View of Washington in 1800

The artwork

In the foreground, on an earthen wharf, a man rolls a barrel and a gentleman points to the far bank: those few houses scattered over the hills are Washington in 1800, the year the government of the United States moved there. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• Washington in 1800, a few houses among the hills seen from the opposite bank.
• Above a desk or beside a bookcase it gives character to a study.
• A gift for anyone who loves the United States or has lived in Washington.

On 1 November John Adams moved into the President's House, the future White House, with many walls still unplastered and no grand staircase; on the 17th Congress met for the first time in the Capitol, where only the north wing was ready. His wife Abigail wrote to their daughter that from Baltimore onwards there was nothing to see but woods, until you reached a city “which is only so in name”. And the great unfinished audience room she used for drying the laundry.

The plate is number sixteen in Vie de George Washington. Collection de planches, the atlas Dentu printed in Paris in 1807 for the French translation of the biography of Washington by John Marshall, who in 1800 was Adams's Secretary of State. The engraved title is “Vue de la Ville de Washington, en 1800”. The view is the one drawn by the English painter George Isham Parkyns, who had arrived in Philadelphia in 1794, and James Heath had already engraved it for the London edition of 1804; the Paris plate is an unsigned copper engraving. The copy is in the David Rumsey Map Collection.

Above a desk or next to the bookshelves, it is a gift for anyone who loves the United States and for anyone who has lived or worked in Washington. And on the wharf, that gentleman is still pointing at a capital waiting to be built.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass