This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following is from Darwin D Bearley, Akron, Ohio:
Ferdinand A. Brader, an untrained, itinerant, artist, known for his large, detailed, birdseye view, pencil drawings of farms and other dwellings was born in Switzerland in 1833. He migrated to the US and Pennsylvania in the early 1870s.
Most of his drawings are quite large; some measuring 50" X 36" and were done using graphite pencil. In 1890 he began incorporating colored pencil into his pictures. Most of his drawings were numbered, and he did some 300 drawings in Pennsylvania before moving to Ohio.
His Ohio drawings first appear around 1879 and Brader continued to do drawings for at least 16 years. The Ohio drawings were done in the counties of Portage, Medina, Wayne, Stark and Carroll.
Brader started numbering his drawings in Pennsylvania but continued in Ohio where the highest known number is 950.
From early records it is known that Brader was a frequent patient at the Portage Co. Infirmary in Ravenna, Ohio, usually during the winter months, but very little else is known. It is not presently known what happened to him, but there are stories that he returned to Europe.
To date, there have been two exhibitions of his work. In the late 1980s a show of mostly Pennsylvania pictures was held at the Reading Historical Society Museum in Reading, PA, and in 1991, an exhibition of Ohio drawings was held at the Massillon Museum in Massillon, Ohio.
His drawings are in collections of the Chicago Art Institute, the Canton Museum of Art, and the McKinley Museum of Canton, Ohio.
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