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Artworks
Nicholas Hornyansky Hungarian-Canadian, 1896-1965
Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls, c 1953aquatint on paper
protected by museum glass4 x 5.5 insigned bottom rightCurrency:Further images
This artwork is an original aquatint and etching by Nicholas Hornyansky, titled “Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls.” The image depicts the Rainbow Bridge, which spans the Niagara River gorge connecting Niagara...This artwork is an original aquatint and etching by Nicholas Hornyansky, titled “Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls.”
The image depicts the Rainbow Bridge, which spans the Niagara River gorge connecting Niagara Falls, Ontario to Niagara Falls, New York. Hornyansky’s composition captures the bridge’s elegant steel arch framed by architectural stonework and ornamental streetlamps typical of the 1930s–1940s era. The perspective is from the Canadian side, looking across toward the American skyline, which includes recognizable mid-century structures such as the United Office Building (now the Giacomo Hotel).
Hornyansky’s aquatint technique gives the work its characteristic soft tonal gradations and jewel-like colour, blending greens, aquas, and ochres to evoke both the power of the river below and the atmospheric haze of Niagara Falls. The fine etched lines of the bridge’s structure and the luminous quality of the water below demonstrate his technical precision and mastery of the medium.
Signed in the lower right and titled in pencil along the lower margin, the piece exemplifies Hornyansky’s celebrated series of Canadian urban and architectural etchings, produced mainly between the 1930s and 1950s. Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls is among his best-known subjects, balancing industrial grandeur with natural beauty — a recurring theme in his body of work.
Provenance
- private collection, Niagara
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