Yearly Archives: 2014

Photography and the Princeton Print Club

The Princeton Print Club (PPC) was established in October 1940 by Princeton University’s newly christened Research Associate in Graphic Arts, Elmer Adler (1884-1962) with exhibitions, a print lending collection, and annual print publications, among other events. Two months later, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) held its first exhibition of photography. Although there were no classes in photography at Princeton, through the PPC the undergraduates began studying and exhibiting contemporary American photography.

Little more than a year after the club was established, an exhibition of twenty exceptional color photographs of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico by David Hare (1917-1992) opened in January 1942 at the PPC’s headquarter at 40 Mercer Street. The son of Elizabeth Sage Goodwin, an art collector and a backer of the 1913 Armory Show, Hare grew up in a house filled with artists. As a professional photographer, he was an early practitioner in color photographic processes. This led to an assignment for the American Museum of Natural History to make photographic portraits of Hopi, Navajo and Zuni Indians in the Southwest. Hare exhibited the color-dye transfer prints in 1939 and then, published twenty of them in a limited edition portfolio. Adler introduced his students to Hare’s work and helped them borrow the portfolio for an exhibit (WA Oversize 2005-0041F).

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The return of many young men after WWII reinvigorated the club with a strong focus on modern technologies, in particular the photographic arts. In April of 1947, the PPC announced an exhibition of photographs by Brett Weston (1911-1993) of scenes in and around Princeton. The photographs were loaned by David H. McAlpin, Class of 1920, an early supporter of contemporary photography, only recently returned to his Princeton home from service as a Navy commander. Before the war, McAlpin had commissioned and purchased Weston’s work and it is possible that McAlpin was hoping the PPC would select one of Weston’s campus photographs for their annual print (they chose to publish George Jo Mess’s acquaint “Stanhope Hall, Princeton University”).

In October of the same year, again thanks to McAlpin, the PPC sponsored a large exhibition of photography by Ansel Adams (1902-1984). The photographer himself accepted an invitation to visit Princeton and give a talk about his work on October 23, held at the PPC’s new headquarters at 36 University Place. Adams told the students how he intended to have a career as a concert pianist, but a six weeks’ walking trip through the Sierra Nevadas turned his interest toward photography. When MoMA formulated plans for a photographic wing, Adams was appointed vice-chairman of the photographic committee, which also included McAlpin.

Student photographers were encouraged to enter their prints the following April 1948, when McAlpin sponsored a photography contest “under the auspices of the Princeton Print Club.” Each print was to focus on the theme of roofs and chimneys found on the Princeton campus and prizes included both cash and photographic equipment. So successful was the event that another contest was held the next November, and each semester that followed.

Fifty student photographs were exhibited by the PPC in the fall semester and the Daily Princetonian announced that prizes would be awarded during a lecture by Beaumont Newhall, although it was in fact Nancy Newhall who had been invited and spoke to the students. As MoMA’s curator of photography during the war, Nancy Newhall was active in assembling the museum’s photography collection. She focused her remarks on the cross-section of contemporary camera work currently on exhibit at the print club.

Also during the fall of 1948, the students of the PPC were invited up to MoMA and allowed to personally select a group of photographs for a Princeton exhibition. Photography: Works of the Greatest Contemporary Masters included “a variety of artistic nude studies and the works of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston [Brett’s father], and Alfred Stieglitz.”

In conjunction with this exhibition, a lecture was given by color photographer Eliot Porter (1901-1990). The Daily Princetonian reported that Dr. Porter told the students that as a young man he was an enthusiastic birdwatcher. However, his love of nature and photography did not seem suitable for a career and so after majoring in chemical engineering at Harvard, he went on to earned an M.D. at the Harvard Medical School.

Porter never lost his fascination with birds, however, and continued to photograph them. “Encouraged by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who presented a show of Mr. Porter’s photographs at his New York gallery, he finally gave up teaching and started work full-time as a freelance photographer in 1939.”

“The Exact Instant,” was the title of a lecture given to the PPC in March of 1949 by Edward Steichen (1879-1973), curator of photography at MoMA. Several years earlier, a group of photographs taken by the U.S. Navy’s photography unit in the Pacific, under the direction of Captain Steichen, had been held by the New Jersey State Museum and Adler had selected a group for Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection. The PPC made a selection of these prints and in conjunction with this exhibition welcomed Steichen to the Club.

In the same month, Adler announced the gift of 72 photographs by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) including portraits of Katherine Cornell, Salvador Dali, Theodore Dreiser, Joe Louis, and Gene Tunney, among others. The Van Vechten collection was to be used in connection with Princeton Print Club activities and the students complied immediately by mounting an exhibition.

On October 31, 1949, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) wrote to his old friend Elmer Adler, “this afternoon at the Modern Museum picking prints for your show. There will be 25 in all.” Once again, MoMA had approved a loan for the PPC and the museum prints were carried to Princeton by Steiner on New Jersey Transit.

He stayed to deliver the Spencer Trask Lecture entitled simply, “Photography.” That evening prizes were also delivered to the winners of the photo competition, including first prize to Arthur D. Haas, Class of 1951, and second prize to William B. Hall, Class of 1947, and special mention was given to A. Perry Morgan Jr., Class of 1946, along with $5.00.”

One final photography show was arranged under the PPC before Adler left Princeton and the graphic arts collection moved into Firestone Library. For this April 1952 event, Edward Steichen personally selected the work of 44 young and upcoming photographers in MoMA’s collection, most only a few years older than the Princeton students. Nine of the men and women whose work was shown at the PPC were winners in Life magazine’s recent “Contest for Young Photographers,” certainly an inspiration to the young men of the PPC.

Fête de l’estampe

Self-portrait by Robert Nanteuil

On May 26, 1660, twenty-one year old Louis XIV signed the Edict of St-Jean-de-Luz, pronouncing the art of engraving free and distinct from the mechanical arts and declaring that all French engravers were henceforth entitled to the privileges of other artists. Many believe that the young king was inspired by the beauty of the engravings by Robert Nanteuil (1623–1678), his royal engraver, and wished to give the talented printmaker equal rank with the portrait painters.

Thanks to the wonderful donation of Princeton resident and Francophile John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905, the Graphic Arts Collection holds 134 seventeenth-century engravings by Nanteuil, given in memory of his wife, Janet Munday Gordon. We are grateful to the Gordons and to Louis XIV on this monumental day.

To celebrate the promotion of engravers everywhere, museums and galleries throughout France are opening their collections to the public on Monday, May 26, 2014, for a day they are calling Fête de l’estampe: http://www.fetedelestampe.fr/page/manifestampe

Included will be nearly 150 events across the entire country, including exhibitions, performances, open artist studios, museum tours, interviews, films, printing demonstrations, and much more. In Paris alone, there will be 23 events, with an additional 30 in the Île-de-France. If you can get there, everything will be free and open to the public.

Vive le roi! Vive la France! Vive l’estampe!

Princeton Group Arts exhibits at the Princeton Print Club

In 1946, a group of Princeton University professors along with members of the Jewish and Quaker communities decided to form a racially and religiously integrated arts organization that would serve the cultural needs of Princeton. They called it Princeton Group Arts and in January 1947, Rex Goreleigh (1902-1986) became its first director. Sadly the organization closed after only eight years.

“Rex Goreleigh was a talented artist with a social conscience,” wrote Jorden Hillier, journalist for The Crisis. “For almost 40 years, he made and taught art in Princeton, first as Executive Director of Princeton Group Arts … and subsequently through his own Studio-on-the-Canal. … In 1933, while waiting on Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, then working on his controversial frescoes in Rockefeller Center, Goreleigh was invited by the artist to watch him work. It was an experience he would later say ‘put him on the road to becoming an artist.'” (The Crisis 58, no 1, Jan 1951)

Soon after Goreleigh came to Princeton, Elmer Adler (1884-1962) and the all-white, all-male students of the Princeton Print Club, housed at 36 University Place, offered him one of their galleries for what would become annual exhibitions by the racially and sexually integrated Princeton Group Arts.

The first show, entitled Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture. Work of Instructors of Princeton Group Arts Program, was held in January 1948, sponsored by the Princeton Print Club. Alden Wicks, Peter Cook, Rex Goreleigh, Joseph Brown, Eileen Hamilton, and Mr. and Mrs. H. Lester Cooke were among the artists whose work was shown. To open the exhibition, Adler arranged a tea for Goreleigh and the other artists, together with his students. The novelist, screenwriter, and feminist Ida Alexa Ross Wylie (1885-1959), who lived in nearby Skillman, New Jersey, was invited to give a talk focusing on the need for community participation in the arts.

In February of 1949, the second annual exhibition held at the Princeton Print Club included the work of Margot Einstein (wife of Albert Einstein), Janet T. Rogers, Francis Adams Comstock, Andre Girard, and many others. Posters for these exhibitions were serigraphs, each printed by hand. Several are preserved in the scrapbooks of the Princeton Print Club (seen here).

In 1951, shortly before Adler closed 36 University Place and left Princeton, the Princeton Print Club sponsored a Princeton Group Arts show that featured the work of William Seitz (1914-1974). At the time, Seitz was enrolled in the University’s M.F.A. program, scandalously studying the contemporary movement known as Abstract Expressionism. He went on to become the first professor of modern art history at Princeton and later, curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1960 to 1970.

With thanks to Charles E. Greene

Alf Cooke (1842-1902), Queen Victoria, the Sovereign of Sixty Years, 1897. Chromolithograph. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. Gift of Charles E. Greene.

On Sunday 20 June, 1897, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) celebrated her Diamond Jubilee Accession Day at Windsor Castle. To commemorate the event, a number of paintings, sculpture, medallions, posters, and all types of printed materials were created.

The master printer Alf or Alfred Cooke (1842-1902) of Leeds, was no exception. Cooke’s first printing factory opened in 1866, was rebuilt twice after fires, and managed to grow into one of the largest chromolithography plants in Great Britain. This led to Cooke’s appointed as “Colour Printer to the Queen” and later, Mayor of Leeds.

His third and final factory, which operated until 2005, was called “New Crown Point Printing Works” and claimed to be the “largest, cleanest, healthiest and most completely fitted printing works in the world.” At its height, Cooke had 300 presses run by a staff of over 600 workers.

Thanks to Charles E. Greene, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of Cooke’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee portrait of Queen Victoria, which was later reproduced hundreds of times in posters and advertisements.

from W. Herbert Scott, The West Riding of Yorkshire at the Opening of the Twentieth Century: Contemporary biographies (W.T. Pike, 1902)

36 University Place

In the spring of 1952, the headline “Tragedy on University Place” ran in the Daily Princetonian (Vol. 75, No. 55, March 29, 1951). 36 University Place had been the home of the Graphic Arts Collection, five galleries, a reference library, meeting rooms, and living space for the curator of Graphic Arts, Elmer Adler. In 1948, the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library opened its doors and by 1952, space on the second floor was completed to house the Graphic Arts Division. Not everyone was happy about this. As we are in the midst of yet another renovation, it is instructive to read the comments of an earlier generation. The author “w.e.b.” wrote:

“The [Julian] Boyd Economy Plan brings to mind several of the grievous errors that exist in the Firestone Library— some which have occurred, and one of far more significant implications which is yet to come. We are not speaking of the “Crime of ’48,” its bastard Gothic design. Far abler voices from points as far distant as our own Architecture Department have long been heard on this touchy subject. …
The Graphic Arts Room can be seen as another example in this “perfectly planned” library. The Graphic Arts is primarily concerned with prints and the showing of them to students. Therefore a first consideration ought to be to its wall space. And thus where did they locate the Room in the new library? In some interior section unsuitable for regular office space for that very reason? No, sir, they gave it a corner site on one of the upper floors; we, right here in Princeton, probably have the Graphic Arts room with the most window space in the whole world. And this little distinction cannot be attributed to oversight or accident. Mr. Elmer Adler, the first and current Curator of Graphic Arts here, remarked on the fact of these windows, but it was pointed out to him by a responsible official that one could get a marvelous view of Nassau Street from the location. Mr. Adler had to remark that if he managed to get up the stairs to the room, it was his job, and that of the room, to show them prints, not selected landscapes.

Our Way of Life Threatened

But what is done is done; about these mistakes we can only laugh and perhaps wonder. Not so, however, is the case of the outcome of the whole Graphic Arts Program here at Princeton. Another mistake, of far deeper significance, is scheduled to occur at the end of next year. The story is simply this: We are privileged at present to have here at our college the outstanding authority in the field of Graphic Arts, in the person of Elmer Adler. At the moment, he, together with his magnificent book and print collects, is located on University Place in that yellow bit of wandering architecture known as “36.”

Here he runs his Print Club, his Graphic Arts seminars, his Book-Collecting Contests, his many exhibits and guest lectures. But to enter 36 University Place is to do more: it is to enter a world apart from the rest of the campus.

The house is old and badly planned; the walls creak with the weight of the pictures hung there. But the pace is slow, the tempo quiet and the human touch has not been replaced by the grim efficiency of a Firestone carrel patrol. Small groups — from the University and from the town — gather there, and as its doors are always open to all, interesting people with interesting things to say somehow seem to gather. It is perhaps a backwash in the great tide of efficient administration, but it is the type of thing that gives one meaning to spending four years in the New Jersey damp. But like the dink and the old-fashioned cane-spree, it too is to pass.

Mr. Adler retires next year; he will have a successor, but his collections will be removed to their bright cases in some slot high in Firestone, where only a grad student may come across it looking for Beowulf in the original.

36 University Place will be straightened out and made quite efficient; some say as a new “Prince” office, others as administration space. But it doesn’t really matter; the old ways, the old high teas, the old conversations will be gone. We noticed in the paper that in the first three months of 1951, Harvard already has been given almost three million dollars, while we are still straining with the five-year-old Third Century Fund. When we are alumni and are asked to support Princeton, let’s be sure that there is enough of Princeton left to support. If we are to give our money to chrome and tinsel, I suggest the Johnson & Johnson Plants on Route 1; it fits there.” —w.e.b.

Ephraim George Squier

“In 1865, in the ancient Inca city of Cuzco, Ephraim George Squier, explorer, archeologist, ethnologist, and the U.S. charge d’affaires in Central America, received an unusual gift from his hostess, Senora Zentino, a woman known as the finest collector of art and antiquities in Peru. The gift was a skull from a vast nearby Inca burial ground.” — Dr. Charles G. Gross (Department of Psychology) “A Hole in the Head” by in The Neuroscientist 5, no. 4 (1999). Keep reading: https://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/neuroscientist_99_hole.pdf

The Graphic Arts Collection holds one box of Squier’s drawings in watercolor, pencil, and pen-and-ink intended for illustration in his publications on Central and South America. There are drawings of artifacts, plans and sections of buildings, and archaeological remains, including twenty-four published in Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877). As far as we can tell, there are unpublished drawings of archaeological sites in Ollantaytambo and Sacsahuaman in Peru, include some of the “Seat of the Inca.” In addition there are fourteen color photographs of selected Squier drawings and five albumen photographs of Peruvian artifacts by Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908).

Among Squier’s other books are Serpent Symbols (1852); Nicaragua: its People, Scenery, and Monuments (New York, 1852); Notes on Central America (1854); The States of Central America (1857) and Monographs of Authors who have written on the Aboriginal Languages of Central America (1860).

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) and E.H. Davis, Ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley (New York: Bartlett & Welford; Cincinnati, J. A. & U. P. James, 1848). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 1929q

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888), Central and South American drawings of E. G. Squier, 1864-1877. One box. GAX Graphic Arts Collection

One of the many obituaries for Squier begins, “Dr. Ephraim George Squier, the well-known archeologist … was born in Bethlehem, N.Y. in 1821, graduated at Princeton in 1848. His first work of note was the investigation, in company with Dr. E.H. Davis, of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, the results of which, formed the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.

…In 1863 he visited Peru, but his account of his investigations in that region was cut short in the middle of its publication by a mental disorder, which left him for the last seventeen years of his life utterly incapacitated for work.” The American Naturalist 22, No. 258 (June 1888): 566-69.

Weeds and Wild Flowers

When the Grolier Club presented an exhibition of the best books created in the twentieth century, Weeds and Wild Flowers was included among the exemplary volumes (Martin Hutner, A Century for the Century, David R. Godine, 2004. Annex A Z1033.F5 H87 2004q).

Armida Maria-Theresa Colt wrote the text, subtitled Some Irreverant Words and George Mackley (1900-1983) created wood engravings, which were printed by William Carter (1912-2001) at Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, and published by Two-Horse Press in London. A second volume includes a suite of 11 wood engravings without the text, covered with yellow Tatsumaki Japanese handmade paper.

The book joins 40 others printed by the Rampant Lions Press, founded in 1924 by William Carter and continued by his son, Sebastian, until 2008 when the press was closed. The elder Carter described his work as “a matter of seeing the simplest way of doing something, which is usually the best.” (The Guardian, 21 March 2001)

Armida Maria Theresa Colt, Weeds and Wildflowers, Some Irreverent Words, with wood-engravings by George Mackley (London: Two-Horse Press, 1965). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

The Chimera and The Princeton Print Club

Guy Crittington MacCoy (1904-1981), Abstraction #2 [later called Yellow Heads], 1937. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 3 (winter 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01781.
Leo John Meissner (1895-1977), Oyster Shells, 1933. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 2 (autumn 1942). Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01851.

In the February 4, 1943 Daily Princetonian Bulletin it was noted that beyond the exhibitions and lectures sponsored by the Princeton Print Club (PPC), “the Club is endeavoring to produce a silk screen lithograph for each issue of the newly formed publication, Chimera.” When the little magazine began in the spring of 1942, Elmer Adler was asked to join the publication’s advisory board and Kneeland McNulty, Class of 1943 and the second president of the PPC, was made art editor. For the second issue, Adler arranged for a wood engraving by Leo Meissner (1895-1977) entitled Oyster Shells, to be printed for the Princeton journal.

In October of 1942, the PPC mounted an exhibition of 40 prints by contemporary American artists, to be sold for $5 each to benefit the club and to enrich the lives of the students. Adler arranged for the prints, including Meissner’s Oyster Shells. Highlighted were a number of serigraphs, which was a new variation in screen printing Adler wished to promote. A Princeton reviewer wrote, “A group of serigraphs make Guy MacCoy the find of the show.” The Chimera published MacCoy’s Abstraction in their winter 1943 issue with a note, “It is the belief of the editors that this is the first serigraph to appear in a widely distributed magazine.”

Although Adler hoped the students would print a new serigraph for each issue of Chimera, only one other print was ever included. The book illustrator E. McKnight Kauffer (1893-1954) often created designs to be reproduced in pochoir or stenciled prints. For Chimera’s spring 1943 issue, he designed a portrait of Homer, which was presumably printed at Princeton for the magazine. Seven years later, Kauffer was given an exhibition of his work by the PPC in their new headquarters in 36 University Place.

E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Homer, 1944. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 4 (spring 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01503

Next year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Princeton Print Club. If you or your father were members, please let us know. We are gathering stories and memories.

Collection décors et couleurs

Near the end of his life, the French painter Georges Valmier (1885-1937) discovered abstraction and created a number of design based works in vibrant colors. Twenty were translated into pochoir or stencil prints by the French master Jean Saudé, commissioned for a series entited Collection décors et couleurs (Decoration and color collection). Only one more portfolio was published in the series featuring the work of Jean Burkhalter.

Album no 1: Georges Valmier (1885-1937), Collection décors et couleurs (Paris: A. Levy, [1930?]). 20 pochoir plates in portfolio. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize NK8667.S28 V34f

Album no 2: Jean Burkhalter (1895-1982), Jean Burkhalter : soixante-dix motifs décoratifs en dix-huit planches (Paris: A. Lévy, [ca. 1930]). 18 pochoir plates in portfolio. Collection décors et couleurs. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0011F

Alonzo Chappel

At the age of twelve, Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887) was selling his portraits on the streets of New York City for the price of $10 and within only two years was able to raise his price to $25. With no formal art education, Chappel went on to paint hundreds of portraits specifically to be steel engraved as book plates.

Among the books Chappel designed and authored (although the caption writers usually get the credit) were Jesse F. Schroeder’s Life and Times of Washington (1857), Jesse A. Spencer’s History of the United States (1858), Evert A. Duyckinck’s Lives and Portraits of the Presidents of the United States (1865) and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (1861-1862), as well as plates for the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William Cullen Bryant (1888).

Many of these portraits were done after existing paintings rather than from life, with the original sometimes noted on the print and sometimes not. The many talented engravers hired to complete the prints after Chappel’s paintings are not identified.

Princeton has several copies of the two volume National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (E176 .D98 1862) and the Graphic Arts Collection holds a number of unbound sheets from this project. Seen here are portraits of John James Audubon (1780-1851), Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), James Madison (1751-1836), and George McClellan (1826-1885).

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