George Jacob Beck 1748-1812

With a paper label inscribed by the artist Great Falls, Potomac on the reverse.

Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York

Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Views and Visions: American Landscapes Before 1830, traveling, September 21, 1987-March 29, 1988
Washington, D.C., The Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American Art, Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800-1915, October 19, 1983 to January 22, 1984

"Reality, Romanticism, Realism: Two Centuries of American Painting", The Kennedy Quarterly, 1967, Volume VII, Number 4, pp. 242-243.

significant inpainting in the sky and clouds, in the lower right portion of the rocks, and scattered throughout
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In 1796/7 President George Washington purchased two companion views of George Beck's The Great Falls of the Potomac.  Although one of the paintings was commissioned from Beck by President Washington, both were purchased through Samuel Salter of Philadelphia.  They are now part of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union collection.  The Great Falls is a series of cascades and rapids in a 200 foot gorge in the Potomac River.  A section of land bordering the river on the Maryland side once held an iron foundry and mill owned by George Washington.

This version, a closeup of the Great Falls, has a fresh, spontaneous and painterly quality absent in the Washington interpretations, and suggests that the artist painted it from nature.  Most likely it was the preparatory rendering translated into aquatint by T. Cartwright.  The subject was one of six American landscape views painted by Beck, engraved by Cartwright and published by Atkins and Nightingale, London and Philadelphia on January 1st, 1802.  The complete set is in the Stokes Collection, New York Public Library.

(Excerpted from Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York)