Family & Social Life - Overview
Donations to the Museum have preserved irreplaceable evidence about generations of ordinary Americans. Objects from the Copp household of Stonington, Connecticut, include many items used by a single family from 1740 to 1850. Other donations have brought treasured family artifacts from jewelry to prom gowns. These gifts and many others are all part of the Museum's family and social life collections.
Children's books and Sunday school lessons, tea sets and family portraits also mark the connections between members of a family and between families and the larger society. Prints, advertisements, and artifacts offer nostalgic or idealized images of family life and society in times past. And the collections include a few modern conveniences that have had profound effects on American families and social life, such as televisions, video games, and personal computers.
"Family & Social Life - Overview" showing 1 items.
Officer and Laughing Girl after Vermeer
- Description
- Le Soldat et la Fillette Qui Rit is the only painting by Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) that Jules Jacquemart etched. His first attempt to etch a painting in 1861 was a failure, as apparently he had been unable to work directly from the subject. Not until five years later in 1866 did he make a second attempt at etching a painting, this print after Vermeer. It was considered to be one of the best reproductive etchings of the time. The Vermeer painting now hangs in the Frick Collection, New York. But when Jacquemart etched it for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, it was in the collection of Léopold Double, a French artillery officer, bibliophile, and art collector.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1866
- original artist
- Vermeer, Jan
- graphic artist
- Jacquemart, Jules
- printer
- Delâtre
- publisher
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts
- ID Number
- GA*14601
- catalog number
- 14601
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center