The Mercantile Library

The Mercantile Library is a membership library. It is a non-profit institution supported by members' annual subscriptions, gifts, and income from an endowment fund. The Library receives no tax support. The name refers not to the collection but to the Library's founders who were young merchants and clerks. Organized in 1835, it is the city's senior library and one of the oldest cultural institutions in the midwest.

Maternité, a significant Elizabeth Nourse painting, is currently on loan to the Library from the collection of Frances and Stanley Cohen of Cincinnati. The painting is a large oil from 1898 depicting a peasant woman and her swaddled child. Curator Sandra Race Geiser has exhibited with the painting the artist's preliminary sketch contained in one of the Center's sixteen sketchbooks

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