Traveling across North America, 1812-1813

by Pavel Petrovich Svinʹin

This book is a facsimile of a sketchbook filled with drawings and watercolors made by the Russian diplomat Pavel Petrovich Svinin (1787-1839) during a stay in America in 1811-13, the years he served in the Russian consulate in Philadelphia. These charming watercolor landscapes, many of them identifiable even though much of America has changed over the last two centuries, are accompanied by the Russian artist's own accounts of the exotic, fairy-tale land he found the United States to be. Among the sites he recorded so deftly are Niagara Falls; George Washington's home, Mount Vernon; views of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Richmond; and many other subjects, such as steamboats, Indians, sea, river, and townscapes, plantations, and mountainous terrain. Traveling across North America illustrates in color the 68 original scenes, which are now in the collection of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Complementing the illustrations is an intriguing introduction by Evgenia Nikolaevna