Frank Hamilton Taylor

{{Short description|American artist, illustrator, and author}}

Frank Hamilton Taylor (April 21, 1846–1927) was an artist, illustrator, and author who lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He worked for newspapers and magazines, painted watercolors, illustrated, and wrote and illustrated a book on Philadelphia during the American Civil War. He was part of a group that travelled with Ulysses S. Grant in 1880 before Grant's unsuccessful campaign for reelection.

Taylor was born in Rochester, New York. He had an internship in Philadelphia in 1865 at a lithography firm. The city had a thriving publishing industry and art community, and by 1870 Taylor established his lithography firm and was an artist for various newspapers and publications in the city. Taylor also collaborated on guidebooks and publications about the city and its buildings including Philadephia in the Civil War and the Official Office Building Directory and Architectural Handbook of Philadelphia. He semi-retired in 1910 to devote himself to painting watercolors, doing washes, and drawing Philadelphia.

File:Jetties Port Eads Harpers 1878.jpg

He photographed Green's Hotel.{{Cite web|url=https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/4085|title=Digital Collections: Green's Hotel|website=Free Library of Philadelphia}}

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Taylor donated a large collection of photographs to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1922. The libraries at the University of Pennsylvania have a collection of his work.{{Cite web|url=https://archives.upenn.edu/collections/finding-aid/upx2t251/|title=Frank H. Taylor Collection|website=University Archives and Records Center}}

He made images of the southern United States, Nassau, and the Canadian province of Quebec. Illustrator Frank Walter Taylor was his son.{{Cite web|url=https://ccmoa.catalogaccess.com/people/366|title=PastPerfect|website=ccmoa.catalogaccess.com}} He accompanied former president Ulysses S. Grant, General Phillip Sheridan, and their wives to Florida, Cuba, and Mexico in 1880. He made depictions of the Thousand Islands.{{Cite web|url=https://thousandislandslife.com/frank-hamilton-taylor-harpers-weekly-special-artist/|title=Thousand Islands Life, Frank H. Taylor's Winter Excursion|date=February 14, 2021|website=Thousand Islands Life Magazine}}

Margaret G. Taylor was his wife. Drexel University has artworks by him and a carpet bag of his wife's in their collection.{{Cite web|url=https://philadelphiahistory.catalogaccess.com/people/23784|title=PastPerfect|website=philadelphiahistory.catalogaccess.com}}

File:Story's monument of Liberty, to be erected in Independence Square, Philadelphia - F.H. Taylor, Phila. LCCN2014648379.jpg's monument of Liberty to be erected in Independence Square]]

Nancy Louise Gustke wrote a doctoral dissertation on him at the University of New Hampshire in 1991{{Cite journal|url=https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1645|title=The special artist in American culture: A biography of Frank Hamilton Taylor (1846–1927)|first=Nancy|last=Gustke|date=January 1, 1991|journal=Doctoral Dissertations}} and her book The Special Artist in American Culture; a biography of Frank Hamilton Taylor (1846–1927) was published in 1995.{{Cite web|url=https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/SCSB-10248200|title=The special artist in American culture : a biography of Frank Hamilton Taylor (1846–1927)|first=Nancy L.|last=Gustke|date=June 16, 1995|publisher=New York: P. Lang}}