1155 - John Caspar Wild, "Laurel Hill Cemetery", cemetery view of Philadelphia, publ. J. T. Bowen, 1840

John Caspar Wild, "Laurel Hill Cemetery", cemetery view of Philadelphia, publ. J. T. Bowen, 1840 (1804 Richterswil to 1846 Davenport), lithograph/paper, coloured, inscribed below the image "LAUREL HILL CEMETERY." and "Published by J. T. Bowen at his Lithographic & Print Colouring Establishmt. 94, Walnut St., Philadelphia.", dated 1840, view across a meadow with a wooden fence onto the cemetery, on the left a large deciduous tree, in the centre the gatehouse with columned front, arched passage and lateral colonnades, in front of it a winding path, on the right the chapel with pointed-arch window, behind them a row of tall conifers, condition commensurate with age, browned, somewhat stained, with a handwritten note in the inscription, image 12.5x17 cm (HxW), passe-partout, glazed, framed, overall 28x30.5 cm (HxW) John Caspar Wild (1804 Richterswil to 1846 Davenport) was a Swiss-American painter and lithographer who came to Philadelphia in 1832 after years in Paris and later, with city views of Cincinnati, St. Louis and Davenport, became one of the early pictorial chroniclers of the Mississippi Valley. His series "Views of Philadelphia, and its Vicinity" with twenty small views and four panoramas from the tower of the State House first appeared in 1838 from Wild & Chevalier and then in further editions, in 1840 from the lithographer and publisher John T. Bowen (died 1856), whose edition was issued hand-coloured. Laurel Hill Cemetery, opened with the first burial in 1836, is one of the early landscape cemeteries of the United States, created as rural cemeteries outside the city in a park-like layout. The gatehouse with triumphal arch motif and the crenellated chapel, an early example of Gothic Revival ecclesiastical architecture in America, were designed by the architect John Notman; the rows of conifers along the boundaries of the grounds served as a screen from the outside.