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inscribed "Painted by R.S.A.T. 1843 No. 125" (on reverse) oil on panel 95/8 x 115/8 in. (24.4 x 29.5 cm) painted in 1843 provenance Old Public Market, Liverpool Cornelius Pickvance, Liverpool Alexander Gallery, new york Barridoff Galleries, Portland, Maine Christie~dq~s new york, May 26, 1988, 14 Glen S. Foster, new york Salmon~dq~s only known panoramic view of Boston Harbor and its environs portrays the port at the high-water mark of prosperity and cultural and moral influence upon the nation in 1843. View of Boston Harbor is a pageant of Boston history from colony to commonwealth. It would appear that Salmon painted his sweeping vista of the Charles River estuary from a vantage point on Breed~dq~s Hill in Charlestown. Looking southwards towards Boston across the Charles River to Boston crowned with the dome of Charles Bullfinch~dq~s State House, and on towards the sunlit hills of Dorchester Heights in the left background, the artist has conveyed a great feeling of space and depth, yet simultaneously imparted a sense of history and pageantry-all contained within a 9 x 11 inch panel. In this early view of Boston, ships in the middle ground comprising every type and rig still have space to maneuver on the Charles River. This topography would change in the coming generations as portions of the river would be filled, greatly reducing the waterway to create Back Bay. This provided living space for a burgeoning population that was progressively less dependent upon the sea for their livelihood. However, in the foreground one can see that Boston was still America~dq~s major shipbuilding center. Donald McKay, the most famous designer and builder of the clipper ship era, was already building ships in a yard close to where Salmon painted. The buildings and piers of the Charlestown Navy Yard can be seen in the extreme left of the painting. Salmon made it a point to state in paint that his adopted city was the heart of New England~dq~s shipping activity. However, there is more to a city than just commerce. Salmon implies this by making View of Boston Harbor the visual feast that it is. The topography and architecture are historical documents and totems of civic achievement and pride. The State House, The Navy Yard, Long Wharf, Lewis Wharf, Commercial Wharf, Dorchester Heights, to name a few of the landmarks noted in the painting, had historical and social significance to a Bostonian of Salmon~dq~s day. In the 1830s and ~dq~40s Boston became the center of religious and social reform movements, such as utopianism and transcendentalism. Of the transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau were quick to perceive and decry the evils of industrialization, while Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emerson had some association with Brook Farm, an outgrowth of Utopian ideals. Horace Mann set about establishing an enduring system of public education in the 1830s. During this period Boston gave to the nation the architect Charles Bullfinch, and had a seminal influence on such writers and poets as Richard Henry Dana, Emily Dickinson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier, historians George Bancroft, John Lothrop Motley, Francis Parkman, and William Hickling Prescott, and the scientist Louis Agassiz. Such was the atmosphere in which Salmon created his transcendent painting, View of Boston Harbor.