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Category: Drawings

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Charles Dana Gibson: Exhibiting an Illustrator Who also Shines as a Cartoonist

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Art. The renowned illustrator Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) is best known for creating the Gibson Girl, that dazzling paragon of feminine beauty—with a flawless face, steadfast gaze, small-waisted yet voluptuous form, that tall beguiling being who radiated grace no …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Antietam: Can One Picture Tell the Story?

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. If you had to pick just one picture to represent the Battle of Antietam, which would you choose? A photograph of a young girl wearing mourning ribbons and holding a photograph of her father could symbolize the wide-spread and lasting losses …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

A History Quivering with Life: Civil War Drawings

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Imagine an expanse of hilly countryside. Fill it with with hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, battling to the death. Now put yourself into that scene. Listen to the clash of metal as swords and bayonets meet, the boom of cannons firing, the voices yelling. You’re in danger: there are bullets whizzing by and men dying around …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Life was Made for Love and Cheer: National Poetry Month

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

When each heart gives out its best, Then the talk is full of zest: Light your fire and never fear, Life was made for love and cheer. (Henry Van Dyke, “Inscriptions for a Friend’s House”) When American illustrator Elizabeth Shippen Green created a watercolor painting to accompany Henry Van Dyke’s “Inscriptions for a Friend’s House,” …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

New Doors Open for the HABS/HAER/HALS Collection

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Thanks to a recent initiative by Library of Congress and National Park Service staff, the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog has grown by nearly 400,000 records. Through a bit of technical wizardry, there is now a record for each digital image in one of our cornerstone collections: the Historic American Buildings Survey/ Historic American Engineering …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

The Buildings That Linked the Nation: New Book on Railroad Stations

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

In Railroad Stations: The Buildings That Linked the Nation, David Naylor chronicles the history and stylistic character of one of our nation’s most iconic building types. Prolifically illustrated with images from the collections of the Prints & Photographs Division, the volume is organized by geographic region. In addition to showing the exteriors of many stations, …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Toward A More Perfect Union: New Civil War Category in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War in a single online location, using a new feature in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.  The “Civil War” category aids research across thousands of images relating to the Civil War that are found in different Prints & Photographs Division collections in a variety …