The Acquisitions Table: Cornered!

Schultz, Christian, after Richard Caton Woodville. Cornered! [Waiting for a Stage].Lemercier lithographer. New York & Paris: Goupil& Co., 1851.

With the exhibition and publication of With a French Accent: American Lithography to 1860, (Davis Art Center, Wellesley College 2012 and MuséeGoupil, Bordeaux, France 2013) the American Antiquarian Society has become a resource for the study of international production and distribution of lithographs in the pre-Civil War era.  This beautiful print, which was published, produced and colored in France for the European and American consumer, completes the Society’s holdings of Goupil lithographs produced after works by the American painter Richard Caton Woodville.  The Society already holds Woodville’s The Civil Marriage and Politics in an Oyster House. This image of three men waiting for a stage was originally sold via the Goupil catalog as a part of a trio of images by Americans — grouped together with a print after William Sydney Mount and one after George Caleb Bingham.  Goupil was well known for extremely fine lithographic impressions and for the skills of their colorists.  The print was sold at Goupil’s New York show room, as well as in London, Paris and Berlin. This impression came from the Goupil archive and has contemporary marginal notations regarding the inventory status of the print. This item was acquired with the support of the B.H. Breslauer Foundation.