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 2 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
Oath of Vargas
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center