Research in the Collection

In addition to representing a work's various states of restoration, the images in many cases document destroyed or lost objects and structures. Notable examples include Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man, formerly in the Czartoryski collection but lost during World War II, and an important group of photographs by Lucienne Bloch documenting Diego Rivera's destroyed Rockefeller Center mural of 1933. Images of many destroyed buildings are also preserved in the collection, including Lowther Castle (Cumbria, England), Eaton Hall (Cheshire, England), the Königliches Schloss (Berlin), and the library at the Soldiers' Home in Washington, DC.

Another aspect of the collection is the documentation of a plethora of versions of old master paintings that have come to the image collectinos through scholars and dealers. The many versions of Satyr and a Maiden by Peter Paul Rubens (?) in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, provide an instructive and amusing example.

Adding to the value of the photographs themselves, the majority of the prints in the collection are annotated on the back by a previous owner, be it a scholar, dealer, or museum. This historical context is important for provenance research and the history of connoisseurship as documentation of solicited scholarly opinions of works of art. An expert often wrote an opinion on the back of a photograph, which the dealer then showed to a prospective buyer. This practice, common in the early twentieth century, frequently resulted in the sale of a work of art because of its attribution to a known master. Many examples of these annotations, particularly for objects that were offered to Samuel Kress, are housed in image collections.