The Majesty of Nature: Waterfalls at The Metropolitan Museum

Waterfalls are a natural phenomenon that have been captured in art for centuries. They are often depicted as a powerful and awe-inspiring force of nature, and can be found in many different cultures and religions. The Metropolitan Museum has a wide variety of artworks depicting waterfalls, from ancient to modern times. These artworks provide a glimpse into how different cultures have viewed waterfalls throughout history.

The Falls of Niagara

    The painting is of Niagara Falls from the Canadian side.
    The painting is based on a vignette of the falls from a map of North America published by Henry S. Tanner in 1822.

The Cascade

    In 1756, having won the Prix de Rome, Fragonard departed for four years at the French academy in that city, a traditional rite of artistic passage.
    Practically nothing is known of his journey from Paris, but on the return trip he traveled by way of Florence to Venice, west to Marseilles, and north through Lyons.
    He visited the principal cities of Italy again in 1774, as well as Vienna and Frankfurt.
   This painting is most likely an imagined conglomeration of the kinds of gardens, architecture, and sculpture he encountered

Waterfall at Terni

    Painters visited Rome and the surrounding countryside to record the natural beauty of the scenery and its antique monuments.
    The Cascata delle Marmore combines both, having been engineered in the third century B. C. to divert the river Velino into the Nera, a tributary of the Tiber.
    Corot visited the waterfall in summer 1826, attaining a mastery of plein-air technique that is characterized by the candor, naturalism, and seemingly intuitive structure of this sketch.

Waterfall at Mont-Dore

    This painting depicts a waterfall in the Auvergne, although it was painted in Italy.
    It embodies the vigorous naturalist aesthetic that distinguishes Michallon's achievement from much of the tepid Neoclassicism of the early nineteenth century.

Ponte San Rocco and Waterfalls, Tivoli

    This painting perfectly illustrates Granet's achievement as a master of small Roman views.
    The arch of the Ponte San Rocco provides the frame for a carefully structured glimpse of the Aniene River as it hurtles through the hilltop village of Tivoli, a half day's ride east of Rome.
    This is a finished painting intended for a private collector.
   It was created in Granet's studio from an oil sketch (Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence) that was executed outdoors at the site

A Mountainous Landscape with a Waterfall

    Unlike Jan Brueghel the Elder, who was a leading figure in the development of realistic landscape painting, Kerstiaen de Keuninck continued the Flemish tradition of imaginary mountain scenery that descended from Patinir.
    This large panoramic landscape view, dominated by fantastic mountains and rock formations, is an early work of the artist and was probably painted in Antwerp.
    It employs contrasting pictorial effects - such as heavy passages of opaque paint set off against areas sketched in a very thin medium - and bold motifs like the water spray formed by flicking the brush to suggest the sublime effects of Nature.