The New City Hall, New York
1811–ca. 1813
Medium
Watercolor and black chalk on off-white wove paper
Dimensions
5 15/16 x 9 1/8 in. (15.1 x 23.2 cm)
Classification
Watercolor
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1942
Accession Number
42.95.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling streets of early 19th-century New with *The New City Hall, New*, a delicate watercolor and black chalk sketch Russian diplomat and artist Pavel Petrovich Svinin Created between 1811 and around 1813, this-scale work (just under 6 by 9 inches) captures the newly constructed City Hall, a symbol of the young nation's growing civic pride and architectural ambition. Svinin, who traveled through America during this period, documented unfamiliar sights with a keen eye, offering one of the earliest foreign perspectives on Manhattan's urban evolution. The artwork's historical sig...
About the Artist
Pavel Petrovich Svinin · 1787–1839
Pavel Petrovich Svinin (1787–1839) was a Russian diplomat, writer, and amateur artist whose visual record of early American life constitutes one of the most vivid and historically valuable documentary accounts of the United States in the early nineteenth century. Born in Russia in 1787, Svinin received a broad education and pursued a career in the Russian foreign service, which brought him to the ...