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Lambeth has been home to many artists over the years. It is to London what Brooklyn is Manhattan. Whitman went to Brooklyn, Blake went to Lambeth. This post will add a small amount to the history of Thomas Palser (ca.1776-1843) and his Lambeth print and book shop, which served these artists. If you missed the beginning, see The Print Shop Window http://printshopwindow.blogspot.com/2012/08/thomas-palser-fl-1797-1843.html

When British watercolorist David Cox (1783-1859) first moved to London in 1804, he rented rooms at 16 Bridge Row, described as six doors down from Thomas Palser’s print and book shop. Cox visited Palser regularly, who was one of the first to buy and sell the artist’s work. Visitors to the shop would also find the work of Samuel Prout (1783-1852), John Mortimer (1740-1779), and many others.

John Hamilton Mortimer (1740-1779), A Series of Twelve Heads after Shakespeare ([Lambeth]: published by Thomas Palser, 1812).(Ex) Oversize 3925.8245f

Caricaturist and military painter William Heath (1794-1840) lived much of his early life at 5 Stangate, Lambeth. If you zoom in on the map above, you will see that Palser, Cox and Heath all lived at the bottom of the Westminster Bridge on the Surrey side. This was the perfect position to take advantage of the crowds traveling from the wealthy neighborhoods around St James’s and the Strand to the theaters of Lambeth.

This is a self-portrait of William Heath in his studio on Stangate Street. Fifteen-year-old Heath designed, printed, and self-published eight caricatures during 1809-10 before he gratefully joined Palser’s shop. He was one of several local artists who benefited from their neighbor’s help with promotion and distribution.

During the 1790s, William Blake (1757-1827) and his wife lived a few block away at 13 Hercules Buildings (now Hercules Road) and knew the Palser family (Thomas’s son became an important collector of Blake’s drawings). In 1800, the bookseller and satirist William Hone (1780-1842) opened a book and print shop with a circulating library a little further south in Lambeth Walk but was not as well situated as Palser and soon moved across the Thames.

The performer Joseph Grimaldi Senior (died 1788), father of the famous clown Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), lived down Stangate street from Heath. The Grimaldi family retained the house and that relationship probably led Palser and Heath to publish a series of prints celebrating Grimaldi’s Covent Garden successes in 1812.

William Heath (1794-1840), Grimaldi’s Leap Frog, in the Comic Pantomime of The Golden Fish, January 12 1812. Etching. Published by T. Palser; Bridge Road, Lambeth. Graphic Arts Collection GA2011.00894

In 1980, the French surrealist and ethnographer Michel Leiris (1901-1990) refused to accept the National Grand Prize of Letters, commenting that he did not want to be a topic for the media. In his obituary, The New York Times noted that Leiris compared the process of writing to a bullfight and likened the writer to a matador.

“He admitted that he had an obsessive desire to make literature ‘into an act, a drama by which I insist on incurring, positively, a risk - as if this risk were the necessary condition for my self-realization as a man.’”

In a 1975 interview, Leiris spoke about his early career. “The first writer that I knew personally was Max Jacob. He’s a man whom I’ve always considered to be a truly great poet and a great writer, and who,” Leiris recalled, “in a tattered, fragmented life full of contradictions had something quite exemplary. He was a poet in the true sense of the word…. It is through him that I came to know the painter André Masson, the one I refer to as my mentor in L’Age d’Homme; and, it is shortly thereafter, following an exhibition of Masson’s work, that I made contact with Breton, and that our whole little group of friends became surrealists.”

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired several early, limited editions by Leiris and the Surrealist circle, including:
Michel Leiris. Miroir de la tauromachie. [Paris]: Éditions G.L.M., 1938]
André Breton. Trajectoire du rêve. [Paris]: Éditions G.L.M., 1938
Michel Leiris. Le point cardinal. Paris: Éditions du sagittaire chez Simon Kra, 1927
Michel Leiris. Tauromachies. Illustrations by André Masson. Paris: Éditions G.L.M., 1937
Robert Guiette. Mort du fantôme: avec un dessin de Fernand Léger. Paris: Éditions G.L.M., impr. G. Lévis Mano, 1937

William Parrott (1813 - 1869), London from the Thames (London: Henry Brooks, 87, New Bond Street, printed by C. Hullmandel [1841]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX oversize 2012- in process.

Parrott’s lithographic title page vignette shows the Tower of London at the time of the Lord Mayor’s embarkation, with ceremonial barges at the wharf. An 1843 journalist noted, “Since the first mayoralty procession, in the year 1215, probably there have been few finer pageants than that of Thursday last, when the November sun even gilded with his beams the somewhat tarnished splendour of the City state.”

3.Lambeth & Westminster From Millbank, November 1841
4. Waterloo Bridge from the West with Boat Race, June 1841
5. Somerset House, St Paul’s & Blackfriars from Waterloo Bridge, Undated
6. Southwark Bridge from London Bridge, April 1841
7. The Pool. From London Bridge. Morning., April 1841
8. London Bridge from the Pool-, November 1841
9. The Pool looking towards London Bridge, May 1841
10. West India Docks from the South East, October 1840
11. Westminster & Hungerford from Waterloo Bridge, Undated
12. Ship Building at Limehouse, the President on the Stocks, March 1840
13. Greenwich and the Dreadnought, Undated.

With thanks to Stephen Ratchliffe and John Bidwell, we have now confirmed that Princeton University holds four volumes with original calligraphy and illumination by Alberto Sangorski (1862-1932), elder brother of bookbinder Francis Sangorski (1875-1912).

They are:
The Sermon on the Mount. Being the King James Version of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 5, 6, and 7, 1911. 14 leaves (23 pages) as designed, written, and illuminated by Alberto Sangorski. Onlaid morocco binding by Riviere & Son with morocco onlay doublures and watered silk free endleaves. Housed in a velvet-lined morocco clamshell case. Gift of an anonymous donor. Graphic Arts Collection GAX2012- in process.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). Morte d’Arthur, a Poem, 1912. 14 leaves (24 pages). Onlaid morocco binding by Riviere & Son with morocco onlay doublures and watered silk free endleaves. Housed in a velvet-lined morocco clamshell case. Gift of an anonymous donor. Graphic Arts 2012- in process

Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-1882), The Blessed Damozel, no date. 10 leaves. Rare Books: Manuscripts Collection (MSS) C0199 (no. 923)

And pictured here, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), The Lady of Shalott, 1908. Scheide Library, owned by William Scheide, Class of 1936.

John Reddie Black (1826-1880) was born in Scotland but lived most of his life in China and Japan. Of the many newspapers and journals he published, The Far East (founded in 1870) is appreciated in particular because of the original photographs used as illustrations. Black was himself a photographer and although he employed both English and Japanese photographers, Black also published his own work from time to time.

In his memoir, entitled Young Japan, Black writes about the portrait [above], which he chose for the frontispiece of his book:
“I well remember the excitement in Kioto as the time approached for opening Osaka and Hiogo to foreigners. I was but 15 years old, and yet I fully recollect that my prejudices against foreigners were as strong as those of others of my countrymen. I never heard the Tycoon make any remark about them; although I was present when at Osaka the French Minister visited him, and received a sword with the Tokugawa badge as a gift, which he immediately transferred to his sword-belt and wore as he left the palace. I also was present when an English photographer from one of the English men-of-war, was invited to take the Tycoon’s portrait, and I had the honour of receiving a copy of the portrait, in conjunction with my adopted father. I have it still. (A reduced copy of it serves as the frontispiece to the first volume of this work.)”

Black’s memoir was widely published and reprinted (it can easily be found today), but only a few copies were issued with original albumen photographs pasted into the book as illustrations. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have recently acquired one of these rare editions.

The first volume holds fifteen photographs, only one of which is almost completely faded (a map of Japan). Black died before volume two of the memoir was completed and so, perhaps, only had a hand in selecting images for the first volume.

John Reddie Black (1826-1880), Young Japan. Yokohama and Yedo. A Narrative of the Settlement and the City from the Signing of the Treaties in 1858, to the Close of the Year 1879 (London and Yokohame: Trubner and Kelly & Co. [printed at the private printing office of the author, Yokohama], 1880-1881). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process.

See also Terry Bennett, Photography in Japan: 1853-1912 (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 2006). SAPH Oversize TR105 .B45 2006q

The exhibition catalogue for Ann Hamilton: the Event of a Thread, which opened last night at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, is published in the form of a twenty-four page newspaper. A copy is currently being accessioned into the Graphic Arts Collection.

Listen to Hamilton talk about her work:

A few fortunate students are wrapping up their semester in ART 445 / ARC 445 with Prof. John Pinto, focusing on the Rome of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). For the rest of the world, you can now have the pleasure of hearing Prof. Pinto’s insights into this fascinating artist and his city, with the publication of Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects, and Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Rome.

We are especially excited to see the book, as it draws on the Princeton University Library collections (among many other institutions) and our rich holdings of Piranesi’s books and prints.

John Pinto is the Howard Crosby Butler Memorial Professor of the History of Architecture at Princeton University. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Pinto’s research interests center on architecture, urbanism and landscape in Rome, especially in the eighteenth century. Among his other publications are The Trevi Fountain (1986) and Hadrian’s Villa and its Legacy (1995), the latter co-authored by William L. MacDonald. Pinto makes extensive use of technology in his teaching, including the Nolli project, an inter-relational database of texts and images linked to a digital version of Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome.

“As they had during the Renaissance, ruins in the eighteenth century continued to serve as places of exchange between antiquity and modern times and between one architect and another. Rome functioned as a cultural entrepôt, drawing to it architects of the caliber of Filippo Juvarra, Robert Adam, Charles-Louis Clérisseau, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Through their collaboration, on-site exchanges, publications, and polemics, architects contributed notably to fashioning a more critical and sophisticated view of the material heritage of classical antiquity, one that we associate with the Enlightenment and the origins of modern archaeology.”—book jacket

John A. Pinto, Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects and Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Rome (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2012).

Soldiers Memorial. A Memorial Register of the 7th Regiment Maryland Volunteers, Company D, 1863. Chromolithographic broadside. Gift of Russell E. Marks Jr., Class of 1954. Graphic Arts Collection broadsides, in process.

“This [company] was organized and mustered into the U.S. Service for the term of three years at Baltimore, Md., Aug. 26, 1862, for the 7th Regt. Md. Volunteers. The Regt. joined the Army of the Potomac Sept. 19, 1862, but were [sic] soon after detached from it to guard the fords of the Upper Potomac, where it remained until ordered to Md. Heights.”

“The Co. and Regt. remained in this vicinity doing duty during the months of Jan., Feb., March and April, 1862. They rejoined the Army of the Potomac at Frederick City, Md., July 1, 1963, in which Army they have since remained, participating in all its battles and marches under Generals Grant and Meade.”

See also:
T. Stephen Whitman. Antietam 1862 Gateway to Emancipation. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2012. Firestone Library (F) In the Pre-Order Process

George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885). Report of Major-General George B. McClellan, upon the organization of the Army of the Potomac, and its campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, from July 26, 1861, to November 7, 1862. Boston: Published at the office of the Boston Courier, 1864. Rare Books: John Shaw Pierson Civil War Collection (W) W49.734.6.13

See pp. 68-72 in Julies Chéret (1836-1932), La Belle Époque de Jules Chéret: de l’affiche au décor / sous la direction de Réjane Bargiel et Ségolène Le Men (Paris: Les Arts décoratifs/BNF, 2010). Marquand SA ND553.C582 B374 2010q

“For some months, the latest craze on the vaudeville stage has been the vitascope, which I think is invented by Edison. At any rate, it is known by his name. It is practically a kinetoscope enlarged and the instantaneous pictures thrown upon a screen.”

” …This week a still newer development of this has been shown at one of the music halls, having come from France. This is known by the name of cinematographe and was perfected in the great photographic laboratory of Messrs. Lumiere, in Lyons. The remarkable feature about it is that the figures not only go through the action, as in the kinetoscope, but appear and disappear, walk, run, and grow smaller or larger, as seen in perspective or near by.” — Esther Singleton, “Life in Picture Films: Wonders of the Cinematographe Shown in Gotham’s Hall. Out Does the Kinetoscope” Washington Post July 5, 1896, p. 12.

It was on December 28, 1895 that the Lumière Cinématographe opened commercially in Paris. Soon after a home-version was developed and the Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have recently acquired one.

Le Cinématographe Jouet [Cinématographe toy], ca. 1900. Original paper box and toy. Graphic Arts Collection 2012- in process. Rolls of images include the dancer, the acrobats, the cooks, the boxers, and the fencers. Box label in French, English, and German.

In 1862, Albert Nees (1836-1874) and his brother Theodor founded the paper manufacturing company A. Nees & Co. in Aschaffenburg, Germany. Four years later, they developed an innovative method of coating colored paper with a layer of shellac, producing Cambricpapier, and distinguishing the firm among the many decorative paper companies in Aschaffenburg.

Graphic Arts recently acquired a collection of over one thousand paper samples from A. Nees & Co., along with a bound sample book of colored and decorated papers for the year 1936. A printed price list for the same year is laid in.

Richard J. Wolfe, in his study Marbled Paper; Its History, Techniques, and Patterns (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) places the Nees firm in the context of the German decorated paper industry and its spread from Aschaffenburg throughout the world. At one time, the four leading Aschaffenburg firms employed over a thousand people and produced wall papers, paste papers, wrapping papers, and hundreds of other varieties of colored and decorative papers. [Graphic Arts Collection GA Oversize Z271 .W638 1990q]

A. Nees & Co., Buntpapierfabrik. Neuheiten, 1936 (Colored Paper Manufacturer. New Products 1936) (Aschaffenburg: Nees, 1936). Approximately 1000 additional paper samples. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012- in process

The American caricaturist William Charles drew several prints around the War of 1812. This satire focuses on King George III attempting to restore lost ships after battles on the Great Lakes in 1813 and 1814. Charles was clearly aware of his British contemporaries Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, and George Cruikshank, who each drew satires using the image of a politician as baker. Here are a few other caricatures with the same iconography.

These are close-ups from the Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Packenham [sic] on the 8th of January 1815 by Joseph Yeager (ca. 1792-1859) after William Edward West (1788-1857). We are adding the second state of the print to show the change in Major General Lambert’s hand.

Why? The folklore around the print states that officers in the Army complained about the view of a soldier crying for his lost comrade and demanded that the handkerchief be removed. The pointing figure was the best the engraver could do without altering more of the composition.

But which Army was complaining? Lambert was a British officer and this print shows the battle from the British point of view. It is, however, an American print published in Philadelphia. Was it the American Army that demanded the change in the British soldier? Was Lambert too sympathetic a figure when the focus of the image was meant to be the death of the British troops?

In addition to the complex iconography, there are five variants of the print, which we often categorize into two first states (with handkerchief) and three second states (without handkerchief). We believe our second print is the 2nd state, 2nd variation.

Joseph Yeager (ca. 1792-1859) after a design by William Edward West (1788-1857), The Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Packenham on the 8th of January 1815. Philadelphia: Published and Sold by J. Yeager, [1816]. Hand colored engraving. 1st and 2nd state. Purchased in part with support of the Barksdale-Dabney-Henry Fund, 2012.

When U.S. Navy commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed to Japan in 1853 and trade routes were opened between Japan and the United States, Americans were introduced to a new iconography from the East. Japanese designs began to find their way into all sorts of American objects.

William L. Sunderland’s lithographic printing company in Providence R.I. was producing “all kinds of lithograph work at short notice and upon the most favorable terms,” when the craze for Japanesme hit the east coast. The firm (known as L. Sunderland Co.) quickly designed and printed a series of trade cards incorporating various Japanese themes.

Among the businesses that purchased these eye-catching feats of artistic printing were Sapanule, makers of the celebrated Glycerine Lotion (said to cure rheumatism, neuralgia, pneumonia, diphtheria, sore throats and more); Dr. J.F. Brogan, “Operative Dentist” at 305 Fulton Street, Brooklyn; Summit Mineral Springs Water; and Harry Harper, a paper dealer and stationer at 60 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

Nine trade cards printed by L. Sunderland, Providence Rhode Island, 1870s-1880s. Chromolithography. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process

“André Mellerio, publisher of L’Estampe et l’affiche, wrote the decade’s most influential book on the subject, La Lithographie originale en couleurs (Paris, 1898). Describing the infrastructure for graphic art, he declared colour lithography ‘the distinctive art form of our time’ and found forty artists worthy of special mention. Chief among them were Toulouse-Lautrec and four of the Nabis—Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and Ker-Xavier Roussel.”
—Pat Gilmour, Grove Art Online

For his own book, Mellerio chose Bonnard to illustrate the volume with a lively cover and frontispiece. His essay has, happily, been translated to English in its entirety by Dennis Cate and can be read in: Phillip Dennis Cate, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890-1900; with a translation by Margaret Needham of André Mellerio’s 1898 essay La lithographie originale en couleurs (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Art Gallery, in cooperation with the Boston Public Library, c1978). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2009-0243Q

In the summer of 1812, Great Britain was at war. Seventeen-year-old William Heath (1794/95-1840) began a series of watercolors for the Strand print shop of James Jenkins featuring victorious battles scenes to be called The Martial Achievements of Great Britain and Her Allies from 1799 to 1815. Thirteen large paper parts were released between December 1814 and December 1815, including a total of fifty-three hand colored prints with aquatinting by Thomas Sutherland (1785-1838).

Orme issued several variations on this series, including Historic, Military, and Naval Anecdotes of Personal Valour, Bravery, and Particular Incidents which occured to the Armies of Great Britain and her Allies, in the last long-contested war, terminating with the Battle of Waterloo (1819). “The forty coloured aquatints … are from drawings by J. A. Atkinson, F. J. Manskirch, W. Heath, J. H. Clark, etc… . . Of the engravings, thirty are by M. Dubourg, seven by Clark and Dubourg together, and two by Fry and Sutherland together.”

Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), A Ward of Chancery, & a Commission of Lunacy Superseded, March 16, 1807. Etching with hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02667

This print, surprisingly, refers to the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1800, which required the indefinite detention of mentally ill offenders. It was passed thanks to chief counsel Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), who argued that an actor named James Hadfield (1771/72-1841) was insane when he tried to shoot King George III during a performance at the Drury Lane Theatre. Erskine convinced the judge that Hadfield had only pretended to kill the King because the actor wanted to die and knew he would be killed for the attempt.

Since the laws of the time had no provision for holding or treating criminals who were found to be insane, a bill was rushed to the House of Commons so that Hadfield would not be set free. No more than four days after the trial, “A Bill for Regulating Trials for High Treason … and for the Safe Custody of Insane Persons Charged with Offenses,” also known as the Criminal Lunatics Act was passed.

Erskine was made Lord Chancellor in the Ministry of All the Talents, although he had no background for the office and only lasted fourteen months in the position. He is seen here rescuing a dog that was being beaten by a group of boys. This actually happened in February 1807 and Williams finished the print a few weeks later, referencing Erskine’s history of rescuing mad men and mad dogs.

I am working on a catalogue raisonné of William Heath, including his prints, drawings, and illustrated books. Here’s a first draft (pdf). If anyone would like to comment or correct, I’d be glad to hear from you.

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/gapdf/heath11.pdf

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), Exposition de l’oeuvre de Corot: a l’École nationale des beaux-arts. Notice biographique par M. Ph. Burty (Paris: Typographie Jules-Juteau et fils, 1875). Two woodburytypes from negatives by Charles Desavary. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) in process.

Late in his life, Corot posed for a series of portraits by Desavary, as though he was painting plein-air, sitting at a canvas under a white umbrella in his garden.

Corot died in February 1875 and an exhibition in his honor was mounted at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Paris, surveying the artist’s complete works. The surprisingly slim exhibition catalogue was published in two editions; the first was a large paper edition with two of Desavary’s portraits printed by Rose-Joseph Lemarcier (1803-1887) whose firm specialized in making woodburytypes. The second edition, slightly smaller in size, used various left-over prints indiscriminately pasted onto the frontispiece of each volume, as the supply allowed.