The Ferris Collection of Prints

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.

More about the collection
More about the artists

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
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
Stephen Ferris sketched his sleeping four-year-old son Gerome in October 1867. He used this pencil drawing as a model for the sleeping child in his painting Grandma’s Spinning Wheel, also completed in 1867.
Description
Stephen Ferris sketched his sleeping four-year-old son Gerome in October 1867. He used this pencil drawing as a model for the sleeping child in his painting Grandma’s Spinning Wheel, also completed in 1867. At a later date, Gerome Ferris came across this sketch and noted in pencil: “I have seen no drawing better than this past or present JLGF," but, of course, he was the subject and possibly prejudiced
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1867
1867-10-24
depicted (sitter)
Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome
original artist
Ferris, Stephen James
ID Number
GA.16653
catalog number
GA*16653
accession number
119780
Mariano Fortuny captured the intense grief of an Arab mourning a dead friend in this stark 1866 etching Arabe Veillant le Corps de son Ami.Fortuny had witnessed Moroccan life at first hand during several visits, the first in 1859, when he accompanied the troops of Spanish General
Description
Mariano Fortuny captured the intense grief of an Arab mourning a dead friend in this stark 1866 etching Arabe Veillant le Corps de son Ami.
Fortuny had witnessed Moroccan life at first hand during several visits, the first in 1859, when he accompanied the troops of Spanish General Juan Prim. A nineteenth-century critic praised Fortuny’s scratchy (egratigné) and gritty (grignoté) etching technique as very original and of the greatest interest. Another critic commented on the remarkable effect of color in the print. Even in black and white, Fortuny’s much admired sense of color is evident.
This print is one of twenty-eight Fortuny etchings issued by the Parisian publisher Goupil after the artist’s death in Rome at age thirty-six. Stephen Ferris, a great admirer of Fortuny, owned impressions of many of his prints.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1866
original artist
Fortuny y Carbo, Mariano
publisher
Goupil & Cie.
graphic artist
Delatre
ID Number
GA.16763
catalog number
16763
accession number
119780

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