Jacques Reich portrait prints
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Creator
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Abstract
Portraits of major American and European artists, writers, capitalists, politicians, and historical figures executed by Jacques Reich (1852–1923), a Hungarian-born artist who moved to the United States in 1873. In addition to privately commissioned portraits, Reich executed some 2,000 illustrations for Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, and created most of those in Scribner's Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings.
Biographical note
Jacques Reich (1852–1923) was a Hungarian-born portrait etcher who immigrated to the United States in 1873. He trained for several years at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia before traveling to Paris in 1879 to study under the painters William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury. He returned to Philadelphia in 1880, and in 1885 moved to New York, where he established a studio. In addition to pen and ink drawings for magazines and other publications, Reich created some 2,000 portraits for Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, and most of the portraits for Scribner's Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings. He later specialized in etchings on copper, and in this medium published portraits of notable authors, poets, artists, and famous Americans, as well as private commissions for Whitelaw Reid, H. H. Rogers, E. H. Harriman, Charles B. Alexander, John W. Mackay, Nelson W. Aldrich. After his marriage to Caroline Bellinger in 1892, Reich resided in New Dorp, Staten Island. He died there on July 8, 1923.
Arrangement
Prints are sorted physically by size in 9 folders, 5 small and 4 large. The container list provides alphabetical access by sitter.
Scope and Contents
The collection contains portraits etched by Jacques Reich during the period 1890–1923 of major American and European artists, writers, capitalists, politicians, and historical figures. These include United States presidents George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Warren G. Harding. Writers and artists pictured include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, James McNeill Whistler, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Other portraits include Nelson Aldrich, John Jacob Astor, William Cullen Bryant, Andrew Carnegie, Adna Chaffee, Henry Clay, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Paul Jones, Robert E. Lee, John Marshall, J. P. Morgan, William Penn, Frank Stockton, and Daniel Webster. Several prints have notations or documentation identifying the photographs or paintings from which they were engraved.
Subjects
Genres
People
Access Restrictions
Open to qualified researchers by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, contact the Print Room Librarian at printroom@nyhistory.org.
Use Restrictions
Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to 20 exposures of stable, unbound material per day. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
The collection should be cited as: Jacques Reich Portrait Prints, PR 102, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, New-York Historical Society.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Oswald D. Reich, 1973, 1974, 1975. New-York Historical Society staff assigned the following numbers to the items in each accession: 1–93 (1973), 94–106 (1974), and 107–115 (1975).
About this Guide
Processing Information
The collection was inventoried most likely in the early 21st century. Archivist Joseph Ditta updated and migrated its anonymous WORD-document finding aid to ArchivesSpace in June 2020.