Untitled Joseph Jefferson, ca. 1885 color monotype, 35.7 x 50.7 cm (14 1/16 x 20 in.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase and gift of the Reverend Dewolf Perry Jefferson Biography

One of the most enthusiastic practitioners of the monotype was the famous actor and amateur artist Joseph Jefferson. Fellow actor Francis Wilson recalled that Jefferson "became restless if long without a brush in his hand, and when he travelled professionally he carried an artist's outfit and daily applied himself with gleeful, almost feverish enthusiasm to `monotyping.'" Since he did not always have access to a real printing press, Jefferson improvised: "He had a gigantic wash-wringer made, and it was a conspicuous article of furniture in his parlor at the various resting-places throughout the country."

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