Label
An itinerant folk artist known for his large, detailed pencil drawings of farms, businesses, and homes, Ferdinand A. Brader was born in Kaltbrunn, Saint Gallen, Switzerland in 1833. He migrated to the United States and arrived in the Berks County area of central Pennsylvania in the early 1870s.
Brader completed around 300 drawings in Pennsylvania before migrating to northeast Ohio by 1884, where he continued to draw for 11 years. Almost all of his drawings include a caption providing the name of the property owner, township, county, state, and year. The materials Brader used in his drawings were portable so he could walk from location to location. These probably encompassed graphite pencils, colored pencils, erasers, a small ruler, knife, and perhaps also a sketchbook/journal. The items that seem too large to have been transported by Brader are a drawing board and a long ruler or straightedge, which Brader may have borrowed at each locale. Working on the huge scale that Brader usually employed would have made carrying paper extremely difficult.
The paper that Brader used is unfortunately self-destructing and will eventually disappear. It contains large amounts of highly acidic wood pulp which began to deteriorate as soon as the paper was made. The framing and backing of Brader’s drawings was usually accomplished with wood, and this destructive combination of wood with air and humidity reaching the drawing between cracks in the wood slats on the back and wherever it touched the drawing. He also brushed buttermilk onto the drawing as a fixative, which adds to the deterioration of his work. The degradation of Brader’s papers can be halted and the dark discolorations partially removed, by modern processes of aqueous de-acidification and light energy treatments, performed by a professional paper conservator. "Portage County Infirmary" underwent treatment from 2024 to 2025.
Families have passed down stories that Brader slept in their barn or other outbuildings. He also spent time, especially in winter, living at the Portage County Infirmary in Ravenna, Ohio, pictured here. The Portage County Infirmary opened in 1839 to house the poor, elderly, and sick local residents. It also operated as a self-sustaining 325-acre farm where residents grew crops like wheat and vegetables and raised livestock to support the facility. Brader captured the breadth and scale of the infirmary in his drawing, where a woman hangs laundry and cows and pigs graze amongst countless buildings. None of the original historic buildings are still standing; the site was eventually closed and redeveloped. The old infirmary also included an onsite burial ground that was later plowed over and lost, though records still remain.
At the bottom of this drawing, Brader listed the the Director, Superintendent, and Matron of the Infirmary in 1892 when he completed this.