Photoarchive

Black and white photograph of a monumental wall tomb featuring several figures and decorative reliefs.

Scholars celebrate photoarchives for providing access to little-known works of art housed in private collections or in circulation on the art market. A feature of photoarchives that is less often appreciated, however, is how comprehensively they document famous works of art on public view.

The story of the "overzealous" restoration of a family portrait as related by the painting's current owner illustrates how crucial this type of personal information is to the documentation of the Photoarchive.

An advertisement for a painting of a landscape featuring a settlement of Native Americans.

Perhaps one third of Photoarchive reproductions are cut from publications, including catalogs, books, newspapers, and magazines. This advertisement sheet for a painting possibly by Ralph Albert Blakelock (illustrated at left) was printed in 1942. As the sheet describes, the dealer Americana Arts is offering a landscape with teepees that might or might not be a good deal:

Image depicting the Virgin Mary and Christ Child.

Although most of the Photoarchive’s 1.2 million reproductions illustrate art from just eight national schools, works from an additional forty countries and regions classified “minor schools” are also represented. An artist from the Tyrolese School, which encompasses works from the intersection of Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, is presumed to have painted this representation (left) of a fifteenth-century statue called the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln.

Painting of the corner of an apartment featuring a blue sofa, a side table with a lamp, and walls covered with framed paintings.

Interior of the Artist's Apartment, made sometime after 1910 by the American painter and watercolorist Walter Gay, shows a narrow view of a sitting area in Walter and his wife Matilda's Paris apartment at 11 Rue de l'Université, where the couple had moved in May 1909.

A color drawing of a terra cotta vase filled with red, yellow, purple and red-and-white striped tulips with a small bird's nest containing three eggs propped on its base.

Dr. Charles A. Ryskamp (1928–2010), Director of The Frick Collection from 1987 to 1997 and, prior to that, of the Morgan Library & Museum, spent more than fifty years developing an extraordinary personal collection of European drawings. Passionate about collecting from a young age, his interest took a serious turn while he was a graduate student at Yale. He avidly collected books and manuscripts related to his studies, then branched into the visual arts when he purchased two Edward Lear drawings while he was a research fellow at Cambridge.

Three-quarter-length portrait of a man against a landscape, pointing to three pyramids.

In 1943, Brooklyn artist Esta Cosgrave (née Esther Flack) (ca. 1900–1952) adopted a quirky style of painting modern-day likenesses in 18th- and 19th–century costumes and poses. Her portraits borrowed their contexts from the works of American painters John Singleton Copley, Robert Feke, Jeremiah Theus and their contemporaries, and also from pictures by unknown, itinerant painters.

A painted portrait of an old man in red robes standing at a desk upon which a large book lies opened.

Photoarchive intern Alexandra Provo and her collaborator Diana Sapanaro discuss their projects to use visualization technologies and Python scripts to make one of the Library's research tools, Spanish Artists from the Fourth to the Twentieth Century: A Critical Dictionary, accessible to the public in new ways.

Drawing of a massive, multi-family townhouse with turrets, gables and round arches standing on the corner of a busy intersection in mid-century Manhattan.

One of the most popular series completed by the American illustrator Vernon Howe Bailey was his "Intimate Sketches of New York," which records the city during a period of dramatic growth—and change.

Half-length portrait of a young woman wearing an embroidered dress, veil and gloves standing next to a bouquet of flowers.

Lost or destroyed paintings are perhaps the most painful reminder of the importance of photoarchives and similar repositories of images and accompanying metadata. An unfortunate example is this portrait of a young bride.

Photoarchive

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