With Early Steel Engravings of the First Eight Presidents

[Presidents of the United States]:

National Galaxy. Or, Portraits and Biographies of All the Presidents of the United States, Engraved on Steel, In the Highest Style of the Art [caption title].

Boston: Printed by J. Howe, No. 39, Merchants Row...Engraved by N. Dearborn...Entered according to Act of Congress by J. Greenleaf, 1840. Broadside, 21.25 x 29 inches, printed in eight columns, with eight mounted intaglio portraits, each 3.5 x 3 inches, all text and portraits within an elaborate ornamental border. Moderate foxing, edge wear, and scuffing. A few closed edge tears, a couple just touching text, minor scuffing to left edge of one portrait, long vertical crease affecting one portrait. Overall good condition. Item #12955

A handsome large-format pictorial broadside featuring steel-engraved portraits and biographical passages of the first eight Presidents of the United States. Each of the eight columns of biographies is headed by a mounted portrait, featuring Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, and Van Buren. This is the first edition of this marvelous display broadside produced by Greenleaf, who issued four updated versions in 1844, 1846, 1849, and 1850. The portraits were produced by noted Boston engraver Nathaniel Dearborn, who executed the portraits on steel, a laborious and expensive process at the time. Usually for works of this type, publishers and engravers would have used much cheaper woodblock engravings, but the use of steel here resulted in sharper and more lifelike images, which the publisher here touts as "the highest style of the art."

In his study of presidential portraiture, Popular Images of the Presidency From Washington to Lincoln, Noble Cunningham provides excellent background on patriotic broadsides of this type: "Popular prints offering portraits of all the presidents in a grand design on a single sheet not only celebrated the presidency but also subordinated individual presidents to the institution...the presidency emerged as the central unifying agent and the foremost symbol of the American republic. Mass-produced prints played an important role in reinforcing public perceptions of the president as the center of the Union and its preserver."

All versions of Greenleaf's presidential broadside are rare, with OCLC reporting just a single institutional copy of the present first edition, at AAS.

Price: $2,250