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Since the colonial era, Philadelphia has been a center for development in the arts and publishing. Bass Otis ranks among the city’s many trailblazers in these fields, having introduced lithography—a method for reproducing images that originated in Central Europe—that would spread throughout the publishing industry in the United States.
Otis was born in 1784 in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. In his early years, he apprenticed with a scythe maker and made a living painting coaches. He moved to Boston as a young man to study painting, and ended up in New York City working under the artist John Wesley Jarvis, nephew of the prominent Methodist John Wesley.
“Bass Otis’ portrait by himself.” Facsimile after a painting. 1860. HSP portrait collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
He relocated to Philadelphia in 1812, where he quickly made a name for himself as a highly competent portrait artist. His work appeared alongside accomplished painters from the Society of Artists of the United States at a major exhibit presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he became a member in 1824.
The highly productive painter produced a number of portraits of notable individuals including James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other leading political, intellectual, and cultural figures.
In his home studio at 515 Cherry Street, Otis began experimenting with lithography: a process for creating prints using a stone or metal plate. One of Otis’ original lithographs appeared in Analetic Magazine in 1819 (though he purportedly produced a successful lithograph a year earlier of the Universalist preacher Rev. Abner Kneeland for a volume of lectures).
Bass Otis House, 515 Cherry Street. Photograph. Undated. Philadelphia Department of Public Transit historic Philadelphia sites photograph collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Depicting an idyllic scene of a house situated near a river, the image that appeared in Analetic Magazine is believed to be the earliest surviving lithograph produced in the United States.
Bass Otis lithograph featured in The Analectic Magazine, XIV. 1819. HSP collection in LCP, The Library Company of Philadelphia.
Though Otis primarily worked in Philadelphia throughout his adult life, he also spent substantial periods of time painting in Boston, Providence, and Wilmington. He passed away on November 3, 1861.