HARTFORD —  The Connecticut Historical Society is presenting “Pictures for Victorian America: Prints by Hartford’s Kellogg Brothers” until July 17.

The exhibit showcases the activities, fashions and interests of ordinary people in 19th Century Connecticut through the colorful images of everyday life that were mass-produced and sold by one of Hartford’s most successful printing firms, run by the Kellogg Brothers.

In the exhibit, the society will present a lavish selection from its collection of more than 1,000 Kellogg prints that were used in Victorian homes, schools, businesses and taverns. Many of these prints have been rarely seen and some of them have never been exhibited before. They provide a broad overview of the output of the Kellogg firm, as well as a vivid picture of the life of the Victorian age.

During the middle years of the 19th Century, bright and colorful Kellogg prints decorated the walls of American homes and offices, provided up-to-date images of current events, advertised products and services, served as educational aids in schools, and provided forms on which people recorded births, celebrated marriages, and commemorated departed loved ones. The dominant art form of their day, the earliest prints predate those of better-known New York firm of Currier & Ives by more than 20 years.

The Kellogg shop included lithographic draftsmen and printers, boy apprentices and countless girls and women who hand colored the prints. The Kelloggs also worked with local artists, who produced many of their original designs. The exhibition will feature some of these unknown workers, including Joseph Buat, a French émigré lithographer who worked for the Kelloggs for more than 30 years, and Mary Maguire, a young Irish girl whose lithograph of St Patrick’s Church in Hartford was printed by the firm.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the society recently published a major book on its expansive collection of Kellogg lithographs, Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830–1880.

The Connecticut Historical Society is at One Elizabeth Street in Hartford, at the corner of Asylum Avenue. For more information, visit chs.org or contact Melissa A. Bennett at 860-236-562, extension 249.