The Princeton University Library Theater Collection holds a number of watercolor and gouache set designs by the Swedish American artist Mark Lawson (ca. 1866-1928).
Thanks to research from the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library, we have the following information about Lawson:
“Set designer Mark Lawson (ca. 1866 -1928) was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He came to Chicago as a baby, later living in Minnesota, studying under scenic artist Paul Clausen. After working at Stetson’s Globe Theatre in Boston, Lawson came to New York where he worked on Broadway from 1915-1922, including productions at the New York Hippodrome, where he was on staff. Lawson was also a member of the Lambs Club. He died in New York City.”
In addition, the online Playbill database lists a number of the New York shows with sets designed by Lawson:
However, we have not been able to match these designs to a particular production in New York or Boston. Can you help? Please reply to jmellby@princeton.edu
Quoted from program: “Carla Diane Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on Sept. 14, 2016. She is the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. Previously, she was CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore for more than 20 years.
She began her library career in 1973 at the Chicago Public Library, where she held several positions, including as deputy commissioner and chief librarian. She taught at the University of Pittsburgh and also worked at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. When she served as president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004, her theme was “equity of success.”
In 1995, she received the Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library, which included an after-school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling. She received her bachelor’s degree from Roosevelt University and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School.
Amid the unrest following the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, she kept the doors open at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, providing a safe haven for a community in distress. During her more than two decades at Pratt, she modernized and revived the 22-branch library system, making it a home for people from all walks of life. In 2016, she became the first person of color and the first woman to serve as the Librarian of Congress. A descendant of people once denied the right to read — and punished for trying — she now leads the country’s national symbol of knowledge. Heralded as a “librarian freedom fighter,” she champions open access to information and education for all.”
Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) is celebrated for producing the twenty volume set of The North American Indian (1907-1930) “picturing and describing the Indians of the United States and Alaska.” Its 20 text volumes include 1,505 photogravures and the 20 portfolios hold 723 photogravures, a total of 2,228 copperplate aquatints from glass plate negatives and then, glass plate interpositives.
It is believed that 272 sets were produced, meaning that well-over 600,000 prints were hand-inked and pulled. Three issues were produced; one printed on Van Gelder paper, another on Japan vellum, and a third on Japanese tissue (although some existing sets have a mixture).
We know that Curtis had various studios in Washington and California over the years producing the glass plates and albumen silver prints but who was making and printing the copper plates?
The names of two firms are printed on the final photogravures, both in Boston and, as it turns out, both in the same building: John Andrew & Son on the plates for volumes 1–11 and Suffolk Engraving Company (also called Suffolk Engraving and Electrotyping Company) on the prints for volumes 12–20. As with any project that took over twenty-five years to accomplish, the details are more complex.
The firm of John Andrew and Son was established in 1869 but the founder, John Andrew (1815–1875) had long since died when Curtis traveled east to find an engraver. In the 1880s and 1890s, John’s son George T. Andrew (dates unknown) was only supervising projects and from then on his name disappears. In a 1915 sample book in the David A. Hanson Collection of the History of Photomechanical Reproduction John Andrew & Son are listed as a subsidiary of the Suffolk Engraving Company at 394 Atlantic Avenue in Boston’s North end.
For many years the Suffolk Engraving Company, managed by Samuel Edson Blanchard (1869-193?), had been growing and expanding, merging or outright taking over various other engraving firms until they were one of the largest operations on the east coast. By 1905 they boasted over 20,000 square feet of floor space and an annual payroll over $200,000, with offices in New York, Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, and Hartford.
After several fires, the company moved to 394 Atlantic Avenue in 1909, where they “occupy the upper stories of the mammoth [building] and have had the whole top of the building entirely remodelled to suit the requirements of a modern photo-engraving establishment, including a passenger elevator.”
At that time, the photoengraver James S. Conant is listed as a branch of Suffolk Engraving, as was John Andrew & Son, both operating from the same building on Atlantic Avenue. A third firm may have done the same, as historian Mick Gidley found the stamp of the Gravure-Etching Company on some of the proofs for volume one and two (Western Americana Oversize 2017-0014Q .C982 1907q). Both John Andrew & Son and Gravure-Etching Company had been located at 125 Summer Street before merging with Suffolk Engraving, and so, it seems reasonable that some combination of their men handled the earliest of the Curtis photogravures.
Unlike J.J. Audubon’s Birds of America, which we know was printed by Robert Havell and his staff, there is still no man or men identified as the primary printer or even supervisor of the beautiful copperplate photogravures produced for Curtis. At least not yet.
In 1909, the Suffolk Engraving Company moved to 394 Atlantic Avenue along the far east waterfront of Boston (Printing Arts 13, no. 6, August 1909).
See also: “Business Expansion,” Advertising and Selling 15, no. 3 (August 1905): 254-55.
George Schmidt, George Schmidt’s Psaligraphic Album (New York: Charles Becker, 47 East Houston St., 1863). 12 albumen silver prints of cut paper silhouettes. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process
Psaligraphy is the art of cut paper silhouettes (in German: Scherenschnitte). Although it was a wide-spread practice, George Schmidt put himself forward as a leading practitioner by publishing his own Method of Teaching the Art of Psaligraphy five years after this album of samples was published.
“A popular recreation of the middle and late nineteenth century was psaligraphy, or the art of cutting pictures in black paper. Prang’s chromo, January 1868, includes a description of the set that Prang published and sold. It came in an elegant box containing full instructions and specimens for the study of this … art. A pair of scissors accompanies each box. Price per box $5.00”–Katharine McClinton, The Chromolithographs of Louis Prang, (New York, 1973), p. 40.
The opening leaf shows George Schmidt himself resting on a tableau vivant in silhouette, gracefully cutting a small animal figure. His publisher, Charles Becker, is listed at 47 East Houston Street [see at the far left], just down the street from where the famous Puck building would be built approximately 15 years later. Since this publisher is not listed in contemporary business directories, it is likely the album was published from their home or apartment.
The introduction reads: George Schmidt, the celebrated and ONLY Psaligrapher, has exhibited his peculiar art before H.M. the Queen Victoria, also the Emperor of France, the Governor General of the Island of Cuba, and other most prominent persons and artists, and has brought to perfection the highly difficult science of creating the most natural and expressive Pictures and Scenes, even of Incredible smallness, by a simple pair of scissors and a piece of black paper.
Induced by a great many of his friends and admirers of his art, he offers in this Album the photographs of some of the best pictures, he has cut out with a common pair of scissors. For Originals, cut with scissors, apply to the Publisher, 47 East Houston Street, N.Y.
The Graphic Arts Collection has a print by Thomas Nast (1840-1902) clearly torn out of a book or magazine. A quick search uncovered the Illustrated American, November 23, 1895 p. 652-53, where a short paragraph is followed by two Nast designs honoring Princeton’s football team. A Mighty Beast refers to the game on November 2, 1895, when 6,000 fans watched while Princeton beat Harvard 12 to 4. Unfortunately, three weeks later on November 23, a crowd of 35,000 watch Princeton lose to Yale 10 to 20. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/16518993/princeton_12_harvard_4/
Assuredly, these are great days for the tiger. No wonder the royal beast goes about with a smile of complete contentment. Not only is he “in it”—to speak in the vernacular, but everything that has opposed him lately is likewise “in it”—grabbed, gobbled and stowed away in the tiger’s insatiate maw. The Goddess of Reform, before whom all New York was lately burning incense has certainly been badly crunched by Tammany’s tiger, and her recovery is by no means sure. Only two or three days before this gruesome catastrophe, Harvard “tackled” the Princeton tiger on the football field at Princeton with results that no lover of the crimson cares to dwell on. Enough to say that when the game was over it was another case of “the smile on the face of the tiger.”
Glenn O. Coleman (1881-1932), The Mirror, 1931. Lithograph printed by George Miller after Coleman’s 1927 painting. 3/50. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2008.00386.
In the fall of 1913, best friends Stuart Davis (1892-1964) and Henry J. Glintenkamp (1887-1946) left their Hoboken studio, grabbed the third musketeer Glen O. Coleman (1881-1932) and moved into a studio in the Miller Building, which was right across the street from the Lincoln Center Arcade (present day Julliard). The $40 rent was split three ways and the walls hung with their work recently included in the Armory Show. All three had agreed to join the staff at The Masses, where John Sloan was the new art editor and every spare minute was spent drawing. That December Davis turned 21, Glintenkamp was 26, and Coleman was 32 but lied about his age, passing as 26.
[Princeton’s Art Museum is fortunate to have one of Coleman’s lower east side street scenes merging architectural elements, which echoes the view in the mirror above. Instead of paintings, he called them Arrangements.
Glenn O. Coleman, City Street, ca. 1927 Gouache on off-white wove paper. Princeton University Art Museum. Laura P. Hall Memorial Collection x1946-172]
Glintenkamp, Coleman and Davis on their way in 1914. Reproduced in Rebecca Zurier, Art for the Masses, (1911-1917) (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1985). Firestone Library NC108 .Z87 1985.
The Lincoln Arcade, at Broadway and 66th Street, had become the new Bohemia with artists, musicians, and actors filling the halls. George Bellows lived on the top floor, sharing his space with Eugene O’Neill who was writing a play about a young man who wanted to be an artist. Robert Henri rented two rooms across the hall where he opened the Henri School of Art, with Coleman as class monitor (one of three or four jobs he maintained).
Downstairs Marcel Duchamp carried two large panes of glass into the studio he shared with Jean Crotti, and promised the finished work to Walter Arensberg, if he would cover their rent. Other residents at various times included Thomas Hart Benton, Samuel Halpert, Raphael Soyer, actor William Powell, and cartoonist Pat Sullivan (Felix the cat), among many others.
Davis, Coleman, and Glintenkamp worked together and played together, wandering through Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and across the Brooklyn Bridge as Henri instructed, in search of real life scenes for their paintings and prints. Note The Doctor’s saloon, a Park Row dive bar owned by Patrick “Burly” Bohan (1864–1931), drawn by both Coleman and Davis.
[above] Detail from Stuart Davis, Outside “The Doctor’s”, 1910. Watercolor. The Norma and Myron H. Goldberg Art Trust, reproduced in Stuart Davis A Catalogue Raisonne edited by Ani Boyajian and Mark Rutkoski (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2007). Marquand Oversize ND237.D32 B692 2007q
[below] Glenn O. Coleman, Third Avenue from the portfolio Lithographs of New York, 1928. Printed by George Miller. Edition of 50.
Henry J. Glintenkamp (1887-1946), Limehouse Causeway, 1921. Linocut. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01354
When the United States joined World War I in 1917, Davis received a deferment and worked in New York, Coleman was exempt (over the draft age), but Glinkenkamp, registered as a conscientious objector, fled to Mexico. Wherever he traveled he continued to paint and make prints featuring street life. Limehouse Causeway [seen above] is a street in East London that was the home to the original Chinatown of London.
Photograph of Robert Henri’s class in 1909 with Davis and Coleman in the back row with an unidentified woman between them (Glintenkamp was not in the class that year). Reproduced in Karen Wilkin, Stuart Davis (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987). Marquand Library Oversize ND237.D32 W53q
Lincoln Square Arcade on fire and firemen extinguish the fire in New York City. HD Stock Footage CriticalPast Published on Jun 19, 2014
Glenn Odem Coleman was born on July 18, 1881, in Springfield, Ohio, not 1887 as we all previously believed. This is the beginning of a longer piece on Coleman.
During the first weeks of June 1909, an exhibition was held at the Nassau Club in Princeton, N.J., featuring “paintings and sketches of the campus made by the well-known artist, Robert Bruce Horsfall.” A review in the Daily Princetonian mentions, in particular, “The large painting of ‘Old Nassau’ is of a rainy day in late autumn, showing the fine old elms in the foreground, and could have been made only by one thoroughly familiar with the campus.”–Daily Princetonian 34, no. 74 (June 5, 1909). Unfortunately, only members of the Club were invited to see Horsfall’s work.
Today, thanks to the generous donation of Tracy Mennen Shehab in honor of her grandfather, William G. Mennen, Class of ’36, Horsfall’s painting of Old Nassau is now part of the Graphic Arts Collection where it can be seen by one and all.
Born in Clinton, Iowa, one of the few thorough obituaries for Horsfall appeared in the Annals of Iowa, published by the State Historical Society of Iowa (fall 1948), which reads, in part,
“Robert Bruce Horsfall, artist and naturalist, died at Long Branch, New Jersey, at Monmouth Memorial hospital, March 24, 1948 . . . as an illustrator of backgrounds for natural habitats, [Horsfall] first exhibited in Chicago in 1886, also at Chicago World’s fair in 1893, and at mid-winter exposition, San Francisco 1893-94; his work often exhibited in national and private museums; from 1904 to 1914 did scientific illustrations for the Princeton Patagonian Report and lived at Princeton University during most of that time.”
There are many woodcuts and broadsides depicting the roads to heaven and hell. Thanks to Bruce Willsie, Class of 1986, the Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have a rather curious variation. It isn’t, as many are, published ca. 1840 by Gustav Peters in Harrisburg, PA or ca. 1830 by Herman William Villee in Lancaster PA, or even the 1825 series printed by François Georgin in the printshop of Jean-Charles Pellerin, Epinal, France.
The woodcut now at Princeton titled Das Neue Jerusalem was published by “Chez Dekherr, Montbeliard, Doubs, France,” the only one found from Alsace so far. As are most of the variations, the text is in German and the devil in the lower right is closer to, but not exactly the same as the one at the Library of Congress [below], dated simply 1800s:
The Library Company of Philadelphia has:Note these later Pennsylvania Dutch broadsides show only three people walking to heaven, one being African American. They are holding burning lamps while the folks below say “give us some oil” because they have no light.
The British Museum [above] has a copy of Das neue Jerusalem (The New Jerusalem) published in Wissembourg and printed by C Burckardt between 1850 and 1870. “No.17. Deponirt / Druck u. Verlag v. C. Burckardt’s Nachf. Weissenburg (Elsass). This version of hell is closer to Cornell University’s The 3 Roads to Eternity (Les 3 Chemins de l’Eternite), which is held in their “Persuasive Maps” collection. [see below] They date it 1825, printed by Francois Georgin, “a popular and accomplished woodcutter in the printshop of Jean-Charles Pellerin, in the Vosges mountain village of Epinal”. For full details on references, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/references.
Cornell’s copy
The Heimatmuseum Trostberg has this 1845 Epinal version, with the door to hell oddly closed.One of the Epinal woodblocks looks ready for printing.
Our devil is the only one who stares directly at the viewer and there are many extra beasts and bodies embedded in Princeton’s copy. Note the dainty Whore of Babylon.
The British Museum has William Blake’s pen and ink and watercolor drawing of The Whore of Babylon also holding a chalice, 1809
Here is Albrecht Dürer version of the Whore of Babylon, woodcut ca.1496-97. She is in the bottom right, it takes a minute to find her.
Read more:
Christa Pieska, “The European Origins of Four Pennsylvania German Broadsheet Themes: Adam and Eve; the New Jerusaslem – The Broad and Narrow way; the Unjust Judgment; the Stages of Life.” Der Reggeboge 23 (1989) 1, pp 13-22 Firestone ReCAP F160.G3 R43
Russell D. Earnest, Flying leaves and one-sheets: Pennsylvania German broadsides, Fraktur, and their printers (New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2005). Marquand Library Z209.P4 E23 2005
Don Yoder, The Pennsylvania German broadside (University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press for the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania German Society, 2005). Firestone Library GR110.P4 A372 vol. 39
Thank you to all the institutions that posted images online, which I have pulled together to compare for educational purposes.
[Above] Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
In 1960, the first 21 titles in the Scribner Library (paperback) series were published, beginning with F. Scott Fitzgerald’sThe Great Gatsby. One artist was assigned to each author, so that writer’s books would have a distinct and yet, uniformed appearance.
This plan was interrupted only once, with the cover designs for the novels of Ernest Hemingway, which were painted by the husband and wife team of James C. McCrea (1920-2013) and Ruth McCrea (1921-2016).
Thanks to the gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973, we are fortunate to have all 11 paintings by the McCreas for the covers of Hemingway’s novels, including Across the River and into the Trees; A Farewell To Arms; For Whom The Bell Tolls; In Our Time; Men Without Women; The Green Hills of Africa; The Old Man and the Sea; The Snows of Kilimanjaro; The Sun Also Rises; To Have and Have Not; and Winner Take Nothing. None of the paintings for Scribner’s are signed by either artist.
Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
James McCrea was born in Peoria, IL; attended the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee; and served in the Merchant Marine in World War II. Ruth McCrea was born in Jersey City, NJ, and attended school first in Brooklyn Heights, then Sarasota, Florida.
It was at the Ringling School of Art that she met James, marrying him on the 4th of July 1943. While he served in the Marines, Ruth sold her watercolor landscapes (beach scenes clearly still in evidence on Hemingway’s covers).
The McCreas both worked as freelance designers and illustrators commuting from Bayport, NY on the south shore of Long Island and much of this information comes from Ruth’s obituary written by Carissa Katz for the East Hampton Star newspaper.
While the two worked closely on many projects, Ruth illustrated a series of cookbooks on her own while James taught typography at The Cooper Union. A search of the two names brings 91 books with designs credited to Ruth McCrea and only 60 for James McCrea.
Here are a few more of their paintings for Hemingway’s books.
Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
[above] Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for Winner Take Nothing by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
[below] Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
Ruth and James McCrea, Cover design for The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Oil paint on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.
A new collection catalogue was received today from the Casa da Xilogravura Museum in Campos do Jordão, Brazil, where they just launched a bilingual website: http://casadaxilogravura.com.br/english/index.php
“The Casa da Xilogravura Museum was created by Antonio Fernando Costella, a lawyer graduated from the Law School of Largo São Francisco. Also [a] journalist, Costella was university professor and to this day he is head of the initiatives of the museum.”
Printers take note: The Museum is scheduling a major international exhibition: XiloPrint 2019 and writes “The Xylography Museum invites all the engravers of the world to take part in the International Xiloprint Exhibition 2019 Brazil.”
Every printmaker in the world is asked to send one woodcut or wood engraving through November 30, 2018, to
Museu Casa Da Xilogravura
Caixa postal 42
12460-000 Campos do Jordão
Brazil.
