USPRR Exp. & Surveys 38 & 39th Parallels
John M. Stanley from a sketch by Richard H. Kern Lith by A. Hoen & Co. Balto.
Rock Hills Between Green and White Rivers
About this print:
Somewhere near the Colorado and Utah border
"Richard H. Kern (1821−1853) was the older brother of the artist Edward Meyer Kern. Richard was an illustrator and scientist who, like Edward, accompanied the surveyor John C. Frémont on an expedition through the Rocky Mountains. He later worked for the U.S. Army, drawing topographical views of Indian territories. He was killed in an ambush in 1853, the year after his brother painted his portrait."
"In 1853, the U.S. congress sent several teams of surveyors from the Corps of Topographical Engineers to survey potential rail routes from the Mississippi to the Pacific. They were accompanied by naturalists and artists who were to capture the images of the "wild west". It was a dangerous expedition with Captain John W. Gunnison, artist R.H Kern, and seven others from Gunnison's survey team being killed in October of 1853, by the Ute Indians in Utah. These lithographs were part of the official government report which would ultimately determine the rail route and forever change the United States."
This is one of the sketches from the above expedition in which he was killed.
A. Hoen & Co. was a Baltimore, Maryland-based lithography firm founded by Edward Weber in the 1840s as E. Weber & Company. When August Hoen took it over following Weber's death, he changed the name and built the company into one of the most prominent in the industry at the time. In 1877, Hoen entered a print produced by his patented lithocaustic process in the Centennial Exposition. This work, entitled "The Continentals" was "commended for excellence in chromo-lithographic art" by the judges.