A white marble bust of Boston hotelier Harvey D. Parker (of Parker House Hotel fame) presides over the Morse Study Room for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs here at the MFA. Parker looks pleased with himself, which is not surprising, since he gets quite a bit of flattery. We often tell visitors to the Study Room about how Parker was, in a way, the founder of the MFA’s collection of prints and drawings, one of the largest and most important in the country. And that’s true—sort of. Parker was no collector, but in 1897, with funds from his bequest, the Museum acquired Henry F. Sewall’s renowned print collection, almost certainly the largest and most comprehensive to be assembled in the United States during the 19th century.

But that purchase, which laid the bedrock for the collection that has grown and evolved over the century and a quarter since, didn’t happen by magic. Parker’s bequest provided the means, but the acquisition came only after years of persistent advocacy by Sylvester Rosa Koehler (1837–1900), the MFA’s first curator for prints. Koehler isn’t exactly forgotten today, but his star has dimmed. Born in Germany, Koehler came to America as a 12-year-old boy, settling first in New York and later moving to Boston to work for Louis Prang, the city’s leading publisher of color prints. Koehler was a printer, an internationally recognized print historian, an author, an editor, and above all, a tireless advocate for printmaking of every sort. He had infinite curiosity and what seems like boundless energy, as well as an admirably unsnobbish appreciation for prints of every kind, from pictures in illustrated weeklies to the finest etchings by Rembrandt. All fascinated him equally. Koehler was an extraordinary figure for the time—any time, really—but today the recognition and appreciation of his exceptional accomplishments has diminished to a relatively small subset of print historians—i.e., print nerds.

Ever since we joined the MFA’s Department of Prints and Drawings more than a decade ago, both of us have been intrigued by Koehler’s literal and figurative paper trail. Every time we dip into corners of the collection that came to the Museum during his relatively short 13-year tenure, we stumble across unusual or unique objects. A few years ago, deep in the early months of the pandemic, these repeated discoveries led our department to apply for a grant from the Getty’s Paper Project Initiative, to allow us to investigate (and digitally reconstruct) one of Koehler’s most ambitious projects: an 1892 exhibition on printing processes from the 15th to the late-19th century. The show was basically an encyclopedia of every method of putting ink to paper ever devised (up until the 1890s), all laid out step by step. The Getty grant has enabled us to take a deep dive into the early collecting history of the Department of Prints and Drawings for the first time. A new online resource brings to light a largely intact and unparalleled print collection from the perspective of a printer turned curator, who built a serious reference collection to serve not just museum visitors but a whole generation of American artists and designers.

Relative to the size of its collection, the MFA's print department was understaffed in Koehler's day, so we’ve long wondered how he was able to achieve all that he did. How did he manage to juggle his many roles—including curatorial positions in both Boston and at the Smithsonian, in Washington, DC—all while writing, conducting international research, and teaching? Thanks to surviving correspondence in the MFA archive, we now understand that Koehler’s daughter, Hedwig, was his right hand and representative, likely long before she joined the Museum’s staff in 1891. This discovery goes a long way toward explaining why Koehler once briefly quit his job until the MFA agreed to hire her. But that’s a story for another time, perhaps when we tell you about Koehler’s 1887 exhibition on American women printmakers—another first!

Take a deeper dive into the 1892 exhibition through the MFA’s online resource “Sylvester Koehler: Exploring Print History.”