Ferdinand Richardt

A Traveler’s Diary
Ferdinand Richardt’s Drawings of America 1855–1859

June 27 - September 7, 2008

When thirty-six year old Ferdinand Richardt set foot in New York in July 1855, he was already a successful professional artist in his native Denmark. He enjoyed a noteworthy reputation during the Golden Age of Danish painting and was patronized by the Danish royal family. His paintings were included in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen.

Between 1855 and 1859 Richardt traveled throughout eastern North America executing hundreds of drawings and paintings on a wide variety of subjects. The phenomenon of tourism, then expanding at an amazing rate in America, attracted Richardt to the country's rivers, mountains, spas and resort hotels, and to the people who gathered there, as well as to America's cities and new architecture.

When Richardt returned to Denmark in 1859, he took his American drawings with him. They returned to America again in 1873 when Richardt and his family sailed into New York harbor to make America their permanent home. While anchored in the harbor, the ship caught fire and many of the drawings were damaged. A recent conservation project has resulted in this first comprehensive exhibition of fifty-five of Richardt’s meticulously executed drawings of America extending south to Virginia and Kentucky and west to the Niagara frontier and Minnesota. The drawings are remarkable examples of 19th-century draftsmanship because of the quality of their execution and the documentation they provide of pre-Civil War America.

The exhibition is organized by Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art from the Justine and Frank Keller Collection and is presented in Grand Rapids in conjunction with the loan of Ferdinand Richardt’s Niagara, a monumental painting from the Manoogian Collection.