Elbridge Kingsley (1842-1918, Hadley, Mass.) was an artist particularly known for his fine wood engravings. The Elbridge Kingsley Collection contains engravings, paintings, photographic prints and negatives, and other art both by Kingsley and from his personal collection.

Elbridge Kingsley
Though a native of a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio, internationaly known wood engraver and nature painter, Elbridge Kingsley (1842-1918), rightfully can be claimed as one of the Pioneer Valley's own. His parents, Moses W. Kingsley and Rachel W. Curtis, moved back to Hatfield when Elbridge was only six months old. He lived with them there until the age of 13 when he "ventured across the river to enter Hopkins Academy in Hadley" and, a few years later, became an apprentice in printing at the Hampshire Gazette in Northampton. Further studies took him to Cooper Union in New York, where he experimented with wood engraving, a life-long involvement. 

Continuing to move between New York and Hadley, Kingsley studied sketching from nature and drawing with James Wells Champney, the first art teacher at Smith College. At that time, he began to fulfill his "longing to sketch out of doors," using the "Sketching Cart," a horse-drawn cart set on large wagon wheels made for him, in 1879, by his blacksmith brother-in-law. With his jaunty hat and sun umbrella, he would sit at his easel outside the cart of his mobil studio in various locations around the Hadley-Hatfield environs, doing sketches for wood blocks and paintings. Much of his work appeared in Scribner's Magazine, later known as The Century. He also went to France, on assignment for the magazine, to do wood engravings of the landscape of the Barbizon School, earning a gold medal for his work at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Many other honors followed. 

Kingsley's paintings, engravings from nature and from reproductions of the works of prominent painters, and Japan proof engravings were exhibited in London, Berlin, Paris, and Japan, as well as in Springfield and Deerfield. Ever-cognizant of his local connections, he personally gave three large oil paintings to Forbes Library, as well as numerous papers, photos, and his autobiographical manuscript. 

In 1951, the Kingsley collection was enhanced considerably by the gift of Mrs. G. Cochrane Smith, of Old Deerfield, who gave the Library thirty-five of the artist's original water colors and twenty-nine etchings and engravings. 

Three large paintings, gifted by the artist Elbridge Kingsley, are prominently displayed in the Library. The hazy, almost, dreamy colors reflect the artist's view of local scenes, visited in his famous "Sketching Cart."

Images From the Archives includes only a small portion of the Elbridge Kingsley collection. To see images not currently included here, please speak with a librarian.

An overview of the collection can be found at http://www.forbeslibrary.org/special/Kingsley_Collection_Overview.pdf