BELLOWS FALLS — Looking out over the current post-industrial landscape of The Island, in Bellows Falls, it is difficult to imagine this 30-acre hillock, bordered by the Connecticut River on three sides, was once considered among the most beautiful places in all of Vermont.
For millennia, according to a news release, The Island served as a sacred burial site and fishing ground to native peoples who left their carvings in its bedrock. When the Europeans arrived, The Island's virgin pines provided masts for the King's fleet. The first canal in America was built there. So was the first bridge to span the Connecticut River. A grand hotel once pampered tourists eager to experience the Great Falls and other local wonders of nature.
Fortunately for history, The Island also attracted skilled artists, some of whom left us depictions of what it looked like before photography was invented and industry took its toll.
Stitch In Time of West Townshend recently announced the release of “The Art Of The Island,” a series of five Giclée fine art prints that lovingly reproduce post-colonial era paintings and engravings of The Island in its glorious early days.
The prints include a striking watercolor depicting The First Bridge Spanning the Connecticut River, connecting New Hampshire to The Island, painted by John Trumbull in 1791.
Trumbull earned great fame for his portraits of American presidents and important historical events surrounding the American Revolution. Since he was a classically trained artist, we may reasonably assume his is an accurate depiction of the bridge's construction and the original cascades of the Great Falls thundering below, according to the news release.
Also included in the series are two primitive watercolors by an unknown artist circa 1802-1805, providing an extraordinary side-by-side Panorama of Bellows Falls Village and The Island. The viewpoint of the paintings comes from an upper terrace, looking east and depicting a farm on The Island, the original canal with its wooden gates, Fall Mountain, and early settlement of The Square.
Based on one of the panels, this same unknown artist also left a third slightly simpler “View Of The Square,” with the names of the first streets, places of business, and property owners listed in large script. At some point in its life, the painting was carefully folded and taped, perhaps for mailing, which adds to its distinctive patina.
Last in the series is a haunting lithograph of some of the many ancient petroglyphs that once graced The Island. Based on a pencil sketch by A.C. Hamlin, this etching first appeared in Henry Schoolcraft's six-volume “Indian Tribes Of The United States,” commissioned by Congress and published in 1857. It is considered the closest depiction we have of the Great Falls petroglyphs in their original state.
All five images in “The Art Of The Island” series were sourced from high-resolution scans of the actual paintings (the exception being Hamlin's petroglyph engraving, which was scanned from an original copy of Schoolcraft's book) residing at Fordham Library, Northern Illinois University's Lincoln Library, and the University of Vermont.
Each image is printed with pigment-based archival inks on 13-by-19-inch ultrapremium presentation matte finish paper to ensure vivid detail and a lifetime of enjoyment.