"View of the Hudson River View" Glass Ornament (Museum Masterworks).

About the Artist: Robert Walter Weir spent many mornings as a young man sketching at the American Academy of the Fine Arts in New York. The artist John Trumbull, who headed the academy, advised Weir to ​“give up painting and take to making shoes.” Weir ignored him, however, and after a few years studying in Italy became the drawing instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He remained there for forty-two years and spent all of his free time painting illustrations for books and magazines, landscapes of the surrounding countryside, and portraits of notable army officers. In 1836 he received a commission to create a historical painting for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda; called Embarkation of the Pilgrims, it is considered his best-known work. (Robert Weir: Artist and Teacher of West Point, 1976)