2007.02.10
Would Benjamin Henry Latrobe have...
...exhibited the work of another architect?
Benjamin H. Latrobe, the architect and engineer, had some taste for landscape drawing. He exhibited, in 1812, a "View of the River Schuylkill" and a "View of the Seat of Miers Fisher."
--excerpt from John Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 (1884), p. 1052.
7. According to the catalogues of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the 1811 exhibition included, by Latrobe, a landscape on the Schuylkill River, an view of the Richmond penitentiary [a work by Latrobe], and five large drawings of the Capitol at Washington [a work by Latrobe]--two plans, two elevations, and a perspective. In 1812 he exhibited a view of the seat of Myers Fisberg [sic], Esq., and another Schuylkill River landscape, and in 1818 a perspective of the Baltimore Cathedral [a work by Latrobe]. His wife also painter; Mary Latrobe is credited with two views from nature in the 1812 exhibition. I owe this information to the kindness of Miss Anna W. Rutledge.
--Talbot Hamlin, Benjamin Henry Latrobe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 318n.
So what does/did Latrobe's "View of the Seat of Miers Fisher" look like? Unfortunately, I don't know yet.
Here's what Charles Willson Peale sketched 17 August 1824:
Here's what Ury House looked like in the early 20th century:
If anything, there is a distinct similarity between the entry porch of Latrobe's Water Works (1800) and the entry porch of Ury House.
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