Cyrus Hall McCormick
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Object Details
- Artist
- Charles Loring Elliott, 12 Oct 1812 - 25 Aug 1868
- Sitter
- Cyrus Hall McCormick, 15 Feb 1809 - 13 May 1884
- Exhibition Label
- Born Rockbridge County, Virginia
- A farmer from Virginia who became a wealthy industrialist, Cyrus McCormick built his fortune on the horse-drawn mechanical reaper. By enabling the cultivation of large tracts of land with unprecedented efficiency, the machine helped boost grain production to record levels in the United States. McCormick claimed credit for inventing the “first practical reaper,” which he designed with Jo Anderson, a man enslaved by the McCormick family, and patented in 1834, but many of McCormick’s competitors contested the novelty of their design.
- Other companies sold similar reapers, but the one attributed to McCormick was particularly successful. In 1847, McCormick opened a factory outside of Chicago, where the use of standardized parts and assembly-line production methods streamlined the manufacturing process. By the mid-1880s, the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company’s innovative advertising strategies, product warranties, and consumer financing options helped it sell more than 50,000 reapers per year.
- Provenance
- (Miss Eunice Chambers, Hartsville, South Carolina), 1965. R. Philip Hanes, Jr., Winston-Salem, North Carolina; acquired through exchange by Howard Hack, San Francisco; acquired 1975 by NPG through funding by Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, Chicago.
- Credit Line
- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation and Mrs. Gilbert Harrison
- mid 19th century
- Object number
- NPG.75.2
- Restrictions & Rights
- CC0
- Type
- Painting
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Stretcher: 51.4 x 41.3 x 3.8cm (20 1/4 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2")
- Frame: 59.7 x 49.5 x 6.7cm (23 1/2 x 19 1/2 x 2 5/8")
- See more items in
- National Portrait Gallery Collection
- Location
- Currently not on view
- National Portrait Gallery
- Topic
- Personal Attribute\Facial Hair\Beard
- Cyrus Hall McCormick: Male
- Cyrus Hall McCormick: Business and Finance\Businessperson\Industrialist\Manufacturer
- Cyrus Hall McCormick: Society and Social Change\Philanthropist
- Cyrus Hall McCormick: Science and Technology\Inventor
- Cyrus Hall McCormick: Society and Social Change\Administrator\Historical society administrator\President
- Portrait
- Record ID
- npg_NPG.75.2
- Metadata Usage (text)
- CC0
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/sm4f16a9008-c24b-45d3-be2c-da5ba6ad12fa
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