American Scenery; or, Land, Lake and River Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature (with Hand Colored plates) by Willis, Nathaniel Parker; W.H. Bartlett; George Virtue - 1840

London: Virtue, 1840. Quarto. Volume I: Portrait frontispiece, hand-colored vignette title page and regular title page, ix, 140 pages, [66] leaves of plates, one map. Volume II: hand-colored vignette title page and regular title page, iv. 106 pages [52] leaves of plates. The map plate in volume I was done by W. Hughes. All 119 plates are present. In 1836 William Henry Bartlett was sent to America to begin making engravings of the major sites in the United States. Virtue had also commissioned Nathaniel Willis to make letterpress descriptions of each image. Thomas Dougherty drew two of the originals while the rest were done with remarkable precision by Bartlett. While Willis is first on the title page, it is Bartlett's fine work that has made this the finest 19th century work on America from the artists' perspective. the plates view the Eastern U.S. before the full force of the Industrial Revolution changed the face of the eastern landscape forever. Bound in a very fine rich red 3/4 red morocco, spines with bands and decorative panels with a matching slipcase.[ Abbey, Travel in aquatint and lithography, 651; Blanck, BAL 22755; Sabin 3784].