The Young Republic

John Rubens Smith (1775-1849)
West Front of the United States Capitol
Watercolor on paper, ca. 1830
LC-USZC4-3671
Prints & Photographs Division

John Rubens Smith (1775-1849)
Mill on the Brandywine
Watercolor on paper, ca. 1828
LC-USZC4-3670
Prints & Photographs Division

John Rubens Smith (1775-1849)
Paper Mill at Hodgskintown Near New Haven
Watercolor over graphite under drawing,
[between 1809 and 1844]
Prints and Photographs Division
Gift of Mrs. Marian S. Carson and
the Madison Council, 1993

Juvenile Drawing Book
Philadelphia:1854
Rarebook & Special
Collections Division (32.7)

John Rubens Smith(117-1849)
Washington, Looking up PA Ave
from the Terrace of the Capitol
Pencil on paper, ca. 1828
Prints & Photographs Division
Gift of Mrs. Marian S. Carson and the Madison Council, 1993 (27A.3)

Between 1810 and 1840, painter and printmaker John Rubens Smith traveled the eastern seaboard of the United States, creating a life portrait of the young republic. Smith sketched cities and towns, rivers, roads, bridges, and mills. His drawings captured the spirit and energy of the new nation during a period of enormous growth and optimism and the literal transformation of the American landscape during the first decades of the Industrial Revolution.

The first is of the nearly completed U.S. Capitol that must have seemed to Smith a particularly poignant symbol of American idealism and ambition. He rendered it from virtually every angle, including this finished view from about 1830. The cows grazing on what is now the Mall offer surprising visual evidence that America's rural character persisted even as urbanization and the Industrial Revolution transformed the nation.

The second drawing is a finished watercolor of a paper mill complex on the Brandywine River. This painting suggests the fragile harmony between nature and technology achieved in America during the first decades of the Industrial Revolution.

Smith was a skillful delineator of the American scene in the decades before photography, and a gifted teacher who influenced a generation of American artists through his drawing academies and drawing manuals. Shown is his drawing of a Connecticut paper mill and his drawing manual for young students.