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 92 items.
Page 1 of 10
A New Departure. [Print advertising.] Chicago Herald. 1886
- Summary
- Illustration: Native Americans with Uncle Sam
- Date
- 1886
- January 10, 1887
- advertiser
- Procter & Gamble Company
- Local number
- Ivorydata4 79
- 0207910069 (Scan No.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
A New Departure. [Print advertising, general circulation publications.] 1892
- Summary
- Illustration: Native Americans with Uncle Sam and crates of Ivory
- Date
- 1892
- 1893
- advertiser
- Procter & Gamble Company
- Local number
- Ivorydata4 178
- 0207910168 (Scan No.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
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
A Chief of Roanoke
- Description
- Theodor de Bry (1528–1598) was an engraver, bookseller, and publisher active in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1590 de Bry published Thomas Hariot's account of the English attempt to colonize the New World, the ill-fated Roanoke Colony. De Bry engraved several plates for this work based on watercolors made by John Smith, another member of the 1585 expedition. He went on to publish an ambitious and complicated series of illustrated volumes describing exploration in North and South America, based on a number of European sources. This work, known as the Great Voyages series or de Bry's America, was issued in several editions that continued to be produced by de Bry's widow and his heirs after his death.
- The engraved plates in the series represent indigenous people, plants, and animals. They offered Europeans one of the earliest and most accurate visual representations of the inhabitants and environment of the New World. The illustrations circulated widely and were frequently copied and reproduced. For his later editions, For his later editions, De Bry revised his own engravings of John Smith's Virginia subjects that he had published in the 1590 Hariot account, and he used the work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, a French artist, for the Florida subjects.
- A Chief of Roanoke illustrates part one of the Virginia series. It is plate 6 from the second German edition published in 1600.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1600
- maker
- de Bry, Theodore
- original artist
- White, John
- ID Number
- GA*24475
- catalog number
- 24475
- accession number
- 1977.0425
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
[Landscape.] 10203 Interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.34 [211]
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 23846
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Indian pictographs, undeciphered writing of antiquity, near Adamana, Arizona. 6164 Interpositive
- Notes
- Currently stored in box 3.2.13 [209]
- Date
- 1900-1910
- publisher
- Underwood & Underwood
- Local number
- RSN 21016
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
A New Departure. [Print advertising.] 1883
- Summary
- Lithograph: Uncle Sam handing a huge bar of Ivory soap to Native Americans (caricature). A humorous poem is below the image
- Date
- 1883
- donor
- Procter & Gamble Company
- Local number
- Ivorydata4 35
- 0207910025 (Scan No.)
- Data Source
- Archives Center - NMAH
Hernan Cortes
- Description
- This engraving shows Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), the Spanish captain who headed the conquest of the Aztec Empire. He became a part of popular mythology the moment he arrived in Mexico in 1521. Cortés had spent time in Cuba killing and enslaving its indigenous inhabitants and administering the new social order of the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean. As his well-read memoirs attest, even his experiences in Cuba did not prepare him for the history-altering intrigues, battles, and cultural encounters between the Spanish and the Mexicans, Mayas, and their many neighbors in between. Motivated by an ancient notion of fame, Hernán Cortés wrote his own version of the conquest of Mexico that put him squarely at the center, favored by the Christian God. But neither his victories nor his pillage of the Mexican capital would have been possible without the aid of soldiers, slaves, and supplies from the enemies of the Aztecs. As a testament to Cortés's enduring fame, his portrait by the Spanish painter Antonio Carnicero was published as an engraving by Manuel Salvador y Carmona in 1791 in the book, Retratos de los españoles ilustres, con un epítome de sus vidas, (Portraits of Illustrious Spaniards, with a Synopsis of Their Lives.)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1795
- depicted
- Cortes, Hernan
- original artist
- Carnicero, D. A.
- graphic artist
- Carmona, D. J. A.
- ID Number
- GA*20683
- catalog number
- 20683
- accession number
- 226630
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Night of the Dead
- Description
- Though anchored in local Roman Catholic traditions, many of the religious beliefs and symbols of Mexican Americans have roots in indigenous notions about the soul and our universe. Between October 31st and November 2nd, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is celebrated with family, decorating home altars and visiting the graves of loved ones. A holiday with much regional and individual variation, it is traditionally an occasion to commemorate parents and grandparents with altars of marigolds, candles, alcohol, skeleton-shaped sweets, and other foods and personal objects favored by the dearly departed. Day of the Dead celebrations were reinvented across many Mexican American communities beginning in the 1970s, as the Chicano movement promoted and readapted Mexican cultural practices. Many artists since then have seized on the visual power of the altar as a conduit for personal and public memory. In the United States, Day of the Dead altars can be found interrogating life and critiquing politics in public places. Contemporary Day of the Dead celebrations have memorialized those who have died from AIDS, gang violence, the civil wars in Central America, and crossing the border. This lithograph, titled Night of the Dead, was originally drawn in ink by Alan Crane in 1958. Alan Horton Crane (1901–1969) was a Brooklyn-born illustrator best known for his landscapes and genre scenes of life in Mexico and New England. This image is part of a series of prints by Alan Crane housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1958
- maker
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23836
- catalog number
- 23836
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
