Discover the Library Company’s Art & Artifacts Collection

The South East Prospect of the City of Philadelphia is one the Library Company’s treasures; this view of the Delaware Riverfront of Philadelphia is the oldest surviving painting of a North American city. Philadelphia is shown as bustling and mercantile, with a river full of ships. A key at the bottom of the painting numbers and identifies landmarks, including the Court House, the Friends’ Meeting House, and the homes of notable Philadelphians. The arms of William Penn and Pennsylvania appear in the top corners. In the lower left corner, the artist has depicted himself sketching the scene.

The painting was sent to the Library Company in 1857 by George Mifflin Dallas, then serving as American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in London, with a letter stating “I will send for the Philadelphia Library an antique daub painted as is believed here in 1720 . . . by Peter Cooper, painter. . . . One of the members of Parliament in looking over the rubbish of a City curiosity shop picked it up and brought it to me.” The painting seems to have been sent to London to be engraved, however no record of it is known until it was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries in London on April 19, 1744, by Richard Rawlinson, topographer, antiquary, and collector.

Little is known about the artist Peter Cooper. We’ve found from the accounts of Quaker merchant Isaac Norris that he purchased paints, brushes, and other supplies as early as 1713. He was an indentured artisan who was admitted as a “freeman” by the Philadelphia Common Council on May 27, 1717. He was probably a sign painter. His only surviving work is this, the greatest pictorial record of early Philadelphia.

The Library Company has a rich collection of art and artifacts. Throughout our 281-year history, we have amassed an impressive array of paintings, sculpture, decorative art, and scientific instruments. The collection first began when members donated an assortment of curiosities from fossils and shells to coins and arrowheads. Later, art took precedence over curiosities; the first painting added to the collection was Samuel Jennings’s Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or the Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks, a 1792 gift to the Library Company from the artist (and the first painting by an American-born artist to address the issue of slavery). Art remains strongly represented in our collection, and many of the works can be seen on display. Notable artists include: Benjamin West (1738-1820), sometimes called “the Father of American Painting,” who painted a portrait of the Rev. Samuel Preston, an English cleric who bequeathed his rich collection of rare volumes to the Library Company; Thomas Sully (1783-1872), a prolific portraitist (we hold eight portraits– among them an expressive Charlotte Cushman, the first American actress to become an international star of the stage); and James Peale (1749-1831), regarded as one of the founders and masters of American still life, whose Still Life with Peaches, ca. 1824-1831, is a particularly fine example of his artistry.

Highlights from the sculpture collection include two busts by the country’s first major sculptor, William Rush; a life-size Benjamin Franklin by Francesco Lazzarini in marble; and Minerva, Patroness of American Liberty, ca. 1791, by Giuseppe Ceracchi, which once stood behind the Speaker’s chair when Congress met in Philadelphia and was given to us when the capital moved to Washington, D.C. Additionally, this historically invaluable collection contains furniture, such as William Penn’s writing desk, John Dickinson’s music stand, and an Edward Duffield tall-case clock; scientific instruments, such as a machine Benjamin Franklin used to conduct electrical experiments; and hard-to-classify antiquities, including a lock of George Washington’s hair and oakum from the U.S.S. Constitution.

To learn more about our collection, please view our online exhibition and our digital collections.