872 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



PHILIP AST 

 1839-1903 



With sincere sorrow I chronicle the death, May 8, 1903, of 

 Philip Ast, who has been engaged in the work of this depart- 

 ment for a period of more than 32 years. 



Mr Ast was of German birth and his early training was that 

 of the Latin school and gymnasium of his home town in 

 Bavaria. At the age of 16 he entered the Bavarian army and 

 served as an officer therein in the War of 1866 between Prussia 

 and Austria. In 1870 he came to America. Mr Ast had a keen 

 artistic sense and remarkable calligraphic facility but in what 

 was to be the work of his life he had had neither experience nor 

 knowledge. On his arrival in New York he secured employ- 

 ment with the well known lithographic establishment of Julius 

 Bien & Co. and so successful were his first attempts there that 

 when Prof. James Hall, needing a lithographer for the execu- 

 tion of the plates of the Palaeontology of New York, applied 

 to Mr Bien, Mr Ast was sent to Albany to take up this work 

 though his experience was then of but a few weeks' standing. 



Free from the usual crudities of inexperience his efforts were 

 from the start successful and demonstrated not merely an apti- 

 tude but a genius for the work. His activity in this career 

 which has highly distinguished the illustrative work of this 

 institution, began Ap. 1, 1871. The hundreds of lithographic 

 plates of scientific objects executed by him remain as a record 

 of his accomplishments, in the production of which he attained 

 an adeptness and excellence which has never been elsewhere 

 achieved in this country and few European workers have equaled 

 his results for accuracy of delineation, perfection of finish and 

 effect. His work raised the plates of the Palaeontology of New 

 York to models of lithographic execution and exactitude. 



An artist on stone is at the mercy of the printer, and some- 

 times a printer not over expert or none too conscientious has 

 qualified the appearance of the imprints in a degree mortifying 

 to the proper pride of the artist, but every lithographer comes 

 to look with a sort of fatalistic toleration on such loss of the 



