Spring--Burning Fallen Trees, in a Girdled Clearing, Western Scene

ca. 1840

George Harvey’s watercolor activities—like those of William Guy Wall, whose work is displayed nearby—were linked to a printmaking enterprise. Harvey created this work for an ambitious though unrealized series titled Atmospheric Landscapes of North America. One of four inaugural images for this project set in different seasons, Spring depicts pioneers in Ohio clearing “girdled” woods for settlement. Girdling is a lumbering technique in which a belt-like notch carved into the trunk cuts off the flow of sap and eventually kills the tree.