Album of Portraits of Celebrities

Art Historical Context

Step into the Gilded Age with *Album of Portraits ofities*, a captivating print portfolio created around 1882 by Shoppell, an artist active during this vibrant era. Housed in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's National Portrait Gallery collection, work exemplifies the 19th-century boom in affordable printed reproductions, allowing middle-class Americans to collect images of luminaries in their homes. As a bound album of prints, it democratized portraiture, transforming elite likenesses into accessible cultural treasures. Among its notable subjects is James Russell Lowell, the esteemed poet...