Foreword

Despite our well-meaning protestations that 'the American Antiquarian Society is a research library, not a museum,' any visitor to Antiquarian Hall need only take a look around our offices, meeting rooms, and public spaces-filled with fine antique furniture, interesting artifacts, and historic portraits, many by significant artists-to question that assertion. This catalogue of the Society's portrait collection affords us, then, the first opportunity in more than half a century to 'exhibit' the faces of those portraits-familiar to us at the Society, but too-little known by others-and to share the stories behind their creation and acquisition. The last catalogue of the Society's portraits was compiled-sans illustrations-by the noted genealogist Frederick L. Weis. It appeared in the Proceedings for 1946, and since that date, a number of important pictures have been added to the Society's portrait collection. In constructing entries for this updated and expanded catalogue, art historian Lauren B. Hewes has improved upon Weis's descriptions by scouring the library's stacks for every newspaper and periodical, image, reference source, manuscript collection, and historic exhibition catalogue that might shed light on either a sitter or an artist, and by thoroughly exploring the Society's archives for information on those many portraits we commissioned over the years. To Weis and to Hewes, we give thanks for making the present catalogue possible.