Elias Boudinot.
Item #77523
ROSENTHAL, Max and Albert. Elias Boudinot. Original pen-and-ink and wash portrait, 5 x 4-3/4 inches on 14-1/2 x 8-3/4 inch sheet. Signed Max & Albert Rosenthal. Albert Rosenthal (1863-1939) was a Philadelphia portrait painter, printmaker, writer, and collector. Rosenthal was a student of his father, engraver Max Rosenthal, and later published a book about him. He is also known for his portraits of Supreme Court Justices, and his collection of American drawings, which he donated to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1927. Max Rosenthal (1833-1918) was born in Poland. He was sent at the age of twelve to Paris to study art and escape conscription in the Imperial Russian Army. In Paris he was apprenticed to Martin Thurwanger, a lithographer, and in 1849 was brought by Thurwanger to the United States. Though his master remained only eighteen months, Rosenthal decided to stay with his elder brother, Louis, who was living in Philadelphia. He studied in the school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. When Louis Rosenthal started his own business about 1850, Max returned to Philadelphia to work for him and subsequently entered into partnership with him, working chiefly in chromolithography, then a comparatively new field. During the first years of the Civil War, Rosenthal followed the Army of the Potomac, making sketches of the camps which he published in lithographic reproductions. About 1870 he began to make a series of lithographic portraits, about two hundred in all, copies of portraits of distinguished Americans of whom no engraved portraits existed. About 1882 he began to etch, and before he retired from that field had produced about a hundred and fifty portraits of eminent American and British officers of the Revolutionary period. It was not until 1892, however, that he began the really important work of his artistic life. In that year he began experiments in mezzotint engraving and, having mastered it, devoted most of his remaining years to the production of important mezzotint engravings. Elias Boudinot (1740-1821), a New Jersey lawyer, was an early supporter of the Revolutionary cause, promoting enlistment, lending money for supplies, and supporting rebel spies. He represented New Jersey in the Second Continental Congress, and served a term as its president. in 1789, Boudinot was elected from New Jersey to the U.
Price: $1,750.00