Samuel Colman:
A Catalogue of the Artist’s Etchings

Samuel Colman was 19th century painter, draftsman, designer, watercolorist, and printmaker. He is best known as a member of the Hudson River School and a painter of grand landscapes. His best known work is likely Storm King on the Hudson from 1866, but he was a prolific and varied artists who worked in a variety of styles and media.

Colman was born in 1832, in Portland, Maine into a family of booksellers. His father was a publisher perhaps best known for publishing Hyperion, by a then-unknown Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His mother was an author and editor of children's stories.

Perhaps more importantly for his future, Colman's uncle was the properieter of Colman's Literary Rooms, a New York bookseller that doubled as an art gallery. In 1825 the store would become the first place to display and sell works by Thomas Cole, the progenitor of the Hudson River School and arguably the most influential American artist of the first half the 19th century.

Colman's artistic training is unknown, but by the early 1850's, his family had relocated to New York and he had begun exhibiting works at the National Academy of Design. There is some reason to believe Colman at least knew, and possibly studied under, Asher B. Durand. Colman's earliest works bearing a striking resemblance to Durand's.

In 1860 Colman took his first trip abroad, visiting... to be continued!