The William S. Ladd Collection of Prints consists of 671 prints, primarily portraits, dating from the 17th century through the early 19th century. In 1975, the Academy accepted the Ladd Collection as a gift from the Cornell University Medical College. William S. Ladd, the original donor, had been Dean of the Medical College and when his significant collection of prints came into the Medical College Library, Erich Meyerhoff, the Librarian, recognized its research value and the fact that such a collection properly belonged in a major research library. With the permission of the Dean of the Cornell University Medical College and the donor’s son, Dr. Anthony T. Ladd, Eric Meyerhoff offered the collection to the Academy. It was accepted and arrived in the Malloch Rare Book Room (now the Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room) in May of 1975.
The prints themselves had been accumulated in the first half of the 20th century by William S. Ladd. He had purchased a great many of them as deaccessioned duplicates from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Primarily portraits of significant and lesser known figures in medicine and science, the prints span a period from the early 17th century to the first half of the 19th century. The printing processes used to render the various images include etching, engraving, stipple, mezzotint, and lithography. Among the etchers, engravers, artists and lithographers are some very famous names, a history in fact of English and Continental art and printmaking, with a smattering of American efforts among the lot. For example, the portrait of John Syng Dorsey (1783-1818), a little known American surgeon who rated a footnote in Fielding Garrison’s An Introduction To The History Of Medicine, is an engraving after a painting by Thomas Sully (1783-1872). Sully, who had studied with Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin West, is best known for his famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. The portrait of Charles Lucas (1713-1792), an Irish physician who did not even get a footnote in Garrison’s work, was engraved by James McArdell after a painting by Joshua Reynolds. James McArdell was an engraver who specialized in mezzotints. ...READ MORE
The New York Academy of Medicine Library and the William S. Ladd Collection of Prints digitization was supported in part by funds from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) through the New York State Regional Bibliographic Databases Program.
