Art - Overview
The National Museum of American History is not an art museum. But works of art fill its collections and testify to the vital place of art in everyday American life. The ceramics collections hold hundreds of examples of American and European art glass and pottery. Fashion sketches, illustrations, and prints are part of the costume collections. Donations from ethnic and cultural communities include many homemade religious ornaments, paintings, and figures. The Harry T Peters "America on Stone" collection alone comprises some 1,700 color prints of scenes from the 1800s. The National Quilt Collection is art on fabric. And the tools of artists and artisans are part of the Museum's collections, too, in the form of printing plates, woodblock tools, photographic equipment, and potters' stamps, kilns, and wheels.
"Art - Overview" showing 26 items.
Page 1 of 3
The Rocky Mountains, etched proof
- Description
- Albert Bierstadt's (1830–1902) large painting, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, completed in 1863, presented the drama of the American West to audiences in the Eastern United States. The Rocky Mountains was Bierstadt's first big success, and he quickly developed a marketing strategy to promote his work. He contracted with engraver James Smillie (1807–1885) to produce a large black-and-white reproductive print. Then he sent the painting on tour, to be exhibited in art galleries in several eastern cities, accompanied by a subscription book and promotional flyers describing the engraving. It was available in four versions, from a limited number of artists' proofs priced at $50 each to an unlimited edition of plain proofs at $10 each.
- Public exhibitions in commercial galleries, together with the growth of the print trade, expanded opportunities for people to see paintings and purchase reproductions. Publishing prints enhanced an artist's reputation and added significantly to his income, but engraving on steel was a slow and painstaking process. It took Smillie more than three years to complete his work, in part because the painting was unavailable for him to copy. First Smillie drew the details of the image with a needle on a large steel plate, measuring 43 by 70.5 centimeters. This background image was etched in acid, and the Museum's copy is an early stage proof made "off the acid" to check Smillie's progress with the design. Several areas of the print remain to be completed. They were finished by hand with the engraver's cutting tool called the burin.
- In 1888 Smillie's son George donated this proof, which had been signed and dated by his father in 1865. Bierstadt also donated a signed impression of the final state of the print. Both states were exhibited together to demonstrate the process of engraving.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1865
- engraver
- Smillie, James
- original artist
- Bierstadt, Albert
- ID Number
- GA*00730
- catalog number
- 00730
- accession number
- 20355
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
The Rocky Mountains, final proof
- Description
- Albert Bierstadt's (1830–1902) large painting, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, completed in 1863, presented the drama of the American West to audiences in the Eastern United States. Although it was more than a decade after the Gold Rush drew settlers to California, most people still had not seen many images of the West. Bierstadt specialized in these landscapes, and he produced impressive paintings of Yosemite and other Western scenes.
- The Rocky Mountains was Bierstadt's first big success, and he quickly developed a marketing strategy to promote his work. He contracted with engraver James Smillie (1807–1885) to produce a large black-and-white reproductive print. Then he sent the painting on tour, to be exhibited in art galleries in several eastern cities, accompanied by a subscription book and promotional flyers describing the engraving. It was available in four versions, from a limited number of artists' proofs priced at $50 each to an unlimited edition of plain proofs at $10 each. The painting was shown in 1864 at Civil War Sanitary Commission fairs in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, before being sold to an English businessman. Since 1907 it has been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Public exhibitions in commercial galleries, together with the growth of the print trade, expanded opportunities for people to see paintings and purchase reproductions. Throughout his career, Bierstadt issued prints after his paintings, using many different graphic processes. Publishing prints enhanced an artist's reputation and added significantly to his income, but engraving on steel was a slow and painstaking process. It took Smillie more than three years to complete his work.
- In 1888 the Museum received this final state of the print directly from Bierstadt, and Smillie's son George donated an early etched proof. Both states were exhibited together to demonstrate the process of engraving.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1866
- copyright holder
- Bierstadt, Edward
- engraver
- Smillie, James
- publisher
- Bierstadt, Edward
- original artist
- Bierstadt, Albert
- originator
- Bierstadt, Albert
- ID Number
- GA*00731
- accession number
- 20356
- catalog number
- 00731
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
"Chacma" Barque
- Description
- Chacma was built in 1868 by W. Pile and Company in Sunderland, England. She measured 174 feet in length, 29 feet 2 inches in beam, 17 feet 9 inches in depth of hold, and 569 tons. Owned by John Hay, she traded between Sunderland and India under Captain Thorpe until 1890, when she was sold to Norwegians. The painting features Dover harbor and Dover Castle in the distance. The ship is flying a swallow tail flag. R.B Spencer was a British painter active between 1840 and 1874.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1868
- maker
- Spencer, R. B.
- ID Number
- 2005.0279.052
- accession number
- 2005.0279
- catalog number
- 2005.0279.052
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
- Description
- William Pate & Co. of New York published this portrait of Lincoln in 1869. The engraver, Henry Gugler, is best known for his bank-note work. Although the copyright notice below the print indicates the source as an original painting by J. H. Littlefield, who was once a clerk in Lincoln's law office, the image was based on a photograph made in the Mathew Brady studio in 1864. Perhaps Littlefield made a painting after the photograph that Gugler then engraved. The Brady studio photograph of Lincoln also served as the model for the engraving that appeared on the five-dollar bill and for other portrait prints.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1869
- engraver
- Gugler, Henry
- original artist
- Littlefield, J. H.
- artist attribution
- Brady, Mathew B.
- publisher
- William Pate & Co.
- ID Number
- GA*03352
- catalog number
- 03352
- accession number
- 23155
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Landscape in Normandy
- Description
- This signed and titled print, Prés Houlgate (Calvados) by Maxime Lalanne, was published in a portfolio of etchings titled Divertissements sur cuivre, 12 croquis (Entertainments on Copper, Twelve Sketches) in 1869. Houlgate is in Normandy in northwestern France. While Lalanne etched many views of the countryside, it was his city views that made his reputation.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1869
- graphic artist
- Lalanne, Maxime
- publisher
- Cadart et Luce
- ID Number
- GA*14595
- catalog number
- 14595
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Alexandre Tardieu
- Description
- Louis-Pierre Henriquel-Dupont’s etching reproduces an 1825 drawing by J. A. D. Ingres (1780–1867) of Pierre-Alexandre Tardieu (1756–1844). The print appeared in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1860. Tardieu came from a dynasty of distinguished graphic artists, which dated back to the beginning of the 18th century. He was especially known for his engraved portraits. Henriquel-Dupont, like the subject of his print, also was famous for his engravings and was considered by some the most celebrated engraver of 19th-century France.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1860
- original artist
- Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique
- graphic artist
- Henriquel-Dupont, Louis-Pierre
- printer
- Drouart
- publisher
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts
- ID Number
- GA*14902
- catalog number
- 14902
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of War, Volume 1
- Description
- Volume I and Volume II of Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War was published in 1866. Each album contains fifty photographs of different scenes of the Civil War and is accompanied by text written by Gardner. These are rare books, each produced by hand. Just a few sets were sold as they were very costly to produce and, after the Civil War, many Americans were looking forward, trying to move on from the death and destruction of the war.
- Alexander Gardner was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1821. Before coming to America in 1856, he was trained as a jeweler and a chemist, but was more interested in the fairly new invention of photography. After immigrating to New York, he worked for Mathew Brady in his photographic studios in New York and Washington, D.C. After disagreeing with Brady over the photographer's rights to receive credit for their pictures, he left that studio in and started his own business in 1862 in Washington, DC, where his most famous subject was Abraham Lincoln. Gardner not only took the last posed photograph of Lincoln in February of 1865, but also photographs of his funeral and the hanging of the conspirators in his assassination. Besides Lincoln, Gardener also took pictures of Supreme Court Justices, visiting delegates, and other government figures.
- During the Civil War, Gardner became a photographer for the Army of the Potomac. He took pictures of not only non-battle scenes, such as military camps, but also the immediate aftermath of battles. He later combined his photographs of the war with those of his staff photographers, and wrote the two-volume book, Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War, for which he became most famous. Gardner died in 1882 in Washington, D.C.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1866
- maker
- Gardner, Alexander
- ID Number
- 1986.0711.0334
- accession number
- 1986.0711
- catalog number
- 1986.0711.0334
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
- Description
- Late in 1862, the Union League of Philadelphia commissioned Edward Dalton Marchant to paint Lincoln's portrait for exhibition in Independence Hall as a gesture of support for the president and the Union. Marchant engaged Philadelphia artist John Sartain to engrave the portrait, and mezzotint prints were published by Bradley and Company in 1864 to meet popular demand for the image. The original painting is part of the Union League’s collection, and the Museum owns two copies of the mezzotint print, one an early proof and this one from the standard edition.
- The half-length portrait depicts Lincoln seated at a table, holding a quill. A document beneath his arm reads: “Abraham Lincoln, Jan’y 1st, 1863, Will. H. Seward.” It references the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on that date. Part of a large statue is shown at the upper right, a classical figure of Liberty with a broken chain at her feet, another reference to the emancipation of the slaves.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1864
- depicted
- Lincoln, Abraham
- original artist
- Marchant, Edward Dalton
- graphic artist
- Sartain, John
- ID Number
- 1986.1013.01
- catalog number
- 1986.1013.01
- accession number
- 1986.1013
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Prescription Label, am Markt
- Description (Brief)
- The Bristol-Myers Squibb Collection has over two hundred early prescription labels from dozens of apothecaries across Germany and Austria. Early labels were plain and without adornment. Later embellishments included decorative borders, images of animals such as stags, lions, or elephants associated with the name of the apothecary.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1868
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.1130
- catalog number
- 1991.0664.1130
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Prescription Label, C.A. Wrede Apotheker in Bonn
- Description (Brief)
- The Bristol-Myers Squibb Collection has over two hundred early prescription labels from dozens of apothecaries across Germany and Austria.
- Early labels were plain and without adornment. Later embellishments included decorative borders, images of animals such as stags, lions, or elephants associated with the name of the apothecary.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1860
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.1295
- catalog number
- 1991.0664.1295
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center