About

About the Ferris Collection of Prints

Ferris’s professional interest as a portrait painter helped to determine the nature of the collection. Portrait prints, such as 17th-century engravings by the Dutch artists Jakob Houbraken and Rembrandt van Rijn and the Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck are well represented. Prints by the popular 19th-century German etcher William Unger reproduce works after Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, and William Merritt Chase. Ferris also owned many reproductive engravings of Italian art. These include works after the Carracci family from the Farnese Gallery and the Barberini Museum, and some charming 18th-century aquatints after sketches by French artist Jean Honoré Fragonard of major Italian 17th-century paintings. Other than prints made during the etching revival, landscape subjects are few.

Ferris participated actively in the etching revival, a movement that began in France in the 1860s and spread to England and to the United States by the 1880s. There were earlier etching experiments in the United States, and a few artists knew about the technique and tried it. Ferris himself saw a demonstration in 1860, but did not devote himself to its practice until the 1870s, when he became an enthusiastic promoter of etching. He demonstrated the art on many occasions at the Philadelphia Sketch Club and was a founding member of the Philadelphia Society of Etchers in 1881.

French art was a strong cultural influence in the United States during the 19th century, and many Americans would have read about French art and artists in newspapers and magazines. The work of contemporary French etchers such as Léopold Flameng, Charles Jacque, Maxime Lalanne, and Paul Rajon was of great interest to artists like Ferris. Not surprisingly, a number of French prints turn up in the Ferris Collection. Some were prints by Jules Jacquemart and other etchers whose interpretations of paintings and decorative objects were highly regarded at the time. Others were original prints like those of Charles Jacque, who etched rural scenes. Ferris and other collectors at this point did not distinguish on the basis of original versus reproductive prints. Later, original etchings—the artist’s own composition transcribed directly onto the plate—came to occupy a higher cultural plane than etchings made after paintings or other artworks.

Both Ferris and his son are represented in the collection as are the members of their extended family. Stephen Ferris married Elizabeth Moran, sister of artists Edward, John, Peter, and Thomas Moran. Thomas, Peter, and Thomas’s wife, Mary Nimmo, also etched, and they often exchanged prints with the Ferris family. Many impressions are inscribed as special gifts.

Stephen Ferris also acquired and exchanged prints with fellow artists in Philadelphia such as John Sartain and received prints from local collectors. He greatly admired Mariano Fortuny (1838–1874), a Spanish artist little known today, whose prints he collected and some of whose paintings he reproduced. But he named his son after Jean Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), the French painter who was just beginning to be known in the United States in 1863 when Gerome Ferris was born. The two men corresponded but seem never to have met in person. Ferris received an impression of one of Gérôme’s four known etchings, La Negresse de Hedjah, with a dedication from the artist: “à Mr Stephen J Ferris/ son affectioné/ J L Gérôme.”

For many years Stephen Ferris taught at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. His teaching career, together with his broad interest in art, helps to explain the miscellaneous nature of the prints in his collection, many of which reproduce works of art in other media. Quite a few appear to have been removed from books. Some show sculpture; some are religious scenes; not all are identified. The figures may be reduced to just the outlines as in the reproductive prints of Charles Normand. These do not appear to have a direct relation to Ferris’s art, but they do form a kind of personal archive.

His son Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930), a history painter, wrote to the Smithsonian in 1927 that his father “knew more about good pictures, past and present, and the fundamental principles of their production than any artist I have ever met.”

Further Reading

  • Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints. New York: Thames & Hudson, Second Edition (Paperback), 2004.
  • Hults, Linda C. The Print in the Western World, An Introductory History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996
  • Tyler, Francine. American Etchings of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Dover Publications, 1984
Stephen James Ferris etched this self-portrait in October of 1880, probably as one of the prints exchanged by members of the Philadelphia Society of Etchers.
Description
Stephen James Ferris etched this self-portrait in October of 1880, probably as one of the prints exchanged by members of the Philadelphia Society of Etchers. Ferris was a founding member of the society, which formed earlier that year, three years after the establishment of the New York Etching Club, the first in the United States. Ferris had seen the etching process demonstrated in 1860 by John Sartain, an engraver. In 1875 Ferris produced one of his earliest etchings to be commercially published in the United States, a portrait of Mariano Fortuny (1838–1874).
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1880
graphic artist
Ferris, Stephen James
ID Number
GA.14388.02
accession number
94830
catalog number
14388
Stephen James Ferris etched this group portrait The Barbizon School: Seven French Artists as a frontispiece for the auction catalog of works from the J. C. Runkle collection, sold in New York in March 1883.
Description
Stephen James Ferris etched this group portrait The Barbizon School: Seven French Artists as a frontispiece for the auction catalog of works from the J. C. Runkle collection, sold in New York in March 1883. Artists of the Barbizon School, named after a rural village in France near which many of them worked outdoors, specialized in realistic landscapes and animal paintings. Samuel P. Avery had arranged the sale and the catalog, which was illustrated with fifteen etchings by four American etchers. This print marks the first time that an auction catalog contained an original etching, as opposed to the usual reproductive etchings. The New York Times gave a favorable review of Ferris’s print.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1883
publisher
Avery, Samuel Putnam
graphic artist
Ferris, Stephen James
ID Number
GA.14508
accession number
94830
catalog number
14508
Mary Nimmo Moran chose The Goose Pond, Easthampton as her diploma work when the recently formed Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in London elected her a Fellow in 1881, the only woman among the sixty-five original Fellows.
Description
Mary Nimmo Moran chose The Goose Pond, Easthampton as her diploma work when the recently formed Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in London elected her a Fellow in 1881, the only woman among the sixty-five original Fellows. When she exhibited four etchings in the Society’s show, the New York Herald commented on a review in a London paper, ‘“Mrs. Moran’s work is so masculine [sic] that the Daily News critic takes it for that of a man.”’ Her vigorous etching style has been frequently noted along with her preference for working outdoors directly on a prepared plate, before the subject.
The print shows a pond, now known as Town Pond, and Gardiner’s Mill, which still stands in the town of East Hampton, where the Morans spent many summers. Landscape and in particular the landscape around East Hampton was the subject of many of Mary Nimmo Moran’s etchings.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1881
graphic artist
Moran, Mary Nimmo
ID Number
GA.14566
catalog number
14566
accession number
94830
Samuel Putnam Avery (1818–1904), a New York-based art dealer and print collector, made annual buying excursions to Europe from 1867 to 1882 to look for decorative arts and paintings, some of which he commissioned directly from the artists.
Description
Samuel Putnam Avery (1818–1904), a New York-based art dealer and print collector, made annual buying excursions to Europe from 1867 to 1882 to look for decorative arts and paintings, some of which he commissioned directly from the artists. He also searched for prints to add to his own collection, seeking not just the original etchings valued today but also reproductive works by artists like Flameng, Jacquemart, and Rajon. French prints made up the core of his collection, almost 18,000 of which are now in the New York Public Library. Léopold Flameng etched this portrait of Avery in 1876 after a painting by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta. The Avery family gave the painting to the Metropolitan Museum in 1904. Madrazo (1841–1920) was a fashionable portrait and genre painter, resident in New York and Paris, who was promoted by Avery.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1876
original artist
Madrazo y Garreta, Raimundo de
graphic artist
Flameng, Léopold
ID Number
GA.14576
catalog number
14576
accession number
94830
Paul Rajon etched the portrait of Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) during one of his annual six-month visits to England. Rajon first visited England in 1873 to execute a commission.
Description
Paul Rajon etched the portrait of Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) during one of his annual six-month visits to England. Rajon first visited England in 1873 to execute a commission. He etched some original portraits, but most of his prints reproduced paintings by contemporary artists and old masters for publications. Alma-Tadema, a Dutch-born painter of neoclassical pictures, enjoyed a considerable success on the Continent and decided to move to London where his work was enthusiastically appreciated from the 1860s to 1890s. This print was intended not only for the European market but also for the United States, and it carries a U.S. copyright line. Rajon etched Alma-Tadema’s paintings as well as his portrait.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1883
graphic artist
Rajon, Paul-Adolphe
publisher
Knoedler & Co.
British and Foreign Artists' Association
ID Number
GA.14592
catalog number
14592
accession number
94830
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.
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
Maxime Lalanne’s etching Le Chambre de Victor Hugo shows Hugo’s bedroom in Hauteville House on the Isle of Guernsey. The distinguished French author of works such as Les Misérables left Paris for political exile after a coup brought to power Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III.
Description
Maxime Lalanne’s etching Le Chambre de Victor Hugo shows Hugo’s bedroom in Hauteville House on the Isle of Guernsey. The distinguished French author of works such as Les Misérables left Paris for political exile after a coup brought to power Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III. The print was originally published as one of a suite of twelve to accompany a book titled Chez Victor Hugo par un Passant (At Victor Hugo’s House by a Passer-by). Hugo’s son Charles based his book on the reporting of Edmond Bacot, who visited Hugo in 1862. Lalanne etched this scene after one of the photographs Bacot took.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1864
publisher
Cadart, A.
graphic artist
Lalanne, Maxime
photographer
Bacot, Edmond
ID Number
GA.14597
catalog number
14597
accession number
94830
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.
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
Jules Jacquemart reproduced these jewels in Bijoux Antiques (Musée Campana), working directly from the objects. He started by making detailed drawings or watercolors of the objects, but sometimes he etched them directly on the plate.
Description
Jules Jacquemart reproduced these jewels in Bijoux Antiques (Musée Campana), working directly from the objects. He started by making detailed drawings or watercolors of the objects, but sometimes he etched them directly on the plate. This print was considered a still life by Jacquemart’s contemporaries. One enthusiastic author even praised him as “the most marvellous etcher of still-life who ever existed in the world. In the power of imitating an object set before him he has distanced all past work and no living rival can approach him.” This etching originally appeared in 1863 in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, which first published one of his etchings in 1859. Of the almost 400 prints Jacquemart made, about two-thirds reproduce objects.
The Museo Campana housed the art collection of the Marchese Giovanni Pietro Campana in Rome. When the collection was disbursed in 1861, France acquired a large part of the jewelry, which comprised mainly Etruscan, Greek, and Roman pieces, as well as some 19th-century work. The jewels were exhibited in Paris from 1862 and helped start a fashion for archeological jewelry. They can be viewed today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1863
graphic artist
Jacquemart, Jules
printer
Delâtre
publisher
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
ID Number
GA.14602.01
catalog number
14602.01
accession number
94830
This impression of La Recureuse by Charles Jacque is neither signed nor dated. The print shows a farm girl washing a large tub, which has been propped up on a rustic stool or wooden chopping block.
Description
This impression of La Recureuse by Charles Jacque is neither signed nor dated. The print shows a farm girl washing a large tub, which has been propped up on a rustic stool or wooden chopping block. The young boy, standing and carrying a shield, originally was shown relieving himself. A later hand, possibly Stephen Ferris’s or Gerome Ferris’s, censored the artist’s composition by whiting out the original activity and inking in a shield. Printed on chine colle.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1845
graphic artist
Jacque, Charles Émile
ID Number
GA.14705
catalog number
14705
accession number
94830
Thomas Moran etched this rugged landscape, Bridge in the Pass of Glencoe, Scotland, in 1882 after his painting of the subject.
Description
Thomas Moran etched this rugged landscape, Bridge in the Pass of Glencoe, Scotland, in 1882 after his painting of the subject. He and his wife Mary Nimmo Moran, also an etcher, visited Scotland, her birthplace, in the spring of 1882 during a five-month stay (May–October) in the United Kingdom.
This print is the first state of two. The second state was published by Estes and Lauriat of Boston in 1888. Moran showed this print in the New York Etching Club Exhibition in mid-January 1883. For the Club’s catalog of the exhibition, Moran etched a smaller version of this scene.
The bridge, which is known as the Bridge of Three Waters, stands near the site in Glencoe where members of the MacDonald clan were massacred by soldiers from a Campbell regiment during a night in February 1692.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1882
graphic artist
Moran, Thomas
ID Number
GA.14737
catalog number
14737
accession number
94830
Thomas Moran etched this view of a mission church in New Mexico in 1881 after a photograph by friend and traveling companion William Henry Jackson (1843–1942). Moran had met Jackson in 1871 on Ferdinand V.
Description
Thomas Moran etched this view of a mission church in New Mexico in 1881 after a photograph by friend and traveling companion William Henry Jackson (1843–1942). Moran had met Jackson in 1871 on Ferdinand V. Hayden’s Yellowstone expedition, the first government-sponsored survey of that area. Jackson and Moran worked side by side recording views. While Moran’s paintings of the West made his reputation, fewer than one-fifth of his etchings depict Western or Mexican scenes. His signature “TYM” at lower left stands for Thomas “Yellowstone” Moran.
The church shown in this print was replaced by a stone building in the early 20th century, and the San Juan Pueblo recently changed its name to Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. It lies twenty-five miles north of Santa Fe.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1881
Associated Date
1881
graphic artist
Moran, Thomas
photographer
Jackson, William Henry
ID Number
GA.14750
catalog number
14750
accession number
94830
This print, On the Neshimaney, which shows cows on a still, warm afternoon standing by a creek, is typical of the views of rural Pennsylvania that were the specialty of Peter Moran. He took pains to make the landscape details appear natural.
Description
This print, On the Neshimaney, which shows cows on a still, warm afternoon standing by a creek, is typical of the views of rural Pennsylvania that were the specialty of Peter Moran. He took pains to make the landscape details appear natural. French artists who depicted the rural landscape, such as Constant Tryon (1810–1865) and Charles Jacque (1813–1894), were important to Moran’s artistic development.
Somewhat confusingly, Peter Moran exhibited three etchings with the title On the Neshaminey in his one-man show in 1887 and 1888 at Frederick Keppel’s New York gallery. This print is the largest and last of the Neshaminey series. Philadelphia book dealer Robert M. Lindsay commissioned the print from Moran and published it in an edition of 100 in late October 1886.
This print is signed in the image and in pencil at lower left below the image, “P Moran.” It also has a remarque (small design) of a cow’s head at left in the lower margin. Remarques are of special interest to collectors as they are used on prepublication prints and then removed from the plate before the edition is printed.
The Neshaminey Creek in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, runs north of Philadelphia through what are today mostly suburban areas, although some farmland does remain. The area shown in the print is probably near either New Britain or Edison. Peter Moran and his family spent some summers in the area.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1886
graphic artist
Moran, Peter
publisher
Lindsay, Robert
ID Number
GA.14769
catalog number
14769
accession number
94830
Abbé Jean-Claude-Richard de Saint-Non made this aquatint from a drawing by Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) of an altarpiece by Guercino in the church of San Gregorio in Bologna, Italy.
Description
Abbé Jean-Claude-Richard de Saint-Non made this aquatint from a drawing by Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) of an altarpiece by Guercino in the church of San Gregorio in Bologna, Italy. While visiting Rome, Saint-Non invited Fragonard, then at the French Academy in Rome, to accompany him on a tour of northern Italy to visit sites of historic and artistic interest. Fragonard made more than 300 sketches, some of which Saint-Non used as a basis for prints that were issued in Paris between 1770 and 1774.
Saint-Non, a wealthy amateur etcher assisted by Jean-Baptiste Delafosse, a professional printmaker, invented a successful aquatint process in 1765. In this process, the artist dusts rosin powder onto a copper plate, which is heated to adhere the rosin. The plate is then etched in acid to create a rough surface that captures the ink to provide tonal areas in the print.
The painting by Guercino (1591–1666) shows Saint William dressed in armor putting on a monk’s habit before Saint Benedict of Aniane. Saint William, formerly the Duke of Aquitaine, had fought bravely against Moorish invaders in Spain and France, but in 806 he retired from the world to become a monk in the monastery he had founded.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1772
original artist
Fragonard, Jean-Honoré
graphic artist
Saint-Non, Jean Claude Richard de
original artist
Guercino, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri
ID Number
GA.14830
catalog number
14830
accession number
94830
Camille Piton made this etching to illustrate a catalog for an auction of works from the collection of J. C. Runkle, which was held in New York on March 8, 1883. Samuel P. Avery, art dealer and himself a collector, organized the sale and the catalog.
Description
Camille Piton made this etching to illustrate a catalog for an auction of works from the collection of J. C. Runkle, which was held in New York on March 8, 1883. Samuel P. Avery, art dealer and himself a collector, organized the sale and the catalog. The New York Times judged Piton’s effort as “handsomely etched.” Ludwig Knaus (1829–1910), the original artist of First Love Letter, was a German painter of sentimental genre scenes which were very popular in his day. Originally titled in German, his painting was known by its English title because it had been purchased by an American.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1879
original artist
Knaus, Ludwig
graphic artist
Piton, Camille
ID Number
GA.14885
catalog number
14885
accession number
94830
Jean Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) painted this scene of Pifferari or street musicians serenading an unseen image of the Virgin Mary in 1870. Camille Piton etched it for an auction catalog of works from the collection of J. C. Runkle, which were sold on March 8, 1883.
Description
Jean Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) painted this scene of Pifferari or street musicians serenading an unseen image of the Virgin Mary in 1870. Camille Piton etched it for an auction catalog of works from the collection of J. C. Runkle, which were sold on March 8, 1883. The auction was organized by Samuel P. Avery, art dealer and print collector. Pifferari come from the mountains in Calabria, Italy, and from the Abruzzi to play bagpipes and reed instruments like the piffero, a kind of oboe, before images of the Virgin in Rome during the Christmas season. Jean Léon Gérôme was a favorite painter of Stephen Ferris, who named his son after him.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1879
1883
original artist
Gerôme, Jean-Léon
graphic artist
Piton, Camille
ID Number
GA.14886
catalog number
14886
accession number
94830
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.
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
Paul Rajon’s print of Le Serment de Vargas is made after a watercolor of the subject by Louis Gallait (1810–1887), not from the oil painting that is now in the Wallace Collection in London.
Description
Paul Rajon’s print of Le Serment de Vargas is made after a watercolor of the subject by Louis Gallait (1810–1887), not from the oil painting that is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Juan de Vargas is swearing an oath before the Duke of Alva, who was a governor of the Netherlands in the 16th century during the long struggle by the Dutch for independence from Spain, achieved at last in 1648. He pursued a bloody campaign against the Dutch Protestants. Louis Gallait was a Belgian painter of history, portraits, and genre.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
19th century
original artist
Gallait, Louis
graphic artist
Rajon, Paul-Adolphe
printer
Salmon, A.
publisher
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
ID Number
GA.14912
catalog number
14912
accession number
94830
In 1879 William Unger, a Vienna-based artist, etched this reproduction of William Merritt Chase’s 1876 portrait of friend and fellow painter Frank Duveneck, titled The Smoker.
Description
In 1879 William Unger, a Vienna-based artist, etched this reproduction of William Merritt Chase’s 1876 portrait of friend and fellow painter Frank Duveneck, titled The Smoker. Duveneck is wearing a Dutch-style hat and smoking a long Dutch clay pipe as he holds a portrait print after Frans Hals. Unger etched many prints after Hals and other old masters as well as after contemporary artists like Chase. His etchings were published widely in both Europe and the United States. Some appeared loose in portfolios so that they could be framed or set up on an easel for study.
Frank Duveneck (1848–1919), son of German immigrants, began his art studies in the United States. Dissatisfied with the experience, he went to Munich in 1870 to attend classes at the Bavarian Royal Academy, where he met William Merritt Chase in 1872. He and Chase became close friends and Chase made several portraits of Duveneck during their years in Munich.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1879
original artist
Chase, William Merritt
graphic artist
Unger, William
ID Number
GA.14974
catalog number
14974
accession number
94830
This etching by Léopold Flameng is known as either Un Rabbin or Un Vieux (An Old Man). The painting by Rembrandt hangs in the Musée Bonat, Bayonne, France.
Description
This etching by Léopold Flameng is known as either Un Rabbin or Un Vieux (An Old Man). The painting by Rembrandt hangs in the Musée Bonat, Bayonne, France. The print was etched for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, a publication started in Paris by Charles Blanc in 1859, which ceased only recently. Flameng had met Blanc in the studio of a well-known engraver, Luigi Calamatta, and became one of two graphic artists on the new publication. He etched no fewer than 100 plates for the Gazette and some forty plates for Blanc’s book on Rembrandt’s work, published in 1859. Flameng’s etchings after Rembrandt were highly regarded by collectors in this period.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
19th century
original artist
Rembrandt van Rijn
graphic artist
Flameng, Léopold
publisher
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
ID Number
GA.14958
catalog number
14958
accession number
94830
Christian Adolf Schreyer (1828–1899) painted this dramatic scene of galloping horses pulling a wagon through the Wallachian countryside (now part of Romania).
Description
Christian Adolf Schreyer (1828–1899) painted this dramatic scene of galloping horses pulling a wagon through the Wallachian countryside (now part of Romania). William Unger’s etching, made about 1880, was selected for exhibition at the Cincinnati Exposition in 1888 in an enormous display of past and present graphic art curated by Sylvester R. Koehler, the Smithsonian’s Graphic Arts Curator. Koehler was also a prolific author, editor, and advocate of contemporary etching. He published Unger’s etchings in Foreign Etchings (1887) and in his journal, The American Art Review.
Schreyer’s paintings of horses and peasant life remain popular today. The Chase, his painting showing Arab horsemen dashing through a field, sold for $464,000 in 2005.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1880
original artist
Schreyer, Adolf
graphic artist
Unger, William
publisher
Kaeser, P.
printer
Kargl, F.
ID Number
GA.14981
catalog number
14981
accession number
94830
Les Deux Frères by Louise Girard after a drawing by Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) of the children of Monsieur de la Villestreux is executed in the crayon manner, a process invented in France.
Description
Les Deux Frères by Louise Girard after a drawing by Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) of the children of Monsieur de la Villestreux is executed in the crayon manner, a process invented in France. Using special tools on a plate covered with an etching ground, the artist reproduces a drawing. When printed on the appropriate paper with the right kinds of inks, the reproduction closely resembles the original chalk drawing. The French firm Rittner & Goupil published this print on August 22, 1835. The original artist, Paul Delaroche, painted history subjects and portraits. In his day, he was a popular artist in the academic tradition, and engravings after his paintings sold very well in Britain and the United States.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1835
graphic artist
Girard, Louise
original artist
Delaroche, Paul
publisher
Rittner & Goupil
ID Number
GA.15249
catalog number
15249
accession number
94830
This lithograph, Passage de l’armé française à; l’hospice du Mont Saint-Bernard 15 Mai 1800 by Hippolyte Bellangé, shows Napoleon’s daring crossing of the Alps via the Great St. Bernard Pass on the Italian-Swiss border with his army of 40,000 men.
Description
This lithograph, Passage de l’armé française à; l’hospice du Mont Saint-Bernard 15 Mai 1800 by Hippolyte Bellangé, shows Napoleon’s daring crossing of the Alps via the Great St. Bernard Pass on the Italian-Swiss border with his army of 40,000 men. It was published with eleven other military views, including the Battle of Marengo, in a portfolio. Entitled Souvenirs militaires de la Republique, du Consulat et de l’Empire (Military Memories of the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire), the firm of Gihaut introduced the album in 1834. It was the last but one in an annual series that Bellangé inaugurated in 1823. The prints in these portfolios included military views and some genre scenes.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1833
graphic artist
Bellangé, Hippolyte
ID Number
GA.15317
catalog number
15317
accession number
94830
La Cruche Cassée etched by Charles Jacque shows a seated man with a broken pitcher in his left hand, at which he gestures with his right. Shards from the pitcher lie on the floor, and a basket tilts off the edge of the table, on which sits an empty glass.
Description
La Cruche Cassée etched by Charles Jacque shows a seated man with a broken pitcher in his left hand, at which he gestures with his right. Shards from the pitcher lie on the floor, and a basket tilts off the edge of the table, on which sits an empty glass. It appears that Jacque is chronicling the kind of mishap that can befall the drinking man. Before concentrating on depictions of rural life, Jacque made caricatures for a satiric magazine. In his prints, however, he presented the life of rural people sympathetically, not satirically.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1844
graphic artist
Jacque, Charles Émile
ID Number
GA.14706
catalog number
14706
accession number
94830

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