Market Square, Providence, Rhode Island, During the Great September Gale (1815): Art, History and Details

Market Square, Providence, Rhode Island, During the Great September Gale (1815) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This anonymous drawing combines a meticulous depiction of actual buildings with a wonderfully abstract rendering of waves and weather effects. The artist was led to stretch his artistic abilities because of a bizarre and memorable event: a hurricane that washed ships into the streets of downtown Providence in September of 1815.

Object facts

• Title: Market Square, Providence, Rhode Island, During the Great September Gale
• Date: 1815
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black crayon and pastel, with graphite and stylus; scraped and incised in places
• Dimensions: Sheet: 39.4 x 52.7 cm (15 1/2 x 20 3/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 19th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1930.733

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Clare Caldwell

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.