Agriculture - Overview
From butter churns to diesel tractors, the Museum's agricultural artifacts trace the story of Americans who work the land. Agricultural tools and machinery in the collections range from a John Deere plow of the 1830s to 20th-century cultivators and harvesters. The Museum's holdings also include overalls, aprons, and sunbonnets; farm photographs; milk cans and food jars; handmade horse collars; and some 200 oral histories of farm men and women in the South. Prints in the collections show hundreds of scenes of rural life. The politics of agriculture are part of the story, too, told in materials related to farm workers' unions and a group of artifacts donated by the family of the labor leader Cesar Chavez.
"Agriculture - Overview" showing 3 items.
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
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
Wallachian Team
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center