Travel by Stagecoach Near Trenton, New Jersey
1811–ca. 1813
Medium
Watercolor, gouache, and pen and ink on off-white wove paper
Dimensions
6 7/8 x 9 13/16 in. (17.5 x 24.9 cm)
Classification
Watercolor
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1942
Accession Number
42.95.11
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Travel by Stagecoach Near, New Jersey** (1811–ca. 1813) by Pavel Petrovich Svin offers a vivid snapshot of early19th-century American life. This charming watercolor, gouache, pen-and-ink work on wove paper depicts men, women, horses, and carriages in motion along a New Jersey road, capturing the era's reliance on stagecoaches for travel before railroads transformed the landscape. Svinin, a Russian and artist attached to the Russian Empire's legation in Philadelphia, created this during his travels across the United States from 1811 to 1813, documenting scenes with a keen eye for everyday vit...
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 ...