Drawing from Life

Drawing from Life: Caricatures from the American Art Portrait Gallery consists of selections of cartoons and caricatures put up by The Smithsonian Institution Libraries. The collection is taken from the American Portrait Gallery.

Collection Principles

They collection is orgnanized by an initial menu located on the homepage of the collection at The Smithsonian Libraries site. The user can choose options such as "introduction", "biographies of artists", "explore caricatures and cartoons", "bibliogrpahy/further reading", "credits", "American Art/Portrait Gallery Library", "SIL Digital Library", "Drawing from Life Hoempage." There are 11 artists depicted including William Hogarth. Exploring the collection allows a user to eiterh view featured books or view cartoons and caricatures.

Object Characteristics

Objects are images of black and white drawings of cartoon sketches or caricatures. Many of the images date to the late 19th century and early 20th century. Topics include golf, war, cave people and classical allusions. The collections allows users to enlarge the objects.

Metadata

The objects are described by a good amount of metadata. Below each image is a series of subject headings. Each image has the name of the illustrator, the book the illustration came from and the date.

Intended Audience

The exhibit is aimed at historians focusing on social commentary and humor, researchers on American self depiction in the late 1800s and early 1900s.