Venice, Pride of the Sea, 1877
Price range: £125.00 through £335.00
Gibson & Co. printed this Venice in Cincinnati in 1877, for American parlours a very long way from the lagoon. Domes, sails and towers shimmer on the water under a pink-flushed sky: the city as a dream, sold by the thousand to people who might never see the real thing.
It brings a little faded grandeur to a room, the kind that feels as though it has always been there. Hang it wherever you’d like to drift somewhere warmer.
Venice, Pride of the Sea, 1877
The print
Print Quality: Gallery-standard archival pigment giclée, made to order
Media: Authentic 310gsm Hahnemühle German Etching, mould-made in Germany
Texture & Tone: Warm white with a soft, velvety texture
Longevity: Museum-grade, generational permanence
German Etching suits this print especially well. Its warm tone and soft, mottled texture echo the paper of the original 1877 chromolithograph and hold the sunset pinks and lagoon greens richly, with the slightly handmade feel of a print from the period.
Sizes available:
50×40cm, 20×16″, fine art print, open edition
80×60cm, 31×24″, fine art print, open edition
100×80cm, 39×31″, fine art print, open edition
Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.
The story
In the decades after the Civil War, colour lithography turned American homes into galleries. Printers could reproduce a picture in colour in large numbers, cheaply enough for almost any parlour, and faraway places like Venice were among the favourites.
This one was printed in Cincinnati by Gibson & Co., a firm founded in 1850 by four brothers from a Scottish family of lithographers, then aged between 12 and 34. Over the following decades it moved into Christmas cards and Valentines, and in time became Gibson Greetings, one of America’s biggest greeting-card makers.
The artist is unknown.
