Colored print depicting four flowers in a mountainous, cloudy landscape

“Primulas” from The Beauties of Flora

A scroll showing a highly detailed outdoor scene. Small figures—some alone or in pairs, some in large clusters—are set against a backdrop of houses, trees, and architecture, along the banks of a river. Pigment on silk.

Variation on the Qingming shanghe tu

A circular, colored print showing an aerial view of Manhattan with a slightly distorted, “fish-eye” perspective

Photograph by Robert Kato

John Bachmann (1814–1896)
New York and Environs
Color lithograph, 1859
The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection

New York and Environs

The Swiss printmaker John Bachmann immigrated to New York in 1848, finding a ready market for his skills in creating large lithographic views. Known especially for his panoramas, he here creates an unusual fish-eye lens perspective of Manhattan and its outer boroughs. Picturing New York City as the focal point of an imaginary globe, Bachmann conveys a sense of the city as the world’s literal and figurative center. Images such as this one, though rare today, were produced in large numbers to decorate private homes and municipal buildings as well as to promote a sense of civic and national pride.

Holding Division: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Co…

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