Rail

This originally hand-colored lithograph is from John & Thomas Doughty’s The Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports. The work was published in Philadelphia by the authors between 1830 and 1834. This work featured the first series of color sporting prints published in America. (Bennett) Thomas Doughty was large responsible for the art work and was “hailed as ‘the all-American Claude Lorrain.'” (Howat, The Hudson River and its Painters, p.31)

The work was “an amalgam of natural history, sporting accounts, travel narratives, and practical advice for the countryman.” (Reese) The Cabinet was very successful in its first eight issues and brought the art and practice of lithography to a wider audience. “1830 crucial in the history of American lithography for the lithographic print came of age, and this was largely through the work of Thomas Doughty” (Looney) This work “marks the beginning of dominance of lithography in book illustration.” (Reese)