American Portrait Prints
The American Antiquarian Society contains a vast collection of American
portrait prints dating from the late seventeenth century to the late
nineteenth century. Most of the prints depicted prominent figures and were
created to be available to the public. Through these portraits, one can
identify successful and famous members of society, including United States
presidents and other government officials from a time before there were
photographs.
Arranged alphabetically by name, the portrait collection is maintained in
the Graphic Arts Department and contains roughly five thousand images from
newspapers, periodicals, books, letterheads, and announcements. An
additional one thousand images of sitters from the city of Worcester can
be found in the Worcester Portrait Prints
Collection.
The production of portrait prints began in Massachusetts and expanded to
other American cities by the end of the eighteenth century. These ranged
from simple almanac cuts to elegant mezzotints.
The two most common processes found in the AAS portrait collection are
line engraving and mezzotint. The typical format was a half-length or bust
of a person enclosed in an oval frame within a rectangle. These portraits
were commonly seen as frontispieces in books and magazines. Publishers
used such portraits to add to the commercial value of their publications.
Mezzotint became a popular process in the eighteenth century and was
revived in the mid-nineteenth century. It consisted of scraping and
burnishing highlights on a roughened plate. These, like the line
engravings, were not modeled after a person from life, but instead, copied
from paintings by such famous portrait artists as Charles Wilson Peale.
The most popular process of the nineteenth century that surpasses all the
other styles in realism is the lithograph. Many were based on
daguerreotype portraits of prominent Americans, including Abraham Lincoln
and Andrew Jackson. They were made to depict a bust-length image or, in
some cases, full-length portraits with elaborate backgrounds.
Some of the most famous portraits in the collection include an engraving
by Cornelius Tiebout of President Thomas Jefferson and a lithograph of
Andrew Jackson by Albert Newsan. Other artists represented in the portrait
print collection include James Heath, John Sartain, and Francis
D'Avignon.
- Kathleen Ruyak, AAS intern
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James Wilson (1742-1798), signer of the Declaration of
Independence from
Pennsylvania, photograph of a painting after James Peale, Independence
Hall, Philadelphia.
General Wolfe (1726-1759)
Samuel Hill, engraver. Mrs. Elizabeth White / Died in London, Feb. 2.
1798, AE. 23, engraved frontispiece for Thomas Allen, The
Benefits of Affliction (Pittsfield, Mass., 1798).
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