Recently in Prints, Drawings, Paintings Category

James Heath (1757-1834) after Francis Wheatley (1747-1801), The Riot in Broad Street, 1790. Hand colored engraving. Graphic Arts 2011- in process

In the following days about 100 buildings owned by Roman Catholics or by the Catholic Church were looted or burnt down. The Bank of England, Buckingham Palace and Downing Street were all attacked. On June 7, the militia was called in; nearly 450 people were arrested and 300 were shot.

Before the work was completed, there was a fire at Heath’s house and the painting was destroyed. Unfortunately, the contract stipulates that Boydell was responsible to return the work, barring “Fire or other Inevitable Accidents.” The engraving was issued in 1790.

Princeton’s graphic arts collection holds a large box marked only “Minstrel blocks,” containing woodblocks cut to illustrated a nineteenth-century story. We have not been able to identify the artist or the book. If you have a clue, please drop us a note or attach the answer here. Thank you.

The French engraver and typographer Louis Luce was the inventor of the light typeface we call “Luce”. He was born in Paris in 1695 and worked first for the silver and goldsmiths. Eventually, he was named printer to the King and engraver to the Imprimerie Nationale. In 1771 Luce wrote Essai d’une nouvelle typographie: ornée de vignettes, fleurons, trophées, filets, cadres & cartels, inventés, dessinés & exécutés. Graphic Arts GAX Z250.L944. Just a note, former owners of our copy include William M. Ivins and Theodore Low De Vinne.

Louis-René Luce (1695-1774), L’impremerie presente aux sciences une epreuve, et les couronnes au temple de memoire (Printing Presents Science a Proof, and the Crown to the Temple of Memory), 1761. Engraving. GC077 French Prints Collection.

Etienne Picart (1632-1721) after a painting by Correggio (ca. 1489-1534), Allegory of Vice, 1676. Engraving. Graphic Arts French prints GC077.

The French engraver Étienne Picart (also known as Picart Romanus or Stephanus Picart) spent his early years in Rome engraving the Italian masters before settling in Paris. He opened a studio on the Rue St Jacques, au Buste de Monseigneur, engraving prints and book illustrations. In 1710, Picart and his son Bernard emigrated to the Netherlands where he continued to print until his death at the age of eighty-nine.

Explanations of this allegory describe a naked man, his hands tied behind him, being tormented by three naked women with serpents in their hair. Personally, I’m not sure he looks tormented. In the center foreground, a small boy tempts us with a bunch of grapes. The inscription reads in part: Image de l’homme sensuel, enchante par la volupte, lie par la mauvaise habitude, et tourmente par la synderese (The image of the sensual man, enchanted by lust, bound by bad habit, and tormented by conscience).

Dublin born, Harvard educated John Trumbull (1756-1843) had only one good eye but he didn’t let that stop him from pursuing a career as a painter. At the age of twenty-four, he moved to London to study with Benjamin West (1738-1820), painting alongside another of West’s students, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828).

Under West’s influence, Trumbull completed The Death of General Montgomery, The Death of General Wolfe, The Death of General Mercer, The Death of General Warren, The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and Surrender of General Burgoyne.

In the case of The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, “complete” is not the right word since he worked on the subject on and off for forty-five years, leaving at least twelve sketches and three oil paintings. Princeton University is fortunate to own seven of the twelve sketches, which many critics have valued for their spontaneity and freshness over the final oils.

In 1950, Theodore Sizer worked out the sequence of works and their owners: (Princeton University Library Chronicle 12, no.1):

1, 1786, pencil sketch, Yale University 1938.277(1)

2, 1786, pen and ink wash sketch, Princeton University [at the top]. General Mercer has been beaten to his knees. George Washington and his officers are on horseback.

3, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. General Mercer has been moved to the right. On the left Lieutenant Charles Turnbull is backed against a cannon. Washington can be seen in the center with Nassau Hall in the distance.

4, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. Mercer is back in the middle, Turnbull is at the right, and Washington on the left.

5, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. Turnbull is at the left, Washington on the right, and Mercer at the center.

6, 1786, pen and ink wash sketch, Princeton University. This combination has been finished in an ink wash but Trumbull still is not satisfied.

7, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. Washington is back in the center and Turnbull on the left, balanced with two soldiers walking out of the frame.

8, 1786, pen and ink wash sketch, Princeton University. A file of British infantrymen march in from the right. The triangle is complete and Trumbull creates a finished sketch, before working in oil.

9, ca. 1786-88, oil painting, Yale University. 1832.6.2

10, 1790, pencil sketch, private hands [not illustrated]

11, 1791, pencil sketch, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Robert W. de Forest, 1906 (06.1346.2). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: www.metmuseum.org. This drawing represents Brigadier General Hugh Mercer. Because his subject was deceased, Trumbull used for his model Mercer’s son Hugh Jr.; he twice sketched the young man in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in April 1791.

12, 1791, pencil sketch, Fordham University [not illustrated]
13, 1791, pencil sketch, Fordham University [not illustrated]

14, ca. 1789-ca. 1831, oil painting, Yale University. 1832.6.1

15, 1844, oil painting, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, #1844.5. This painting was In the possession of the artist until his death in 1843, when it was purchased by Daniel Wadsworth and committee members of the Wadsworth Atheneum from Benjamin Silliman, executor of the artist’s estate, in 1844.

Trumbull gave sketches no. 3-8 to his nephew-in-law Professor Benjamin Stillman in the late 1830s, who passed them on to his son, Stillman II, and then to Stillman III. In 1896, the sketches were sold at auction to Junius Spencer Morgan, Class of 1888, who donated them to Princeton University in 1904 (GA 2005.00005-10). The seventh drawing, no. 2, was purchased in 1957, thanks to the generosity of Edward Duff Balken, Class of 1897 (GA 2006.02348).

Our sincere thanks to Yale University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum for allowing us to post their images. More of Trumbull’s work at Yale can be seen at: http://discover.odai.yale.edu/ydc/Author/Home?author=Artist%20John%20Trumbull

Early in her career, Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) took the geometry of color and form that she and her husband, Robert, were exploring on canvas and translated it to printed fabrics. She called these textile and costume designs “simultaneous contrasts.”

While living in Portugal during the First World War, Delaunay opened a store in Madrid called Casa Sonia, where she sold “simultaneous” dresses, coats, home furnishings, and accessories. She also designed the costumes for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe performance of Cléopâtre (1918) and other avant-garde productions.

Back in Paris, Delaunay created a sensation with her two-dimensional cardboard “poem-dresses” for Tristan Tzara’s 1923 Dada production La Coeur a gaz (The Gas Operated Heart) . She and Robert were offered numerous exhibitions of both their canvases and textiles, including the influential Grand Bal Travesti-Transmental.

In 1924, Delaunay opened a Paris textile printing workshop, Atelier Simultané, to produce her line, Maison Delaunay. In addition, she collaborated with Jacques Heim on a display for the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. As a result, a limited edition portfolio of her designs was printed in pochoir and published by Librairie des Arts Décoratifs.

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), Sonia Delaunay: ses peintures, ses objets, ses tissus simultanés, ses modes, préface d’André Lhote; poèmes de Cendrars, Delteil, Tzara, Soupault (Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, [1925?]). Charles Rahn Fry Pochoir Collection, Graphic Arts (GAX) Oversize 2004-0020E

In December 1726, William Hogarth (1697-1764) designed an etching, entitled The Punishment Inflicted on Lemuel Gulliver, in response to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels [below]. An enormous backside (Britain) is being given an enema by the Lilliputians (the Whig ministry and church). The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, supervises the action.

On July 30, 1746, a lawyer named David Thomas Morgan (1695-1746) was executed for his part in the second 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Within days, an anonymous print, using Hogarth’s premise, was issued “for Jonathan’s father.” It is titled Orator H—y laying the Independent Rump Ghosts. A faithful narrative of the wonderful and surprising appearance of Counsellor Morgan’s ghost: at the meeting of the independent inhabitants of the city and liberty of Westminster, last Friday night being the first of August; Giving a full and true Account of the Behaviour of the Club upon that fearful Occasion; together with a genuine copy of the speech he made to them, without his head.

The title refers to Reverend John Henley (1692-1756) who performed monologues or lectures at a theater near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and was briefly arrested in 1746 for outspokenness supporting the Battle of Culloden (the last battle of the Jacobite uprising, won by the English in 40 minutes, leaving over 1,200 dead).

Henley is shown drinking and smoking with a political club whose chairman is at the head of the table, followed by Jakey of York, Baron Bumpe, Count Newport the Butcher, Henley, Esq’ Thrift ye Executioner, Charlton the Butcher, and Buckhorse the Bruiser. They are interrupted by several shrouded figures, described as the The Independent Rump Ghosts, led by Counsellor Morgan, who moons the club and then, farts “See What you shall all come to.”

Paul-Albert Besnard (1849-1934), Souscrivez pour Hâter la Paix par la Victoire (Subscribe to Hasten Peace through Victory). Poster for the Third Loan of the National Defence. Paris: Maquet Gr., 1917. Lithograph. Graphic Arts French prints

During the First World War, the French government solicited funds from its people through National Defense Loans. Both the second and the third appeal, 1916 and 1917, were led by lithographic posters designed by Albert Besnard. As a decorative artist, Besnard worked on a large scale, creating frescoes at the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Pharmacie, the Salle des Sciences at the Hotel de Ville, and the ceiling of the Comédie-Francaise, among others.

At the time that Besnard designed these posters, he was the director of the École des Beaux Arts and one of the most sought after artists of the day. Two years later, he was one of the artists chosen to participate in the National Exhibition of French art held in the United States.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Le petit garcon au porte-plume (The Little Boy with the Pen), ca. 1910. Lithograph. Graphic Arts French Prints.

Renoir sketched his eldest son Claude as the boy was quietly writing in the artist’s studio one day. Drawing with a greasy crayon on special transfer paper, Renoir did not have to worry about the complex problems of lithography. When he was finished, he simply gave the drawing to the master printer Auguste Clot (1858-1936), who printed an unsigned edition of fifty.

See entry no. 55 in: Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), The Graphic Work of Renoir, catalogue raisonné́ compiled by Joseph G. Stella (Bradford: Lund Humphries, between 1971 and 1975). Marquand Library (SA) ND553.R2 S74

Graphic Arts is the fortunate new owner of proof prints, blocks, and drawings by the Brothers Dalziel (pronounced De el, rhymes with Real), previously owned by the bookseller Nigel Williams (1962-2010). The collection includes eighty-five proof wood engravings for the Bible, ca. 1860s; forty-three proofs of illustrations of children; and an uncut pencil drawing pasted to a woodblock, depicting wrecked ships below a cliff face and titled “Coast scene by Thomas Dalziel 1872-3” on the label pasted underneath.

The collection also has an engraved woodblock depicting the Adoration of the Magi in a fitted case with two proofs of the image and an early reproduction of the drawing for “Sampson carrying the Gates” by Frederick, Lord Leighton, reproduced as a wood-engraving in the Dalziel Bible Gallery, framed and glazed.

One hundred forty-six proofs illustrate The Arabian Nights, prepared from drawings by Thomas Dalziel and first published in 1877. Many include the aritst’s annotations for reworking (we are lacking only no. 8, 24, and 65 from the series numbered 1-148 and tailpiece).

Finally, twenty-nine wood-engraved proofs are by William Harvey to illustrate The History of Ancient and Modern Wines by Alexander Henderson (1824), one of the first books illustrated by Harvey. The proofs were formerly to property of Thomas Dalziel

This block gives us direct proof of the wood engraving process used by the Brothers Dalziel and others. A linear sketch was delivered by one of the artists, the drawing was pasted to a woodblock of the same size, and the engraver cut directly through the paper into the block, cutting away the white areas and leaving the black lines standing in relief.

Although this print was never cut and so, never published, the first long poem by Meg Blane in Robert Buchanan’s North Coast and Other Poems (1868) is set in a similar landscape. It’s possible that the drawing was designed for that publication.

Many of the proofs include handwritten comments indicating changes or correction still needed. Above on the right, there is a question about the intention of the artist. The man’s hand might be holding a torch or it might be handing food to a bird. Hopefully, the engraver clarified the image for the publication.

See also, Dalziel’s Illustrated Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (1865). EX 2263.2864
and
Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881). Graphic Arts GAX 203-0010F

Attributed to Francesco Bartolozzi (1728-1815) after Loraine Smith (1751-1835), The Game of Hazard, 1782. Etching with aquatint. Published by M. Rack, London. Graphic Arts GAX 2011-

In Smith’s design, we see (on the left) the Whig politician Charles James Fox (1749-1806) who was, at the time, the foreign secretary in Rockingham’s short-lived government, and (right) Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (1732-1792), who had recently left office as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons.

They are busy playing the popular dice game called Hazard. The print is inscribed, “Here goes at the Treasury and all in the Ring, Seven’s the Main & Seven’s a Nick.” 1 May 1782

Born in Florence, the superb engraver Francesco Bartolozzi moved to London in 1764 and helped to establish the Royal Academy of Arts. While there, Bartolozzi did a number of commercial projects including the aquatinting of this print, working from in his large home in the North End, Fulham.

Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856), Going to a Fight. [Illustra]ting the Sporting World in all its variety of Style and Costume along the/ Road from Hyde Park Corner to Moulsey Hurst, 1819. Etching with aquatint and hand coloring. Box theater by Sangorski & Sutcliff. Graphic Arts 2011-

A series of eight prints by Robert Cruikshank (George’s brother) showing forty-one numbered scenes are joined together to form a panorama, reading right to left. The prints show a group of Londoners traveling to a boxing match in Moulsey Hurst (near East Molesey). Landmarks seen along the way include the White Horse Inn and the Diana Fountain at Hampton Court.

Princeton’s copy was originally in a hand-held cylinder, decorated with a hand colored and varnished print of two boxers by Cruikshank. Later, a box theater was constructed in wood and red leather so that the scroll could be viewed through a glass window. The box resembles one posted earlier for the panorama Trip to Town (GA 2005-01039). Both are embossed: E.P. Sutton & Company, Sangorski & Sutcliff.

The author of Boxiana, Pierce Egan (1772-1849), wrote Key to the picture of the fancy Going to a Fight at Moulsey-Hurst, (London, 1819) but no copy is held in graphic arts.

Thanks to the generous donation of W. Allen Scheuch II, Class of 1976, given in honor of Meg Whitman, Class of 1977, graphic arts is the proud owner of a watercolor portrait by the British artist Sarah Biffin (1784-1850). Born with no arms or hands or legs or feet, Biffin taught herself to perform a variety of everyday tasks using her mouth and shoulders. She developed a talent for drawing and painting; became an expert seamstress; and performed these abilities before a crowd of spectators.

Biffin’s family contracted with Emmanuel Dukes, a traveling showman, to make her one of his sideshow attractions. She traveled from town to town, painting or writing for the public’s entertainment. Dukes publicized her as “The Eighth Wonder!” and pocketed all the proceeds from the sale of her watercolors.

Thanks to the patronage from George Douglas, the sixteenth Earl of Morton (1761-1827), Biffin was finally released from her contract and established a studio in the Strand, London, where she painted miniature portraits.

A brief and unfortunate marriage left Biffin destitute. Her later years were spent in poverty, living in Liverpool, surviving thanks to the support from a public appeal led by Richard Rathbone. Biffin continued to paint and in 1844, completed this portrait of James West (1808-1884), captain of the U.S. Mail Steamship “Atlantic,” which sailed between New York and Liverpool.

For more details, see the entry on Biffin in: Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan, The Intimate Portrait ([Edinburgh]: National Galleries of Scotland; [London]: The British Museum, 2008. Marquand Library and Graphic Arts ND1314.4 .L56 2008.

Designed and published by William Hone (1780-1842) and etched by George Cruikshank (1792-1878), The Royal Shambles or the Progress of Legitimacy & Reestablishment of Religion & Social Order - !!! - !!!, 1816. Etchings. Graphic Arts Cruikshank. Gift of Richard W. Meirs, Class of 1888.

Louis XVIII (1755-1824) was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for 100 days in 1815. Napoleon Bonaparte had escaped his island prison and was headed to Paris. The soldiers stationed outside Paris defected to Bonaparte and Louis XVIII quickly left France. Happily for him, the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo and the King was able to return, reentering Paris on July 8, 1815.

There was a celebration the following July and in August 1816, the British artist William Hone (1780-1842) published this panoramic caricature of the French King’s procession, literally on the backs of the French people. Princeton is fortunate to own three copies, a hand colored proof, an uncolored proof, and a finished copy with lettering added.

In Hone’s procession, Louis XVIII rides on a cannon pulled by Wellington. Four men/countries march along, including Francis I, Emperor of Austria; Frederick William III, King of Prussia; John Bull; and Alexander I, Tsar of Russia. Behind, on a crowned donkey are two couples, Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duc d’Angoulême (1775-1844), Charles, Duc de Berry (1686-1714), and their wives.

On the scaffolding above, a variety of executions, hangings, and mutilations continue in-between cheers. Rather than “Long live the King” the crowd shouts “Vive l’Oie,” (Long live the goose).

William Hogarth (1697-1764), Before (left) and After (right), 1736. Etching and engraving, 2nd state (Paulson 141 and 142). Graphic Arts Hogarth collection

Hogarth painted two versions of these scenes, one depicting the lovers indoors and one outdoors. The first was commissioned by John Thomson, who fled to France before the paintings were finished, after being charged with fraud and theft in the 1731 Charitable Corporation scandal.

The man in the scene has been identified as Sir John Willes, Walpole Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and a notorious womanizer. Hogarth fills the prints with sexual innuendo, such as the framed cupid preparing to shoot his rocket before and smiling contentedly as the rocket returns to earth after.

Although she hesitates, the woman is not completely virtuous. On her vanity is a book of erotic poems by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) and in the drawer is another volume labeled simply “novels.” After sex, the man dresses quickly while the woman entices him to stay. On the floor, a book is open to a quotation from Aristotle: “Omne Animal Post Coitum Triste” (Every animal is sad after intercourse).

The diptych sold well throughout Hogarth lifetime but after his death both Mrs. Hogarth and John Boydell suppressed it from some bound editions of his complete works. In later editions, they were often placed inside folders at the back of the volume.

In 1895, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his friend, the photographer Maurice Guibert (1856-1913), took a vacation on a steamship, intending to sail from Le Havre to Bordeaux. While on board, Lautrec became infatuated with a red-haired woman. He never spoke to her or learned her name; he only knew that she slept in cabin number fifty-four. At his friend’s request, Guibert secretly took a photograph of her while she was relaxing on a deck chair.

Lautrec learned that she was traveling on to Dakar, Africa. Rather than disembark at Bordeaux, he remained on board hoping to speak to her. It was not until Lisbon that Guibert is said to have dragged the artist off the ship and back to Paris.

The Parisian magazine La Plume, under the leadership of Léon Deschamps, sponsored a series of exhibitions from 1894 to 1900 called Le Salon des Cent, because the shows were limited to 100 artists. Lautrec was commissioned to create a poster for the 1896 exhibition and used Guibert’s photograph to draw the red-haired woman. His lithograph became known as La passagère du 54 - Promendae en Yacht (The Passenger in 54 - On a Cruise).

See also La Plume. No 1-426 (15 avril 1889-1 jan. 1914). Firestone Recap 0904.726

Albert Alden (1812-1883), The Life and Age of Man: Stages of Man’s Life, from the Cradle to the Grave, wherein all Christians May Behold their Frail Nature, and the Miseries that Attend a Sinful Life, Set Forth in an Alphabetical Poem. Barre, Mass.: Printed by Thompson and Alden, [ca. 1835-1840]. Broadside with a large allegorical wood engraving attributed to Albert Alden. Paul M. Ingersoll, Class of 1950, Graphic Arts Acquisitions Fund. Graphic Arts Broadside Collection.

Picturing the different ages and/or stages of life has been a favorite subject of artists, from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. The earliest broadsides were printed for a popular audience, to appeal to their fears about life and death; sin and salvation; and stimulate the belief in a moral life.

In 1540, the German painter Jörg Breu, the younger (ca. 1510-1547) published Ten Ages of Man, one of the first engravings showing the steps of life, with staircases leading both up and down, as man passes from the cradle to the grave. Abraham Bach repeated the motif in the seventeenth century, but added a woman on each step, with the more politically correct title, Ten Ages of Human Life.

This seventeenth-century Ages of Man engraving closely resembles the nineteenth-century broadside held in Princeton’s graphic arts collection. It presents a man’s life in eleven steps, with three muses in the central arch below. Albert Alden’s broadside depicts life in eleven stages, but offers the more typical devil at the bottom center, tempting two men. One accepts and one rejects these temptations. In both prints, a clock is ticking, moving us ever closer to midnight.

The Pennsylvania printmaker Gustav S. Peters designed another version, with only slight variations, as did James Baillie, Nathaniel Currier, and the Kellogg Brothers. Dozens of other versions were published, purchased, and hung on bedroom walls throughout the nineteenth century.

For more information, see Thomas R. Cole, The Journey of Life: a Cultural History of Aging in America (Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Firestone Library (F) HQ1064.U5 C526 1992
and
Alan Wallach, “Voyage of Life as popular art,” Art Bulletin 59, no. 2 (June 1977)

Engraved by Bernard Picart (1673-1733) after a design by Pierre Gaubert (1659-1741), La défaite de Porus [Defeat of Porus by Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Hydaspes], ca. 1730. Engraving. Graphic Arts French prints

In 326 B.C.E., along the banks of the Hydaspes River, in what is present day Pakistan, there was a battle between King Porus of Paurava (4th century B.C.E.) and Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.). Alexander’s men faced an army that included 200 war elephants, which led the first charge. After a long and bloody battle, 3,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry were killed, leaving Alexander and his men the victors. Impressed by the dignity of King Porus, Alexander is said to have made peace with him and given him the kingship of neighboring territory.

Picart created this scene at the same time that he was completing thousands of prints for the massive study Religious Ceremonies of the World (Ex Oversize 5017.247.11f). Professor Anthony Grafton wrote, “In 1723, the engraver Bernard Picart and the printer Jean Frederic Bernard revealed the varied religions of the world to European readers. In seven splendidly illustrated folio volumes that appeared from 1723 to 1737, Religious Ceremonies of the World offered—at least to anyone strong enough to lift one of the volumes and open it—a tableau of the world’s priests and believers, in action.” “A Jewel of a Thousand Facets,” New York Review of Books June 24, 2010.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a similar, large format print of this battle, engraved by Picart but after a design by Charles le Brun (1619-1790). Unfortunately no image has been posted on their database.

See more:
Philip Freeman, Alexander the Great (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). (Dixon) Firestone DF234 .F74 2011
and
Lynn Avery Hunt, The Book That Changed Europe: Picart & Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). Firestone BL80.3 .H86 2010

This is an early nineteenth-century version of the Game of the Goose, which is claimed to have been a gift from Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1541-1613) to King Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) sometime between 1574 and 1587. According to H. J. R. Murray, A History of Board-Games Other than Chess (Firestone GV1312 .M8 1952), the Game of the Goose reached England by 1597, when John Wolfe entered “the newe and most pleasant game of the Goose” in the Stationers’ Register.

No matter what the theme, the board consists of sixty-three numbered spaces arranged in a spiral. In La prix de sagesse each of the numbered compartments depicts a fable from Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695), arranged around a center square. Rules are also given in English, along with brief summaries of the fables in verse to left and to right.

The French poet La Fontaine published 243 fables in twelve books from 1668 to 1694. He took his inspiration from Aesop, Horace, and ancient Indian literature such as the Panchatantra. The first collection of Fables Choisies (Ex 3262.33.173) appeared March 31, 1668, dedicated to “Monseigneur” Louis de France (1661-1711) the six-year-old son and heir of Louis XIV, King of France and Maria Theresa of Spain.

Rare Books and Special Collections holds more than 150 editions of La Fontaine’s Fables. The Cotsen collection holds over two dozen different versions of the Game of the Goose, included a variant edition of the La Fontaine: Jeu instructif des Fables de la Fontaine (Paris: Basset [between 1835 and 1845]). (CTSN) Print Case LA / Box 99 103446

For English translations of the fables, see http://oaks.nvg.org/fontaine.html

The Swedish miniature painter Niclas Lafrensen created this Rococo scene in gouache to be engraved by the Parisian master printer Nicolas Delaunay and sold through the fine print market. The print is dedicated to Countess d’Ogny, wife of a young nobleman Claude-François-Marie Rigolet, Comte d’Ogny (1757-1790). We see Madame d’Ogny choosing wallpaper, taking a singing lesson, and having her hair done while entertaining guests in an elegant sitting room.

It is interesting to note that Comte d’Ogny, the founder of the Paris-based music society, Concert de la Loge olympique, and patron of Franz Josef Haydn, was known for his extravagance and left a debt of 100,000 livres when he died.

Lafrensen and Delaunay also created a pendant scene: Le billet doux (The Love Letter) showing a man slipping a letter to one woman while chatting with another.

Delaunay engraved a number of book illustrations. Here are a few:
Arnaud Berquin (1747-1791). Idylles, romances, et autres poésies de Berquin (Paris: Ant. Aug. Renouard, 1803). Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) Euro 18 23489

Jean Michel Moreau (1741-1814), Dessins de Moreau ([Paris: s.n., 1776-1779]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2008-2366N