Research Catalog

Title

Captain Watson's travels in America : the sketchbooks and diary of Joshua Rowley Watson, 1772-1818 / Kathleen A. Foster ; commentaries on the plates by Kenneth Finkel.

Author

Foster, Kathleen A.

Publication

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Finkel, Kenneth

Description

xii, 372 p. : ill., maps; 23 x 29 cm.

Summary

From 1816 to 1817, British Naval Captain Joshua Rowley Watson visited friends in Philadelphia and toured the northeastern United States. During that time he filled two sketchbooks and a diary with impressions of travels that took him to Washington, Boston, and the wilds of the Hudson River valley. Watson's record proves to be a charming and graceful observation of the American scene - particularly of Philadelphia, as Watson includes an extensive overview of Eaglesfield, the country house on the Schuylkill River where he stayed. With a style that is reminiscent of eighteenth-century British topographical draftsmen, Watson's watercolors joined the flow of British art into America that ultimately formed and inspired the Hudson River school. Art historian Kathleen Foster has now gathered this previously unpublished material into a handsome volume that presents a fresh view of American art, architecture, landscape, and society in the Jeffersonian era. Her book comprises an extended essay on Watson's life and travels, a discussion of his artistic style, a guide to the diary, and the complete diary itself.

Subject

• Watson, Joshua Rowley, 1772-1818 > Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc
• Watson, Joshua Rowley, 1772-1818 > Diaries
• Watson, Joshua Rowley, 1772-1818 > Journeys > United States
• Great Britain. Royal Navy > Biography
• British > United States > Diaries
• Landscape painters > Great Britain > Diaries
• United States > Description and travel
• United States > Pictorial works

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• Diaries
• Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
• Pictorial works

Note

• "A Barra Foundation book."

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [359]-363) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: Discovering Captain Watson -- Chronology: The life and travels of Joshua Rowley Watson -- pt. I. Watson's world. Raised in the navy, 1772-1790 ; An officer's life during the Napoleonic Wars, 1791-1815 ; The American trip, 1816-1817 ; American family and friends ; Philadelphia ; Eaglesfield : a gentleman's villa on the Schuylkill ; Travels in the United States ; Watson's American diary -- pt. II. Selections from Watson's American sketchbooks. Introduction.

ISBN

0812233840 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^97015132^

OCLC

• 36767638
• SCSB-12520715

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library