Prints & Photographs

The Prints & Photographs Department of the Boston Athenæum houses a nationally recognized collection of prints, photographs, and drawings dating from the eighteenth century to the present.  

William James Bennett (1787-1844). Boston, from the Ship House, West End of the Navy Yard. Aquatint, 1833. Gift of Charles E. Mason, Jr., 1991.

Primarily a historical documentation collection, the department’s holdings provide a unique visual record of New England cultural and political life. It is particularly strong in prints, photographs, and architectural drawings depicting the built environment and topography of Boston and New England in the nineteenth century. In addition to its New England material, the Department also has a fine collection of prints and photographs of the Civil War as well as political cartoons, portraits, and historical prints that chronicle American national history.

The Prints & Photographs Department is also a significant resource for the study of American art. Specializing in works by Boston artists, photographers, and printmakers, the collection traces the development of printing and photographic techniques in the nineteenth century. 

       

The Collections

Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865). View of the Battle Ground at Concord, Mass. Hand-colored lithograph, c. 1840. Gift of Charles E. Mason, Jr., 1949?

 

 Prints. The print collection contains examples of a wide variety of printmaking techniques, including engravings, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, wood cuts, and silk-screens. Nineteenth-century New England lithographs form the core of this collection with large numbers of New England city views, landscapes, portraits, advertising posters, sheet music covers, and theatrical prints. Boston was a center for the lithographic arts and many well-known artists received their training as apprentices in local print shops, including Winslow Homer, Fitz Henry Lane, and David Claypoole Johnston. Their work, along with those of lesser known but highly accomplished artists, is well represented in the collection. The development of art of lithography is documented by the early black and white prints of the Pendleton Brothers, the commercial work of the highly prolific J. H. Bufford, and the dazzling chromolithographs of Louis Prang and the Forbes Lithographic Establishment.
James Wallace Black (1826-1895). Members of the First National Photographic Convention assembled in the Public Garden, Boston, June 3, 1869. Albumen photograph, 1869. Gift of Albert Thorndike, 1917.

Photographs. Specializing in works by Boston-area photographic firms, this collection comprises a catalog of early photographic processes, including, but not limited to, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, albumen and salted paper prints. The important role played by Boston photographers in the history of the medium in America can be traced through the collection, which includes the work of Samuel Bemis, Southworth & Hawes, John Adams Whipple, James Wallace Black, and A.H. Folsom, among others. Internationally important photographers including Felix Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Francis Frith, and Eadweard Muybridge are also represented in the collection. Boston's changing streetscape in the twentieth century is visible in the collections of photographs by John Murdoch, George M. Cushing, Jr., Paul Caponigro, and Irene Shwachman.

Alexander C. McIntyre (fl. 1860s-1870s) First Inauguration of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States of America at Montgomery, Alabama, February 18, 1861. Albumen photograph, 1861

Civil War Prints and Photographs. This collection complements the Boston Athenæum's renowned collection of Civil War material. It contains prints made  from sketches by enlisted artists including  Henry Bacon and the Confederate Conrad Wise Chapman, the work of special artist-reporters Winslow Homer and Edwin Forbes, and battle scenes by Currier & Ives and Kurz & Allison. It includes photographs taken in the field by Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, George M. Barnard, A.J. Russell, and Henry P. Moore.

Nathaniel J. Bradlee (1829-1888). William H. Knight Residence: Front Elevation. Watercolor, pen and ink, 1858.

Architectural Drawings. The Prints & Photographs Department houses the archives of two important and prolific nineteenth-century Boston architects: George Minot Dexter and his successor Nathaniel J. Bradlee. These two archives comprise nearly 6,000 drawings of New England buildings and provide a unique record of the architectural profession from the 1830s to the 1870s. The Department also holds drawings for proposed and realized works by Charles Bulfinch, Alexander Parris, Joseph R. Richards, Alexander Esty, and John A. Fox; it retains the architectural archives of the Boston Athenæum from 1818 to the late twentieth century. Biographical files on major New England architects form a less important but useful part of this collection.

Arthur Rotch (1850-1894). Alhambra. Watercolor, 1879. Gift of Aimée and Rosamond Lamb, 1981.

Watercolors and Drawings. This collection encompasses works of art on paper by such professional artists as Isaac Sprague, Thomas Edwards, Edward Clarke Cabot, Ellen Day  Hale, Arthur Rotch, and Allan Rohan Crite. The work of amateur or anonymous artists is also collected and provides context for understanding the development of the graphic arts in nineteenth-century America.

Eastern Advertising Company. Take the “L.” Four-color process, c. 1925. Anonymous gift, 1992.

Posters. The Department’s poster collection includes over seventeen hundred World War I posters, a small but significant number of World War II posters, and travel posters dating from the early twentieth century.

Joseph Andrews (1805-1873) after Chester Harding (1792-1866). Truly yours, Amos Lawrence. Engraving, ca. 1858.

American and European Portraits.  This picture research collection contains approximately 30,000 portraits of prominent personages and is comprised of both reproductive and original material. It is particularly strong in portraits of  nineteenth-century Bostonians. The Prints & Photographs Department also holds a separate collection of George Washington portraits.

Hammatt Billings (1816-1874). Boston Common. Engraving, 1842.

Old House File. This file of miscellaneous images and articles is arranged geographically and documents the built environment of Boston and other towns in the state of Massachusetts. Non-Massachusetts towns and states are also represented although less exhaustively.
 

Twenty-First Century Collection. Contemporary works of art on paper by living New England artists continue the Department’s mandate to document the region's built environment, natural landscape, and historic events. 

 

 How to access the collections

Onsite: The Prints & Photographs Department is open to researchers and serious scholars by prior appointment only. It is recommended that researchers contact the Department at least two to three weeks in advance. Please contact Catharina Slautterback, Curator of Prints & Photographs for information about the collections or to make an appointment.

 Online: The Boston Athenæum’s online catalog, Athena, is a unified catalog with records for a wide variety of material, including books, maps, broadsides, and works of art on paper. The card catalog of the Prints & Photographs collection was converted to on-line records and added to Athena in 2003. Catalog records for new acquisitions are also entered into Athena regularly. Many of these records contain a linked digital image. Although the records in Athena represent the bulk of the collection, serious researchers are advised to consult the Curator about special subject collections, research files, and techniques for locating pictorial works in Athena.