Washington: engraved landscape with trees, cart and river valley

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Set beyond the city's streets, this engraving turns toward the countryside, where a cart travels a track under a cluster of trees and the land drops into a river valley. Rural scenes like this were common in prints of Washington during the late 1700s and 1800s, when the capital was still a young city with open ground and farmland close to its government buildings. The Potomac River shaped the city's site and early trade, and engravers often used river country like this to suggest the region's working landscape. Notice how the trees frame the middle distance and how the small cart gives the scene its sense of scale.

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