About

About the Ferris Collection of Prints

Ferris’s professional interest as a portrait painter helped to determine the nature of the collection. Portrait prints, such as 17th-century engravings by the Dutch artists Jakob Houbraken and Rembrandt van Rijn and the Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck are well represented. Prints by the popular 19th-century German etcher William Unger reproduce works after Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, and William Merritt Chase. Ferris also owned many reproductive engravings of Italian art. These include works after the Carracci family from the Farnese Gallery and the Barberini Museum, and some charming 18th-century aquatints after sketches by French artist Jean Honoré Fragonard of major Italian 17th-century paintings. Other than prints made during the etching revival, landscape subjects are few.

Ferris participated actively in the etching revival, a movement that began in France in the 1860s and spread to England and to the United States by the 1880s. There were earlier etching experiments in the United States, and a few artists knew about the technique and tried it. Ferris himself saw a demonstration in 1860, but did not devote himself to its practice until the 1870s, when he became an enthusiastic promoter of etching. He demonstrated the art on many occasions at the Philadelphia Sketch Club and was a founding member of the Philadelphia Society of Etchers in 1881.

French art was a strong cultural influence in the United States during the 19th century, and many Americans would have read about French art and artists in newspapers and magazines. The work of contemporary French etchers such as Léopold Flameng, Charles Jacque, Maxime Lalanne, and Paul Rajon was of great interest to artists like Ferris. Not surprisingly, a number of French prints turn up in the Ferris Collection. Some were prints by Jules Jacquemart and other etchers whose interpretations of paintings and decorative objects were highly regarded at the time. Others were original prints like those of Charles Jacque, who etched rural scenes. Ferris and other collectors at this point did not distinguish on the basis of original versus reproductive prints. Later, original etchings—the artist’s own composition transcribed directly onto the plate—came to occupy a higher cultural plane than etchings made after paintings or other artworks.

Both Ferris and his son are represented in the collection as are the members of their extended family. Stephen Ferris married Elizabeth Moran, sister of artists Edward, John, Peter, and Thomas Moran. Thomas, Peter, and Thomas’s wife, Mary Nimmo, also etched, and they often exchanged prints with the Ferris family. Many impressions are inscribed as special gifts.

Stephen Ferris also acquired and exchanged prints with fellow artists in Philadelphia such as John Sartain and received prints from local collectors. He greatly admired Mariano Fortuny (1838–1874), a Spanish artist little known today, whose prints he collected and some of whose paintings he reproduced. But he named his son after Jean Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), the French painter who was just beginning to be known in the United States in 1863 when Gerome Ferris was born. The two men corresponded but seem never to have met in person. Ferris received an impression of one of Gérôme’s four known etchings, La Negresse de Hedjah, with a dedication from the artist: “à Mr Stephen J Ferris/ son affectioné/ J L Gérôme.”

For many years Stephen Ferris taught at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. His teaching career, together with his broad interest in art, helps to explain the miscellaneous nature of the prints in his collection, many of which reproduce works of art in other media. Quite a few appear to have been removed from books. Some show sculpture; some are religious scenes; not all are identified. The figures may be reduced to just the outlines as in the reproductive prints of Charles Normand. These do not appear to have a direct relation to Ferris’s art, but they do form a kind of personal archive.

His son Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930), a history painter, wrote to the Smithsonian in 1927 that his father “knew more about good pictures, past and present, and the fundamental principles of their production than any artist I have ever met.”

Further Reading

  • Gascoigne, Bamber. How to Identify Prints. New York: Thames & Hudson, Second Edition (Paperback), 2004.
  • Hults, Linda C. The Print in the Western World, An Introductory History. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996
  • Tyler, Francine. American Etchings of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Dover Publications, 1984
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.
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
Christian Adolf Schreyer (1828–1899) painted this dramatic scene of galloping horses pulling a wagon through the Wallachian countryside (now part of Romania).
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
Gerome Ferris etched this print after French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s (1825–1905) New Born Lamb, painted in 1873. Ferris’s print appeared in the catalog for the 1887 New York auction of the A. T.
Description
Gerome Ferris etched this print after French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s (1825–1905) New Born Lamb, painted in 1873. Ferris’s print appeared in the catalog for the 1887 New York auction of the A. T. Stewart collection, as a reproductive etching advertising the painting for sale.
Gerome Ferris had studied with Bouguereau in Paris in 1884 at the Académie Julian, a co-ed art school with no entrance exams and low fees. An academic-style painter, Bouguereau’s work was highly regarded in his day.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1887
original artist
Bouguereau, William-Adolphe
graphic artist
Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome
ID Number
GA.14560
catalog number
14560
accession number
94830
Gerome Ferris made this ink drawing in 1882 while on a trip to southern Spain with his father. The drawing demonstrates a sure hand.Currently not on view
Description
Gerome Ferris made this ink drawing in 1882 while on a trip to southern Spain with his father. The drawing demonstrates a sure hand.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1881
1882
original artist
Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome
ID Number
GA.16622.02
catalog number
16622.02
accession number
119780

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