The Ferris Collection of Prints - Introduction
The Museum’s Graphic Arts Collection, the oldest print-collecting unit in the Smithsonian, focuses on the technical and social history of printmaking to document how prints are made and used. Smithsonian art museums collect works on paper selected for aesthetic reasons, but the National Museum of American History (formerly the Museum of History and Technology) takes a broad view of visual culture.
Our prints illustrate technical developments and cultural changes. They represent all kinds of graphic works that have influenced American society. The collection has always included examples from many periods and countries, fine-art prints as well as popular and commercial graphic art, together with the plates, blocks, and tools used to produce prints. In 1996 the Museum presented an exhibition on 150 years of Smithsonian print collecting, Building a National Collection.
One of the largest print collections ever received by the Smithsonian was donated by the Ferris family between 1927 and 1932. Stephen James Ferris (1835–1915), a Philadelphia painter and etcher, collected over 2,000 European and American prints, both reproductive and original, representing old master and contemporary printmakers. The collection incorporated a variety of artistic subjects, compositions, and styles. Ferris may well have mined it for inspiration for his own work, but he was also deeply interested in art for its own sake. He and his family and friends would have simply enjoyed studying the images.
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"The Ferris Collection of Prints - Introduction" showing 3 items.
Portrait of Samuel P. Avery
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Spanish Gypsy's Home
- Description
- Stephen Ferris etched Home of Mariano, Gypsy King in Granada, Spain, during his 1881 visit to sites associated with Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish artist he deeply admired. In a letter from Granada to art editor Sylvester R. Koehler, Ferris told of his fascination with gypsy cave dwellings. He described them as “most picturesque and weird, overgrown with vines, cactus, and aloes . . . . I have made several drawings of Gitanos [gypsy] caves and of one especially a favorite model of Fortunys [sic] a Gitano prince in splendid costume. We bought his dress and I intend to paint and etch my picture when I get time.” Ferris etched the gypsy’s portrait in costume separately and included it, slightly altered, on the right in this print showing the family and animals assembled in front of their cave. Ferris noted in pencil on the print that it was etched directly from life.
- Gypsies or gitanos still live in caves in the Sacromonte(Holy Mountain) area of Granada. Today the number of cave dwellers has dwindled, but the area remains famous for flamenco singing and dancing.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14404.03
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14404.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ferris's Daughter May
- Description
- Stephen James Ferris etched an undated portrait of his daughter, May, in the costume of a bull fighter, and dedicated this impression to her. May Electa Ferris was born in 1871, eight years after her brother, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Like her father and brother, she was an artist. She learned to etch from her father and became known as an etcher and landscape painter, exhibiting in the 1880s and 1890s. Her paintings were reproduced as calendar artwork into the 1920s under her married name, May Ferris Smith.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c. 1890
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14405.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14405.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center