The "Psycho Beautigraph" etchings of Birmingham, AL, artist Felix Benjamin Gaines (1908–1991) are something of a mystery. His portrait of George Washington Carver offers some interesting challenges, beginning with identifying how it was made and how it relates to other prints of the period, both commercial and artistic. Presumably the term "psycho" refers to the psychology of the portrait's sensitive investigation of character. The background texture of the image resembles the cross-hatched fibers of a peanut shell, one of Carver's primary subjects for his experiments, and Gaines described some of his portraits using the term "peanut etching." It seems he made very detailed pen-and-ink drawings that were reproduced as photo-lithographs.
Gaines marketed his prints to audiences in the American south. During the late 1940s he planned to distribute his portrait of Dr. Carver to black schools and churches. He used Carver's image as a model to commemorate him as a great scientist and humanitarian and to encourage young people to seek higher education as a means to achieve racial tolerance and a better understanding between the races. After posting this blog in February 2015, we heard from some descendants and learned that Gaines was a muralist as well as a printmaker. He was involved in WPA art programs and later worked as an art teacher.

This blog introduces the talented poster artist Ethel Reed (1874-1912) and recounts her remarkable success. One of the most talented and prolific artists of the 1890s, she made her name during the poster craze of the period. She produced book illustrations, cover designs, and more than 25 posters, mostly in just two years, 1895 and 1896. Her creative burst earned her international recognition and she traveled to Europe and completed a few commissions for British publications through about 1898. Then she disappeared from the historical record until a 2013 biography by William Peterson detailed her sad end.

In 1849 the Smithsonian purchased the Marsh Collection of European engravings. Not only the first collection of any kind to be acquired by the new Institution, it was also the first public print collection in the nation. Although the uncertainty of the Smithsonian's mission in the early years complicated its motivation for purchasing the collection, the Marsh Collection represented an important symbol of cultural authority.
The prints formed part of the library of Vermont Congressman George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), a member of the Smithsonian's Board of Regents. The book recounts Marsh’s growing connoisseurship in the context of the art market of the 1840s. Remarkably, he made all his purchases in the U.S. and did not visit Europe until after he sold the collection. After a serious fire at the Smithsonian in 1865, portions of the collection were deposited at the Library of Congress and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Efforts to reclaim it began in the 1880s, as a new generation of Smithsonian staff expanded the National Museum, but they achieved only partial success. A number of the prints remain at the Library of Congress. As the story continues, it treats the growth of the art market after the Civil War with particular emphasis on the reception and exhibition of prints nationwide.
Through the example of the Marsh Collection, the book explores the cultural values attributed to prints in the 19th century, including their influence on visual culture at a time when collecting styles were moving from an individual's private contemplation of artworks to wider public venues of exposition in museums and reception by multiple audiences. The history of the first Smithsonian collection informs an important stage in the development of American cultural identity and in the formation of the Smithsonian as a national institution.

In 1428, a devastating fire destroyed a schoolhouse in the Northern Italian city of Forlì, leaving only a woodcut of the Madonna and Child that had been tacked to the classroom wall. The people of Forlì carried that print – now known as the Madonna of the Fire – into their cathedral, where two centuries later a new chapel was built to enshrine it. In this book, Lisa Pon considers a cascade of moments in the Madonna of the Fire's cultural biography: when ink was impressed onto paper at a now-unknown date; when that sheet was recognized by Forlì's people as miraculous; when it was enshrined in various tabernacles and chapels in the cathedral; when it or one of its copies was – and still is – carried in procession. In doing so, Pon offers an experiment in art historical inquiry that spans more than three centuries of making, remaking, and renewal.