Ferdinand Reichardt

(1819-1895)

Niagara Falls was perhaps the greatest single iconographic natural image for painters in America during the 19th and early 20th centuries. So powerful was the attraction that artists from abroad were drawn to it. Danish-born Ferdinand Reichardt left his homeland an already well-established artist at age 36 with one specific objective, as he noted in a catalogue: “to study the sublimity and grandeur of that wonderful work of nature.”1 Study it and paint it he did. Reichardt established his reputation painting dozens of images of Niagara Falls, some as large as 6' x 8' in size. In 1857 he exhibited no less than 30 paintings of Niagara Falls at a gallery in New York. He was commissioned by William Vanderbilt to execute a major painting of the falls and recieved the enormous sum of $14,000. I was aware of the artist’s name and association with Niagara Falls from early Kennedy Gallery Quarterly magazines, but as examples of his work occasionally turned up, they were always large, and the timing was never right. But this example was offered to me in 2003 by a private dealer, and I acquired the piece… right subject, right size, and right timing.