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.
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S. J. Ferris Self-portrait
- Description
- The Philadelphia Society of Etchers commissioned this self-portrait of Stephen James Ferris in 1880. Ferris was a founding member of the society, which formed the same year, three years after the founding of New York Etching Club, the first in the United States. Ferris had seen the etching process demonstrated in 1860 by John Sartain, an engraver. In 1875 Ferris produced one of his earliest etchings to be commercially published in the United States, a portrait of Mariano Fortuny (1838–1874).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1880
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA.14388.02
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14388
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Barbizon School Artists
- Description
- Stephen James Ferris etched this group portrait The Barbizon School: Seven French Artists as a frontispiece for the auction catalog of works from the J. C. Runkle collection, sold in New York in March 1883. Artists of the Barbizon School, named after a rural village in France near which many of them worked outdoors, specialized in realistic landscapes and animal paintings. Samuel P. Avery had arranged the sale and the catalog, which was illustrated with fifteen etchings by four American etchers. This print marks the first time that an auction catalog contained an original etching, as opposed to the usual reproductive etchings. The New York Times gave a favorable review of Ferris’s print.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1883
- publisher
- Avery, Samuel Putnam
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA.14508
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14508
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
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
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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
-
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
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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
-
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
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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
-
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
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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
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