AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA 01609-1634
A research library of American history and culture through 1876
www.americanantiquarian.org
Contact: James David Moran
(508) 471-2131 (office)
(508) 248-4694 (home)
(508) 783-5085 (cell)
E-mail: jmoran@mwa.org
Photo caption for Taproom by David Claypoole Johnston
David Claypoole Johnston (1799-1865) was a Boston artist and satirist who
produced hundreds of cartoons, book and almanac illustrations, and prints. Johnston had
an astonishing eye for detail and this skill, along with his ability to successfully capture an
individual’s strengths and foibles with a sweep of brush, burin, or lithographic pen, earned
for him the name, “The American Cruikshank.” One of a set of urban images made by
Johnston in the 1850s, this watercolor is part of a large archive of Johnston’s work
dispersed by his grandchildren. This was a gift to the American Antiquarian Society by
Charles H. Taylor, a member of the family that founded the Boston Globe.
This item is part of the exhibition In Pursuit of a Vision: Two Centuries of Collecting
at the American Antiquarian Society on view at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New
York, from September 12 – November 17, 2012. This exhibition is in honor of the Society’s
bicentennial this year. In Pursuit of a Vision tells the story of the significant collectors,
librarians, and bibliographers who developed and expanded the Society’s collections from
its founding in 1812. The AAS library, located in Worcester, Massachusetts, contains over
four million items from 1640 through 1876 including the largest collection of pre-1821
American imprints in the world.
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