Visual Materials Collections

Baltimore Harbor (twin views: Locust Point and Canton) print from the Cator Collection of Baltimore Views

Use the following PDF guides to browse the Visual Materials Collections, including photographs, paintings, drawings, and print materials.

Painting Collections

Herbert T. Tiffany Chinese Painting Collection - A collection of 24 books from the Ch’ien Lung period, Qing Dynasty (1735-1795). The paintings are primarily done on rice paper with mineral pigments, though one book uses Pei leaves.

Drawing Collections

Aaron Sopher Collection - A collection of drawings and watercolors by Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts (now MICA) graduate and Baltimore Sun illustrator Aaron Sopher (1905-1972).

Adalbert Johann Volck Collection Volck - (1828-1912) was a well-respected Baltimore dentist now best known for his drawings and etchings in ardent support of the South during the Civil War. His sketches and caricatures ridicule abolitionists, politicians, and especially President Abraham Lincoln.

McKee Barclay Collection - McKee Barclay (1870-1947) was a Baltimore Sun cartoonist from 1908 to 1920 and became known for his political cartoons and representations of WWI leaders. This collection includes more than 380 hand-drawn images from Barclay’s career at the Sun, most from 1914 to 1920.

S. Donovan Swann Collection - Don Swann was a Baltimore artist who developed the “Swann New Way of Etching” kit for amateur etchers. This collection contains business and personal correspondence, biographical material and over 500 etchings of subjects all over Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic Region.

Print Collections

Cator Collection of Baltimore Views - (1752 - 1930) Nearly 200 etchings, engravings, watercolors, and prints and other lithographs create a visual timeline from the city's beginnings, through the civil war, and into the early twentieth century.

War Posters - This collection of more than 1000 original posters represents the social history of World War I and II. It captures the powerful use of art and advertising to promote social, economic, and political ideas.

Gebbie Print Collection - The Gebbie Prints Collection features scenes of Neo-Classical themes as well as etchings of European paintings, ca. 1888. Block and wood engravings are also included.

Eminent Americans Engraving Collection - The Eminent Americans Engraving Collection consists of a small group of engravings of eminent American statesmen, more specifically, 19th century lawyers.

Photograph Collections

Jones Sisters Collection - Twenty-one photographs hand-colored with oil paints by the Jones sisters of Sykesville, MD. Elsie took the photographs, Ida hand-colored them, and Frances wrote the brief histories which accompanied the photographs.

Stereographs - Stereographs were popular during the late 19th c. through about 1930. Two side-by-side photographs look 3D when seen through a viewer. This collection contains over one thousand stereographs with particular subject strength in travel and World War I.