Graphic Arts

This posting is in honor of Stephen Rea’s brilliant performance at the Public Theater in Kicking a Dead Horse. http://www.publictheater.org/
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Rare Books and Special Collections holds a large collection of Irish theater plays, playbills, posters, and manuscripts given by Leonard L. Milberg in honor of the Irish poet and Princeton professor Paul Muldoon.

Shown here is a poster from an early production by Stephen Rea’s Field Day Theatre Company, The Cure at Troy written by Seamus Heaney and directed by Stephen Rea. His company also originated the production of Translations by Brian Friel. Field Day now publishes books. https://marketplace.nd.edu/
fielddaybooks/index.cfm

For more information on the Irish Theater Collection, see the website http://www.princeton.edu/milberg. Here is a finding aid to the posters: http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/
firestone/rbsc/aids/tc145.html

Coming in 2011, a new collection of Irish novels.

At the age of twenty-two, John Foster had completed his education at Harvard and was teaching English grammar in Dorchester, Massachusetts. When his friend and minister, the influential Richard Mather, passed away, members of the congregation planned a publication in his honor. Foster offered to design and print a woodcut portrait of Mather for a frontispiece to The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather. Only six copies of the print are known. It is considered the first woodcut printed in the United States.

[Metamorphosis] ([Philadelphia, ca.1775])

Graphic Arts holds three different editions of this ealy American juvenile. This one contains eight woodcuts by James Poupard. The prints are arranged into sections with four of the plates cut through the center so that the top and bottom can be raised. The lion turns into a griffin, the girl into a mermaid, etc. According to Sinclair Hamilton’s Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, some later 19th-century editions carry the title Metamorphosis; or, a Transformation of Pictures with Poetical Explanations for the Amusement of Young Persons.

In the 1820s, a group of men from Philadelphia, prevented by an obscure ordinance from enjoying their favorite pastime in their own city, began playing an early version of baseball in Camden, New Jersey. By the 1830s, other teams had formed along the East Coast, and rules to the game were published in Robin Carver’s Book of Sports (1834). Carver’s book included this wood engraving depicting a baseball game played on Boston Common. The same block was used to illustrate several publications over the next few years, including the first and second editions of The Boy’s Book of Sports (1835 and 1838).

1546

1761

1831

1884

1930

1954

Aisōpou tou Phrygos ho bios kai hoi mythoi: auxēthentes te kai pro sapēkribōmenoi pros antigraphon palaiota ton to ek tēs basilikēs bibliothēkēs = Æsopi Phrygis vita & fabulæ : plures & emendatiores, ex vetustissimo codice bibliothecæ Regiæ (Lutetiæ [Paris]: Ex officina Rob. Stephani typographi Regii, M. D. XLVI. [1546]). Greek title and Greek subtitle in Greek characters; text in Greek. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3189N




Robert Dodsley (1703-1764), Select Fables of Esop and Other Fabulists …(Birmingham [Eng.]: printed by John Baskerville, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1761). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Baskerville 1761b



Fables of Aesop and Others, translated into English with instructive applications, and a print before each fable by Samuel Croxall (Philadelphia: S. Probasco, 1831). engravings by James Poupard. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2003-0490N






Selections from Aesop’s Fables, versified by Clara Doty Bates; accompanied by the standard translations from the original Greek; illustrated by E.H. Garrett … [et al.] (Boston: D. Lothrop, c1884). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2003-0369N


The Subtyl Historyes and Fables of Esope, Translated out of Frensshe in to Englysshe by William Caxton at Westmynstre in the yere of oure Lorde. mcccc.lxxxiij ([San Francisco]: The Grabhorn Press at San Francisco, 1930) “Two hundred copies… Initialed and decorations by Valenti Angelo …” Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3609N


12 Fables of Aesop (New York: Museum of Modern Art, c1954) “Linoleum blocks by Antonio Frasconi to illustrate Twelve fables of Aesop newly narrated by Glenway Wescott, Adapted from a limited edition designed by Joseph Blumenthal.” Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Z232.B654 A37 1954

The Potawatomie Indian Tribe occupied various lands in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin as they were pushed further and further west by U.S. government treaties. As hunters and farmers, one of the many things they were known for was their medicinal herb gardens. This is a nineteenth-century Potawatamie herbarium, or medicine stick, identifying the plant specimens from one area or territory. Note the hand-coloring.

Western Americana collection WC086

This untitled and undated pastel by the American modernist Arthur Dove found its way into the graphic arts collection without even a mention in the department's annual "new and notable" commentary. It has never been published and was not included in the artist's catalogue raisonné.

The pastel has been attributed on the verso to the 1930s, which is fitting. In 1920s, Dove lived with Helen Torr in a houseboat on Huntington Harbor, off Long Island, and he often included abstracted landscapes of the water and shore in his work. Dove also included elements of collage in his work of this period, none of which are present in this pastel.

At the end of the 1920s, Dove wrote to his dealer Alfred Stieglitz, "Am more interested now than ever in doing things than doing something about things. The pure paintings seem to stand out from those related too closely to what the eye sees there. To choose between here and there--I should say here." Dove to Stieglitz, October 1929, Beinecke Library.

In 1933, Dove moved to rural Geneva, New York, and produced a number of formal color studies based on the wildlife of the area, emphasizing shapes and lines in an effort to move closer to an organic abstraction. When he returned to Long Island in 1938, Dove's work changed once again; his color pallet became bolder and his abstractions more geometric. It is from somewhere within the early 1930s period that I believe Princeton's pastel was created.

The Inconstant Moon: Poems to the Moon by Mark Jarman … [et al.]; with a Homeric hymn translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis; lithographs by Enid Mark. (Philadelphia: ELM Press, 2007) Limited edition of 45 signed copies, 8 poets’ copies numbered I-VIII, and 10 artist’s proofs. (GAX) Oversize 2007-0662Q

James Nasmyth (1808-1890) and James Carpenter (1840-1899), The Moon, Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite. 2d edition. (London: J. Murray, 1874). Illustrated with woodburytypes and wood engravings. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2003-0202Q

Nasmyth photographed his own hand to demonstrate the similarity between the shrinking of the molten surface of the moon and the wrinkling of his own skin.

In 1954, Princeton received a gift from the painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). This donation included issues of 291, a monthly magazine published out of The Little Galleries of the Photo Succession, run by her husband Alfred Stieglitz. Today, the graphic arts division holds issues no. 2-7/8 (although no.1, 9-12 are currently missing, things have a way of turning up).

291 was edited by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Marius de Zayas (1880-1961), Paul Haviland (1880-1950), Agnes Ernst Meyer (1887-1970), and to a lesser extent Francis Picabia (1879-1953), and Katherine N. Rhoades (1885-1986). Many of the prints include hand-coloring and issue no. 7/8 has a photogravure by Stieglitz.

291 no.3 May 1915. Page design by Marius De Zayas, poems by Katherine N. Rhoades and Agnes Ernst Meyer.


291 no.3 May 1915. Le Coq Gaulois drawn by Edward Steichen. “A Bunch of Keys” by J.B. Kerfoot.

William Morris (1834-1896) wrote, “Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” [Hopes and Fears for Art, Rare Books (EX) 3867.4.345] One of the objects Morris would not have objected to was his own Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, also known as the Kelmscott Chaucer after the press where it was printed.

In 1891, Morris set up three presses in his home, where he could design and print fine press editions. Over 50 books were completed. The Kelmscott Chaucer was one of the last and certainly one of the most successful.

The book was the product of many talented men besides Morris. The text was edited by Frederick Startridge Ellis (1830-1901), ornamented with 87 pictures designed by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), and engraved on wood by William Harcourt Hooper (1834-1912). It is interesting to noted that Burne-Jones’s drawings were photographed and the photographic images printed onto the woodblocks to ensure the fidelity of the engraving. The full-page woodcut title, fourteen large borders, eighteen borders or frames for the pictures, and twenty-six large initial words, along with the ornamental initial letters large and small were designed by Morris. For more on this, see The Life of William Morris by J. W. Mackail, v. 2, p. 326, Graphic Arts collection (GAX) PR5083.M25.

Around 1740, painter and printermaker Thomas Worlidge settled in the Covent Garden section of London. He found success painting portrait miniatures and later, as an etcher working “after the manner of Rembrandt”. This refers to his drypoint technique of drawing with a sharp needle directly into the surface of the copper plate. It also alludes to Worlidge’s admiration for Rembrandt the man, such as in this frontispiece self-portrait, which is a clear imitation of a Rembrandt self-portrait.

When Worlidge died in 1766, he was in the middle of a massive project etching a series of 182 drypoint portraits. Princeton owns several variant editions of the collection. The following is a description of the project taken from the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 21:

The series was published in parts, some of which seem to have been issued as early as 1754 but Worlidge died before the work was completed. It was finished by his pupils William Grimaldi and George Powle, and was published by his widow in 1768 at the price of eighteen guineas a copy. In its original shape the volume bore the title, A select Collection of Drawings from curious antique Gems … printed by Dryden Leach for M. Worlidge … and M. Wicksteed, Seal-engraver at Bath.

The frontispiece, dated in 1764, shows Worlidge drawing the Pomfret bust of Cicero; behind on an easel is a portrait of his second wife, Mary. No letterpress was included originally in the volume, but between 1768 and 1780 a few copies were issued with letterpress. After 1780 a new edition in quarto, deceptively bearing the original date of 1768, appeared with letterpress in two volumes at five guineas each. The title-page omits mention of M. Wicksteed’s name, but is otherwise a replica of the first.

Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch (1884-1976, Princeton class of 1906) was a successful businessman and friend to the Princeton University Library. In particular, Kienbusch donated an extensive collection of books, manuscripts, and other works relating to angling. In among the reels and tied flies are some amazing paintings and drawings, including Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait’s American Speckled Brook Trout, seen above.

When Tait immigrated to America in 1850, he was already a practicing lithographer and illustrator. His was also an enthusiastic amateur naturalist. In his spare time, Tait hiked the Adirondack Mountains; camping, hunting, and painting in a summer studio he built.

Charles Edward Whitehead (1829-1903), Wild Sports in the South; or, The Camp-Fires of the Everglades. With illustrations by Ehninger, Tait and others (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 1238

Tait produced thousands of paintings, most often romantic depictions of sportsmen and outdoor life. It was his still life of a brook trout that first caught the attention of Currier & Ives, who commissioned the elaborate “American Speckled Brook Trout” for a commercial print. Tait became one of their favorite free-lance artists, producing over forty-two designs for print reproduction. These prints sold for anywhere from 5 cents to $3.00, depending on the size and coloring. Tait wisely sold only the rights to the design and kept the oil paintings for himself, to be sold separately.

Around the same time as this painting, Tait designed the frontispiece for Charles Whitehead’s “Wild Sports in the South,” which was engraved on wood by N. Orr & Company.

leaf 39 “t” Beatitude and leaf 40 “v” Coronation

blank verso of leaf 40 and leaf 38 “s” Hell

Princeton’s historical leaf collection holds three leaves from an edition of the Biblia pauperum, one of the best-known of the fifteenth-century blockbooks. According to Nigel Palmer’s article in the current Journal of the Printing Historical Society (no. 11, 2008, Firestone Z119 .P95613), the Biblia pauperum was “an ensemble of texts and images which narrated the history of man’s redemption from the Annunciation through to the Last Judgement and the coronation of the blessed soul in heaven” represented in 40 plates. During the 1460s, the 40 woodblocks for this volume were recut three times, along with seven intermediate issues in which just some of the blocks were replaced.

Mr. Palmer examined the sheets in Princeton’s collection and wrote that he believed they belong to the edition X, “almost certainly printed in Germany”. Of the known copies of this edition, Palmer identified one in Blackburn, England, originally from Gotha, which lacks these numbers and might be a match for our leaves.

The three leaves shown here are anopisthographic (printed on one side). Two of the sheets have been pasted together to form recto and verso of one sheet. Because there are so few Biblia pauperum surviving in their original structures, it is difficult to be certain about their construction but several editions were sewn into single-quire volumes in chancery folio (approximately 310-20 x 440-50 mm., only slightly larger than Princeton’s sheets).

Blockbooks were made from about 1450 to the 1470s, and Palmer cautions us to regard them as intertwined with all experimentation in printing technology of the period, included single-leaf woodcuts, single-leaf metalcuts, single-leaf engravings, books and single leaves with text printed with moveable type, and books with typographic text and woodcut illustrations.

For a complete reading of the iconography in each plate (in English), see Avril Henry’s Biblia Pauperum Marquand Library Oversize Z241.B6B52 1986Q

Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, (784?-856), Magnencij Rabani Mauri De Laudib[us] sancte Crucis opus. erudicione versu prosaq[ue] mirificum ([Pforzheim, Germany: Thomas Anshelm, March 1503]). Gift of Elmer Adler. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-1145Q

Rabanus Maurus (784?-856), the Archbishop of Mainz, was one of the greatest writers of the Carolingian age. Rabanus compiled an early encyclopaedia, wrote commentaries on the Bible, and devised a complicated system of coded poetry, shown here.

Princeton’s Magnencij Rabani Mauri De Laudib[us] sancte Crucis opus begins with an introduction by Jakob Wimpheling (dated 1501) and includes 30 full-page poems printed in red and black, followed by a transcript in ordinary type for the sake of clarity and a Declaratio explaining the whole ingenious arrangement. The encrypted poems are composed in a grid of 36 lines each containing 36 letters. Rabanus sometimes incorporated a figure within the grid, creating both a figurative and a literal picture poem.

Saint Odilo of Cluny, an 11th-century devotee of Rabanus’s poetry wrote “no work more precious to see, more pleasing to read, sweeter to remember, or more laborious to write can or could ever be found.” Gustav Mahler was also a fan and composed his 8th symphony around one of Rabanus’s poems.

Other images of these poems can be found at http://www.almaleh.com/
raban-e.htm.

Soon after Thomas Maitland Cleland left school, at the age of 16, he taught himself to set type, bought a small Gally Universal, and began making books in his basement. In 1900, he moved to Boston and published under the imprint Cornhill Press, named after the street where he lived. D. B. Updike of Merrymount Press was an early mentor, who provided commissions and endless criticism, leaving Cleland chronically unsatisfied with anything less than perfection.

Cleland went on to work as art designer for McClure’s Magazine, the Locomobile Company of America, the Westvaco Corporation, the Cadillac Motor Car Company, and Fortune Magazine, although he wrote “I am not, and never have been, particularly interested in advertising and have done much of my work for it only because it was, or seemed to be, necessary in order to make a living.”

In the 1930s, he made a series of calendar illustrations for the Harris, Seybold, Potter Company of Cleveland Ohio, which manufactured high-quality sheet-fed offset lithographic printing presses. The company tried to convince the printing world that sheet fed-offset presses could produce quality 4-color process work and Cleland’s prints were meant to provide the proof. “God Bless America,” seen below, is one of these prints.

In between commercial work, Cleland illustrated fine press editions, often using a series of stencils. Writing to Merle Armitage about his process, Cleland explained “It is made entirely with stencils which I cut myself by hand in thin metal (thirteen of them in all) and which I then printed successively by brushing through them with pure water colours. … so far as I know, no one has attempted before to make a complete picture with them as a medium, and I hope no one will try it again. It was an insane amount of work for such a trifling result, and took about four months work to make a hundred of them—fifty for the special edition of Adler’s book of my work, and fifty for sale.” (GAX Oversize NE539.C57 A3 1929q)

One of his most complex projects was Jonathan Wild, seen above, printed under Cleland’s supervision by the Marchbanks Press and published by the Limited Editions Club. In a letter to editor George Macy in 1942, Cleland wrote, “I am anxious to have this large line drawing photographed for the plate so … I should have proofs of the plate on which I can paint in the color for each stencil … so that they will have only the actual coloring of the edition to do after the book is off the press.” The coloring was accomplished by Charlize Brakely, who charged $10 per thousand pages. The book has 30 pages with color in an edition of 1,500, so that means a total of 45,000 pages to color.

Sadly, Robert Rauschenberg died on Monday night at the age of 82. One of many obituaries for this great artist can be read at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
05/14/arts/design/14rauschenberg.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The Graphic Arts division is fortunate to hold a set of publisher’s proofs for Rauschenberg’s print edition of XXXIV Drawings for Dante’s Inferno, published in 1964 by Harry Abrams. This collotype portfolio reproduces the 34 drawings in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A great source of information about the Dante project and many of Rauschenberg’s other works of art is Mary Lynn Kotz’s Rauschenberg, Art and Life, revised 2004 Marquand Library SA ND237.R187 K679 2004.

There are works of art, films, books, and other materials in the storage rooms of museums and libraries across the country for which the copyright owner cannot be found. Any use of these materials could mean statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work and so, these orphans go unused. Please write to your congressmen and congresswomen to encourage them to pass the Orphan Works Act of 2008. For more information, see http://www.publicknowledge.org/alertfax/1549

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to help you with your own:

I am writing to ask you to support H.R. 5889, *The Orphan Works Act of 2008*. The bill addresses a problem under copyright law that stops copyrighted works from being used when their owners cannot be found. These works are called “orphans” and there are millions of them that go unused today because filmmakers, libraries, archives, museums, and publishers are afraid of being sued. Penalties for using an “orphan work” without permission can be as high as $150,000 if the original copyright owner appears.
H.R. 5889 allows for orphan works to be used, so long as the user does a “qualifying search” for the owner. In the off chance the original owner surfaces after the search, he is compensated for the use. The bill goes out of its way to prevent “bad faith” users from gaming the system, but is balanced enough to not make it burdensome for the honest users.
The bill includes a “Notice of Use Archive,” a limit on how an orphan can be used, and an extra fee just because a work was registered. These sections would add costs and put more burdens on users that would limit their use of orphan works. I would urge you to take out those sections of H.R. 5889.
Lastly, H.R. 5889 authorizes services that would let owners upload their photos or other visual works to online databases so that the owners could be found later if someone else wanted to use the work. These services are a good idea, but the bill should be changed to guarantee the public free access to search them, including through Internet search engines. Please support this small but important change to the bill.
I urge you to make the above changes to H.R. 5889, and support its passage.

The Graphic Arts collection holds a wide selection of optical toys and instruments, from a portable camera obscura to 20th-century Magic Mirror Movies. One of the favorite viewing devices in the Victorian era was affectionately known as the Peep Egg.

Victorian peep egg, ca. 1843. Aalabaster and glass viewer. GA 2005.00242

Unlike moving image viewers, such as the phenakistoscope or the zoetrope, this personal viewer allows one person to view one still image through a monocular lens. More complex peep shows or boite d’optique were equipped with many openings and/or moving parts to simulate daytime and nighttime. These viewing eggs were often made as souvenirs for a special event, festival, or exposition.

The peep egg is made of alabaster, so that light passes through the body of the device and no other source of illumination is required. The body is fitted with twin alabaster handles rotating a spindle so that two or three prints can be mounted inside the body of the egg. Each person turns the handle at his/her own speed to see each of the images. Princeton’s egg is from London and offers a hand-colored engraving of Greenwich Hospital, another of the Thames river at the entrance to the Tunnel, and a third panel in-between with a small bouquet of dried foliage and crystals.

One of many good websites showing optical devices is: http://users.telenet.be/thomasweynants/pre-cinema.index.html

Attributed to Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), [Mister O’Squat: A Panorama] (London: Published by William Sams, Booksellers to his Royal Highness the Duke of York opposite the Palace, St. James Street, 1822). Box embossed: E.P. Sutton & Company; Sangorski & Sutcliff. GA 2005.01039

Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) was one of the greatest of the British caricaturists. Critic Robert Hughes wrote “William Hogarth invented the panorama of social class as a subject in English painting. Rowlandson, who was eight when Hogarth died, continued the tradition, with an equal gusto but greater humor. The dark side of Hogarth, his capacity for moral rage, is largely missing in Rowlandson, and his interest in art theory is entirely absent.”

Theodore Lane (1800-1828) on the other hand, was a lesser known British caricaturist who worked around the same period as Rowlandson. A savant, who had his debut at the age of 16 with an exhibition of paintings at the Royal Academy, Lane is only known today for his humorous work, such as his caricatures of George IV.

The graphic arts collection holds a scrolling panorama made up of 12 unsigned, hand-colored etchings, with a narrative in verse, attributed to Rowlandson and titled Mister O’Squat. This year, a search for more information about this item uncovered an unbound series of 12 panoramic colored prints that were sold in a 1906 book sale under the title Mister O’Squat and the Widow Shanks. This title corresponds to a listing in OCLC for a series of prints with verse attributed to Lane and titled The Misadventures of a Pair of Newlyweds who Leave the Country for the Superior Pleasures and Society of London, also called Mister O’Squat and Widow Shanks. Published in 1818, this is also a panorama in 12 sections, each 13 x 73 cm. the same as Princeton’s.

Were these prints just reconfigured to be viewed as a continuous scene through the window of a small box (sometimes called a myriopticon)? Did Rowlandson know of Lane’s prints and reproduce them for the publisher William Sams? Is the 1818 series misattributed to Lane and really the work of Rowlandson? These are still unanswered questions that deserve further research before an answer is given.

In the early years of the 20th century, the publishing house known as Tolmer et Cie or Maison Tolmer was located at 15, quai Bourbon in Paris. The editor in chief was Alfred Tolmer, who took over after his father, and who’s son, Claude, was also with the firm. These three generations of Tolmers produced literally hundreds of beautiful volumes with exceptional design, often illustrated with original pochoir or lithographic prints. See Papillons in a previous blog post.

In 1930, Alfred Tolmer began to write his definitive treatise on graphic design, entitled Mise en Page: the Theory and Practice of Layout, which continues to be consulted today, if only for the inspirational layout of this book alone. The volume deals with photography, typography, and illustration, using unusual techniques of collage, pochoir, and coated papers. He published a French language edition himself and an English language edition with The Studio magazine, which was printed in London and includes the French text at the back.

The Excellency of the Pen and Pencil, Exemplifying the Uses of Them in the Most Exquisite and Mysterious Arts of Drawing, Etching, Engraving, Limning. Painting in Oyl, Washing of Maps & Pictures … (London, Printed by T. Ratcliff and T. Daniel, for D. Newman and R. Jones, 1668). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2003-1344N

The coming of the seventeenth-century brought a proliferation of drawing manuals, beginning with Henry Peacham (1576?-1643?), The Art of Dravving vvith the Pen and Limning in Water Colours (London: Printed by Richard Braddock, 1606) [available online as an electronic text]. These books were written for an aristocratic audience of men and women who had the time to train their eyes and improve their mind.

The manuals provided instruction with an emphasis on art as an intellectual endeavor. Drawing is always the essential practice, with the arts of printing and painting coming later. Linear or contour models of the body parts are offered for copying, teaching the popular practice of limning.

The Excellency of the Pen and Pencil was published anonymously, printed by Thomas Ratcliff and Thomas Daniel, and sold by them at the Chyrurgeons Arms and at the Golden Lyon. The text is based in part on the writings of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein. The title page introduces it as “A Work very useful for all Gentlemen, and other Ingenious Spirits, either Artificers or others.” A second edition was published in 1688 with the significant edition of a section on the mezzotint, a process that came into use just after the first edition had been released.

Other seventeenth-century drawing manuals available at Princeton include: Sir William Sanderson (1586?-1676), Graphice. The Use of the Pen and Pensil. Or, The Most Excellent Art of Painting (London: Printed for R. Crofts, 1658). Marquand Library (SA) NE910.G7 F17 1658

John Evelyn (1620-1706), Sculptura, or, The History, and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper (London: Printed by J.C., 1662) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), NE1760 .E94

William Salmon (1644-1713), Polygraphice: or the Arts of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limning, Painting, Washing, Varnishing, Gilding, Colouring, Dying, Beautifying and Perfuming (London: Printed by A. Clark, for John Crumpe, 1675). 3rd ed. Marquand Library (SAX): Rare Books, NE910.G7 S45 1675x

George Bellows (1882-1925), The Murder of Edith Cavell, 1918. Black chalk and black crayon over charcoal on cream wove paper. Courtesy of Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund

On August 5, 1915 Edith Cavell, head of the Training School for Nurses in occupied Brussels, was arrested for assisting Belgian, British, and French soldiers to escape from the country. Two months later, she was shot by the German authorities. As news of her execution spread, with no fewer than 41 stories in The New York Times alone from October 16-30, her case became somewhat of a cause célèbre.

The American artist George Bellows included this incident in a series of 12 lithographs he produced depicting atrocities committed by the German armies in Belgium. The Graphic Arts collection is fortunate to own 7 of the 12 prints from this series, including The Murder of Edith Cavell. In 1959 the Princeton University Art Museum found and acquired Bellow’s finished, full-size drawing (53.5 x 68.5 cm.) for this print. Interestingly, only after completing the drawing and print did Bellows paint the same scene in oil. The painting now belongs to the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts.

For a comparison of the work in three mediums, see the entry by Robert A. Koch “George Bellows’ Murder of Edith Cavell” in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 18, no.2 (1959): 46-62.

For more about the Cavell case, see Correspondence with the United States Ambassador Respecting the Execution of Miss Cavell at Brussels (London, Darling, 1915). Rare Books (Ex) 2004-1558N

One of the highlights of Cincinnati’s thirteenth annual Industrial Exposition in 1886 was the trompe l’oeil painting by the American artist William Harnett called The Old Violin. Publisher Frank Tuchfarber, who specialized in art reproductions, bought the painting both for his love of music and his interest in selling a commercial reproduction of the painting.

The resulting chromolithograph was printed in seventeen colors, each from a separate stone. The thickness of the inks, along with the varnish, gives the impression (if not the exact look) of an oil painting. Two versions exist; one published in Cincinnati and one in Covington, Kentucky under the Donaldson Art Sign Company (also known as Donaldson Lithographing Company). Although neither was issued with a printed date, Princeton’s copy is a printer’s proof and so probably from around 1887. The sheet is not trimmed to the image but retains its margins, with their registration crosses, color keys and ink bleeds.

The popularity of this print and the question of the artistic achievement in making the chromolithographic reproduction led to a court battle over the copyright for the print. To read more about this, see http://www.law.uconn.edu/homes/swilf/ip/cases/bleistein.htm

Antonio Frasconi, Albert Einstein, 1952. Woodcut and woodblock. GA2007.01286

This portrait of Albert Einstein was completed by Antonio Frasconi in 1952, three years before Einstein’s death, as a commission for the Princeton Print Club. The Print Club was organized in 1940 as an undergraduate activity with the stated aim of furthering student interest in the field of the Graphic Arts. Dues were $5 and in the first year the Club numbered 180 members. The Club’s founder Kneeland McNulty, class of 1943, went on to become a print curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The members decided on three main activities:

To build up a lending collection of examples of contemporary American Graphic Art and to offer them each term, framed and free of charge, to undergraduates for the decoration of their rooms.

To hold exhibitions, invite authoritative lecturers, and provide demonstrations by artists of the various techniques of print making. An extra-curricular seminar, conducted by Elmer Adler was held on the history and identification of the Graphic Art techniques. These seminars were open to all students regardless of Club membership.

To invite to Princeton each year an outstanding American artist in the Graphic Arts to make sketches of the Princeton campus for the annual Club Dividend Print. A signed proof of this print was presented to each member. Prints were completed by T.W. Nason (1941), Louis Rosenberg (1942), Charles Locke (1943), Louis Novak (1944), Harry Shokler (1945), Samuel Chamberlain (1946), George Jo Mess (1947), John Meniham (1948), Leonard Pytlak (1950), Hans Mueller (1950), Herbert Waters (1951), and Antonio Frasconi (1952).

“THE FIRST DUTY of the mistress after breakfast is to give her orders for the day, and she naturally begins with the cook.

ON ENTERING THE KITCHEN, invariably say, “Good morning, cook” (a courtesy much appreciated below stairs), go into the larder—do not give a mere glance, careless or nervous, as the case may be, but examine every article there; never let anything that displeases your neat eye pass: it is much easier to correct as you go along, than to overburden a maid with directions or reprimands. Do not allow any shy fear of strangers, as new servants of course are, to interfere with the careful discharge of your duties as a wife and mistress of the household. Look in the bread-pan and see that there is no waste. After all joints a good basin of dripping ought to be in the larder.

IN ORDERING DINNER it is best to write down what you intend having; for instance, one o’clock dinner, “Cold beef, potatoes, greens, apple pudding;” six (seven or eight) o’clock dinner, “Julienne soup, fish, roast fowl, gravy, bread sauce, boiled bacon, browned potatoes, spinach, plum tart, custard pudding. Another good result from writing down the dinner; it keeps both mistress and cook up to the mark in seeing that every proper accompaniment to a dish is served with it.”

The first edition of Mrs. Beeton’s book was published when she was only twenty-five. Unfortunately, she died before for turning thirty. To read more about her eventful life, see Kathryn Hughes, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton (New York: Knopf, 2006). Firestone Library TX140.B4 H84 2006

S.M.S. ([New York]: Letter Edged in Black Press, 1968). Gift of Barbara Kamen Movius in 1992. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2006-0017E

Volume No. 1
A: Black dress by James Byars; B: Chicago project by Walter de Maria; C: Two propositions in black by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela; D: Photograph - hottentot apron by Sol Mednick; E: Luggage labels by Nancy Reitkopf; F: LERP SMS Title Page; G: My country ‘tis of thee, West Germany 1968 (4 views) by Kasper König; H: A postal card - for mother by Richard Hamilton; I: Project for a bridge by Su Braden; J: Store front by Christo; K: Pharmaceuticals by Julien Levy

Volume No. 2
A: A proposed comic section for the New York Times by Bernard Pfriem; B: A 2-year old girl choked to death today on an Easter egg by Ray Johnson; C: Three color separation by Alain Jacquet; D: Cynocephalus & co. by Nicolas Calas; E: The mirror of genoveva by Meret Oppenheim; F: Thesis (1960) by Lee Lozano; G: Legal tender by Bru