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 19 items.
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Goose Pond, East Hampton
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Lawrence Alma-Tadema
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Landscape in Normandy
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Victor Hugo’s Bedroom
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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
Antique Jewels
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Farm Scene, the Scourer
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Scottish Landscape
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mission Church, New Mexico
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Cows by a Stream
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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