On the Road to Carmel: Hand-Colored

Buildings, Children, Color photograph, Foliage, Landscape, Figure, Roadways

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 21.4 x 16.7 cm glued to backing board
Support Dimensions: 31.9 x 22.4 cm cardboard with heavy adhesive remnants from removed overlay matt.

Although having no title or author attribution, this photograph was purchased online in early 2015 after being identified by this archive as On the Road to Carmel by amateur photographer O.S. Parsons. An artist or gifted hobbyist had carefully trimmed the plate from the May, 1893 issue of the periodical Sun & Shade; glued it to a backing board and skillfully hand-colored the image, originally printed as a plate gravure using green ink for the publication.

The following comments appeared in the index of the issue describing the photograph:  



This is a characteristic bit of the country roads that one finds skirting the east shore of the Hudson River from the Harlem quite up to Albany.
As they approach nearer the towns and cities, the roadways are in splendid condition, and finely laid walls, with ornamental entrances, take the place of the rough stones and wooden fences shown in our picture. The roads that lie nearer the river give an almost continual view of the beautiful Hudson, affording some of the finest drives in the country.
Carmel lies about ten miles back from the river, in the most picturesque part of the Croton Water Shed, and is the seat of the well known Drew Ladies’ Seminary, an institution of learning that ranks with Vassar and Wellesley.  (1.)




1. Plate LXVI: On the Road to Carmel. : from: Sun And Shade: New York: May, 1893: Vol. V.  No. 9.  (Whole No. 57)