Object Number 1973.0018

Object Name

Print (Lithograph)

Title

John Hopkinson L.L.D.

Category

Prints and Maps

Credit Line/Donor

Museum purchase

Creator (Role)

Albert Newsam (Draftsman)
05/20/1809-11/20/1864
Newsam was born deaf and mute. At the age of 11, William P. Davis, posing as his deaf-mute borther, took Newsam to Philadelphia to exploit his artistic talents. Bishop White, president of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, rescued Newsam and provided him with an education. In 1827, Cephas G. Childs apprenticed Newsam at his engraving, and later, lithography firm. Eventually, after Childs left the business in 1834, Newsam became the principal artist at the successor firm, owned by George Lehman and Peter S. Duval. Newsam was particularly adept with portraits, which he often drew from life in the early part of his career, and then from daguerreotypes and photographs later on. Until he was forced to retire in 1859 because of blindness and a paralizing stroke, Newsam was the foremost portrait lithographer working in Philadelphia.

James Reid Lambdin (Painter)
1807-1889

Peter S. Duval (Lithographer and publisher)
1804/1805-02/09/1886
References: Last, The Color Explosion, pp. 72-3; Peters, America on Stone, pp.163-8. Peter S. Duval was among the earliest and foremost lithographers in the United States. He trained as a lithographer in Paris, where Cephas G. Childs of Philadelphia met him in 1831 while touring Parisian lithographic firms and persuaded him move to Philadelphia to work in his company. Childs later sold his interest in the firm to Duval and George Lehman in 1834, after which time the company was known as Lehman & Duval. They moved the business to a building at Dock Street and Bank Alley in 1835. When Lehman resigned in 1837, the firm assumed the name of P. S. Duval's Lithographic Establishment. He relocated this firm to the second floor of the Artisans' Building, between Fourth and Fifth Streets, between Chestnut and Market, in 1848. It remained there until the building was destroyed by fire on April 11, 1857, then reopened at Fifth and Minor Streets. At that time, Duval's son, Stephen D. Duval (1832-, joined the business and the name changed to P.S. Duval & Son. Peter S. Duval retired in 1869, and Stephen continued to run the firm in partnership with Thomas Hunter under the name of Duval and Hunter in 1870-71. Their partnership ended in 1874 and Hunter continued to run the business under his own name until the late 1880s. Peter S. Duval is best known for publishing periodicals with his own firm, as well as with the concern of Huddy & Duval (Duval entering in partnership with William M. Huddy from 1839-40). He was one of the first to experiment with color lithography and is credited with the first color printing in the United States with the illustraton of "Grandpa's Pet" in the April 1843 issue of Leslie's Magazine. His was the first major lithographic firm in Philadelphia to use steam-powered presses (after the move to the Artisans' Building in 1848). Duval's was Philadelphia's major lithographic firm during the 1850s and 1860s.

Place of Origin

Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mid-Atlantic, United States, North America

Date

1842

Mark or Signature or Inscription or Label

1. Inscription; Lower left beneath image; Drawn on Stone by A. Newsam
2. Inscription; Lower right beneath image; form the Original Portrait by J.R.Lambdin.
3. Inscription; Bottom center below legend; Entered according to Act of Congress in the Year 1842 by J.R.Lambdin in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern Dist.\t of Penn.\a/ P. S. Duval Lith.Phil.\a

Subjects

Portrait

Materials

Ink; Paper (wove)

Techniques

Lithography

Dimensions (inches)

17 (H) , 12.8 (W) , 14.1 (Image H) , 8.2 (Image W)

Dimensions (centimeters)

43.3 (H) , 32.52 (W) , 14.1 (Image H) , 8.2 (Image W)

Measurement Notes

H at left. W just below top. Plate marks very faint.

Publisher Summary

Duval, Peter S.

Publication Date

1842

Place of Publication

Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Mid-Atlantic, United States, North America

Watermark

none

Object Description

Text available soon.