Series II. Kit Kat Club Photographs and Ephemera, 1888-1908, 1932, inclusive
Scope and Contents
Photographs, bylaws, printed programs, and invitations documenting the activities of the Kit Kat Club, a New York City-based association of artists organized in 1881 and incorporated in 1884. The club counted among its members such notables as lithographer Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896) and Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase (1841-1916). The Kit Kats sponsored annual summer sketching and painting excursions, three of which are represented by photographs and ephemera here: a week-long trip by barge on the Delaware and Hudson Canal (1895); a camping trip to Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx (1896); and a sail by schooner to Stony Brook, Long Island (1897). This material was assembled by William C. Ostrander, onetime president of the Kit Kat Club, and includes some items from the Salmagundi Club and the Black and White Club, other arts organizations which counted Ostrander as a member.
Arrangement
The material in Series II was originally pasted or laid in a scrapbook, but had been removed and possibly reordered before it came to the New-York Historical Society. The archivist has left the photographs in the order in which they arrived, but has grouped the loose ephemera chronologically.