffield Harding's *Lake of Uri and Brunnen from Picturesque Selections (1859) captures the dramatic beauty of Switzerland's Lake Uri, part of the majestic Lake Lucerne, with the village of Brunnen nestled against towering alpine peaks. Harding, a prominent British landscape artist and lithographer of the Romantic era, specialized in evoking the "picturesque"—a 19th-century aesthetic celebrating nature's sublime, rugged charm. This print, housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints Drawings Department, reflects the era's fascination with European travel and scenery, as affluent Victo...
About the Artist
James Duffield Harding
James Duffield Harding (1798–1863) was one of the most influential British watercolorists and lithographers of the nineteenth century, whose teaching manuals, technical innovations, and celebrated landscape paintings shaped the practice of drawing across two generations of artists. Born in Deptford, London, he was the son of a drawing master who had studied under Paul Sandby, and received his earl...