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The Iron Mine, Port Henry, New York
Homer Dodge Martin (born Albany, NY 1836-died St. Paul, MN 1897)
ca. 1862
- Medium
- oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 30 1/8 x 50 in. (76.5 x 127.0 cm.)
- Culture
- New York
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
The iron-ore bed in Craig Harbor near Port Henry, New York, was one of the richest veins in the northeast. Earlier artists had pictured America's mountain peaks and virgin forests, but by midcentury, the railroads, mines, and oil fields were the new and exciting scenes to paint. From a mineshaft that looks like a bleeding wound, tailings stream down the side of the cliff to the water, where ore was loaded onto barges. Nearby were the blast furnaces of the Bay State Iron Mine Company, which supplied the steel for America's railroads. Railways in turn carried more raw materials to the nation's burgeoning factories. Painted during the Civil War, Martin's canvas quietly asserted the primacy of the North, whose strength lay in its natural resources and manufacturing.Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
