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The following clipping from yesterday's Pittsburg Dispatch will be of interest to the citizens of Beaver Falls:
An oil painting of Beaver Falls in 1854, which is now on exhibition at the Gillespie art gallery, attracts considerable interest, on account of the fact that it was painted by Emil Bott for a party of men who intended to purchase a large tract of land which was known as the Patterson property, and there build a city to rival Pittsburg.
The painting is a landscape showing the falls, an old mill and the surrounding country covered with trees. The artist was secured to paint the picture as the land then appeared and it was the intention of the founders of the proposed city to have a picture painted in later years showing the vast change they anticipated. The party, which consisted of Horace Greeley and General Hiram Walbridge, of New York, Marcus T.C. Gould and John Thompson, of Rhode Island; Stephen DeLay and Judge Robinson, of Boston, and a number of other Eastern as well as some Pittsburg capitalists met in the office of John L. Newbold, in the fall of 1853, and while a number agreed to invest $70,000 each, the others subscribed sufficient to make $800,000 to develop the rival of Pittsburg.
Mr. DeLay gave the order to Emil Bott, who was connected with Paul Webber and was a noted landscape artist. He painted the picture in the summer of 1854. Newbold and Walbridge paid their shares, but the time for the payment expired and when DeLay found that the others did not contribute he refused to accept the picture, and as the artist was in need of money, Mr. Newbold purchased it from him. The painting is now the property of James Hay, who allowed it to be placed on exhibition.
Attorney H.H. Patterson, of Fifth Avenue, Beaver Falls, who has his office in Pittsburg, when he learned of this valuable picture, went at once to Gillespie's store and made arrangements to purchase it. It was his grandfather who owned this tract of land and resided in the Mansion House, which stood on the site of the Union Drawn Steel Company's office at Seventh Avenue and Third Street. This picture takes in nearly the whole of the present town and was probably painted from a point on the hillside below the present residence of D.O.C. Patterson. The comparison with the present busy city is most interesting and Mr. Patterson feels that the picture should belong to Beaver Falls and especially to the Patterson family. A year or so ago, parties in Philadelphia wrote to Beaver Falls council and offered to sell it to the town and suggested that the Carnegie Library would be an appropriate place to hang it. Council turned down the proposition.
Editor's Note: This painting now hangs In the Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pa. For more examples of Emil Bott's and Paul Weber's work, please visit the Merrick Art Gallery, New Brighton.