John Reuben CHAPIN (1823 – 1904), [Death of Washington], ink and gray wash on paper, 110 x 171 mm. mounted to a larger sheet.
Original artwork for the published engraving, Death of Washington. The scene was subsequently engraved by John Rogers (c. 1808 – c. 1888)1 and used for volume three of Benson J. Lossing’s Washington and the American Republic (New York: Virtue & Yorston, 1870) following page 556. Offered together with an original engraving based on the painting.
Soiling and toning to mount, especially on verso, however the artwork is quite clean and in very fine condition overall.
Chapin was born in Providence, R.I. and moved his family to New York in 1830. A decade later, Samuel F. B. Morse, a family friend, encouraged the young Chapin to attend the Academy of Design where Morse was a professor of art. By 1850 Chapin was a freelance illustrator for books and magazines as well as for the Patent Office in Washington. Chapin became so successful that he helped finance Samuel Morse’s new endeavor: the telegraph. In 1860, Harpers Weekly hired Chapin to supervise the illustration department. In 1865 Chapin began his own illustration concern, The New York Bureau of Illustration. In 1870 he moved to Buffalo, N.Y. and opened a branch of his business. Today, he is perhaps best known for his mammoth illustration of the Chicago Fire of 1871 that appeared in Harper’s Weekly.2
(EXA 4385) $4,500
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1 See Groce & Wallace, The New York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America (1957), 544: “English engraver who came to NYC about 1850 and was chiefly employed by book publishers.”
2 Judy Chapin Buzby “The Illustrated Chapin: John Reuben Chapin, (1823 – 1904)” Western New York Heritage (Fall 2004). 46-52.
