Edward Beyer

From a hilltop vantage point, Edward Beyer captured the verdant landscape of William Snidow’s farm, the meandering New River, and the Blue Ridge Mountains towering in the distance. Snidow’s Farm occupies a highly significant geographical locale in close proximity to the Continental Divide and the New River, which most scientists conjecture to be one of the oldest rivers in the world.¹According to a Giles County Deed Book, William H. Snidow (1796-1863) acquired the sprawling property from his father, Col. Christian Snidow (1760-1836), following his death in 1836.²  The house was built by William’s maternal grandfather, Captain Thomas Burk (1741-1808), who was the son of one of the earliest settlers west of the Allegheny Mountain Range.³

Due to the proclivity of early American settlers to push the boundaries of the frontier, counties in Virginia mushroomed and were frequently reshaped throughout the nineteenth century. Both Giles County, where Snidow Farm is located today, and Roanoke County, where present-day Salem is located, were formed out of Montgomery County. This reinforces why it is understandable that Edward Beyer attributed the location to “Salem” on the back of the painting.

German artist, Edward Beyer, painted this work during his three year sojourn in Virginia. From 1854 to 1857, he traversed the state as an itinerant artist sketching the scenic landscape, bustling towns, and stately county estates with a near photographic precision informed by his classical training at the Dusseldorf Academy. In Picturing America, 1497-1899, Gloria-Gilda Deák illuminates Beyer’s zealous approach to depicting Virginia by stating that he was “taken by the beauty of the Virginia landscape, particularly by the elegant settings of some of the region's watering places… There was probably no Virginia county that Beyer left unvisited."⁴ While Beyer later tapped preeminent German lithographers to transform forty of his sketches into his magnum opus, the “Album of Virginia,” Beyer’s paintings documenting the homesteads of the Virginians he encountered provide an intimate glimpse of antebellum Virginia through the artist’s eyes. The inscription on the back of the painting reveals that this painting was presented to Snidow as a gift and that they considered each other friends. One can only imagine that William H. Snidow possibly hosted the artist for a period, as his farm would have represented a prime location to sketch the fertile valley and mountainous vista.

¹ R.F. Fonner, “Mountain State Geology,” West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, 1987.

² Giles County Court, Giles County Deed Book E, 1836-1844, p.225.

³ David Emmons Johnson, A History of Middle New River Settlements and Contiguous Territory (Huntington: Standard Ptg. & Publishing Company, 1906), p. 386-387.

⁴ Gloria-Gilda Deák, Picturing America, 1497-1899 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 721.