An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara
An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara is a historic watercolour of Niagara Falls painted on site by Thomas Davies in 1762. It was the first eyewitness painting and the first accurate view of the falls.
History
Thomas Davies was a British Army officer in the Royal Artillery and received training in topographic drawing at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. During the French and Indian War, he served under General Jeffery Amherst. After the attack against Montreal, he surveyed the surrounding region from 1760 to 1766 and painted six waterfalls, including this one of Niagara Falls.Niagara Falls was first described in the journals of Samuel de Champlain in 1604. The first published eyewitness description was by Louis Hennepin in Description of Louisiana. His later work, A New Discovery of a Vast Country, included the first image of the falls based on his description and not done on site.
Davies later painted two additional views of the falls. His work was not well known until after a 1953 auction from the Earl of Derby's library. These paintings were then shown as part of a major exhibition devoted to Davies, 2 July – 4 September 1972, at the National Gallery of Canada.
On 1 April 2015, it was sold for £146,500 at Christie's in London from the Winkworth Collection. A print of the engraving of this painting by Fougeron was sold for £3,750. On 19 August 2015, a temporary export bar was placed on the painting in an effort to keep it in the United Kingdom.