Born in New York City, eight years after Robert Fulton sent the first steamboat up the Hudson River, James Bard saw and reflected in his marine paintings the industrial development of shipping in America.

He and his twin brother John Bard together painted more than 350 marine portraits, steamships and sailboats in the New York Harbor and on the Hudson River. Likely James did the outline sketches, and John filled in the color and backgrounds.

However, James quit working with John after 1849, and John died seven years later, but James kept painting, doing nearly 4000 works during his lifetime and leaving a record of nearly every steamship on the Hudson River during the second half of the 19th century. He worked ...