The magazine contained high quality engravings of works by Thomas Moran and other Hudson River School painters.

It also featured many reproductions of works by popular European academic artists such as Gustave Dore and William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

According to art historian Janice Simon, the "extensive accounts of what the editors deemed the nation's most picturesque and sublime regions ... branded The Aldine as a formidable competitor to Appleton's Journal and its publication of 1872, Picturesque America.

"[2] Harry Fenn, prominent contributor to the many Picturesque publications, also did some work for Aldine.

The word "aldine" is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as, first, an adjective, "Designating editions of Greek and Latin classics (including many first printed editions, or principes) issued at Venice by Aldus Manutius (Teobaldo Manucci, 1450–1515), and his family (c. 1490–1597).