The Osborne collection

1888 was an important year for the Smithsonian's graphic arts collections. Not only did it mark the exhibiting of photography as a separate entity in America, as shown at the Cincinnati Exposition, but it was also the year that John Walter Osborne donated a unique collection of early photomechanical prints to the National Museum. The Osborne Collection was received just in time to be included in the print exhibition that the graphic arts curator, Sylvester R. Koehler, developed for Cincinnati, representing the technical side of art as a field of human activity, in keeping with the Smithsonian's philosophy at that time. Nearly a thousand prints, organized by process, displayed traditional efforts from the Old Masters to contemporary artists, with separate sections on American wood engravers and American etchers. Another section, drawn largely from Osborne's gift, featured the ‘modern photomechanical processes’: photoengraving, half-tone, collotype, photogravure, and - Osborne's particular specialty - photolithography. In the catalogue of the exhibition, Koehler invited special attention to ‘the specimens of early work, given to the National Museum by Mr J. W. Osborne, which lend to the exhibition something of an historical character’.1

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