Object Details
- graphic artist
- Gifford, Robert Swain
- Gifford, Robert Swain
- Description
- Robert Swain Gifford’s etching Coal Pockets at New Bedford shows a grimy Massachusetts dock scene with a coal storage facility and a chimney belching smoke. Gifford pictured the southeastern Massachusetts coast, where he had lived as a boy, in many of his prints. As Sylvester R. Koehler noted in the American Art Review, which published the print in 1880, “The artist lifts the commonplace into the ideal, and teaches us to see beauty where our unguided eyes would have failed to discover it.” The print continued to be popular and was republished several times. In later impressions like this one, the date “-79’’ at bottom right has almost disappeared. Probably the publishers did not want the print to seem out of date.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
- 1879
- ID Number
- GA.14871.02
- catalog number
- 14871.02
- accession number
- 94830
- Object Name
- Other Terms
- print; Intaglio; Etching
- Physical Description
- paper (overall material)
- ink (overall material)
- Measurements
- image: 17.5 cm x 12.5 cm; 6 7/8 in x 4 15/16 in
- plate: 19 cm x 13.5 cm; 7 1/2 in x 5 5/16 in
- sheet: 30.5 cm x 23.5 cm; 12 in x 9 1/4 in
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Graphic Arts
- Ferris Collection
- Communications
- Art
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_782173
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a5-cd7a-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
