Category Archives: Books

books

Sons of Africa designed by Aaron Douglas

The designs created by Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) for Georgina A. Gollock’s Sons of Africa (New York: Friendship Press, 1928) are simple and refined but add enormously to the beauty of the book’s first edition. Gollock compiled this collection of biographies of notable Africans, “including kings and chiefs of pre-modern times, characters of the early nineteenth century when Africa was coming to know the West, and recently living Christian leaders.” In the 19th century, the Sons of Africa was an abolitionist group composed of prominent Africans living in Britain, including Olaudah Equiano.

Chapters include: The discovery of the sons of Africa. The great Askia; a tale of Timbuktu. Osai Tutu Kwamina; from Kumasi to the coast. A Nigerian romance; the career of Bishop Crowther. Tshaka the Zulu; a black Napoleon. Moshesh the nation-builder. Khama the Good. Sir Apolo Kagwa; from page to prime minister. Where three continents meet; the life work of J.E. Kwegyir Aggrey. Men of affairs. Evangelists, pastors, teachers. Among the prophets. Mothers of men.

1928 was a pivotal year for Douglas, a pioneered the African-American modernism. He received a one-year Barnes Foundation Fellowship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied the painting and African art collection of Albert C. Barnes. It was also the year Douglas participated in the seminal College Art Association exhibition entitled “Contemporary Negro Art.”

The book’s publisher, The Friendship Press, was at that time a branch of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, which produced an international array of progressive books, including Blind spots: experiments in the self-cure of race prejudice by Henry Smith Leiper; India looks to her future by Oscar MacMillan Buck; Young Islam on trek by Basil Mathews; and Aggrey of Africa: a study in Black and white by Edwin William Smith.

Princeton’s copy also includes the dust jacket, which reproduces the design printed on the front and back covers.

The irresistible “wow” factor of Charles LeDray’s Book Ends

The unpacking and opening of this new acquisition has been documented below to avoid any misunderstandings with our reading room or the reading public. Seen here is the latest in a continuing series of deluxe limited editions published for the Library Council of the Museum of Modern Art under its editor May Castleberry.

Over the past two years Charles LeDray, an artist known for creating collections made up of a multiplicity of carefully crafted and often very small objects, produced a collection of 177 unique “used” miniature books and this week, the Graphic Arts Collection received its unique edition of LeDray’s Book Ends.

Writing for the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl observed, “The bite-size world of LeDray’s miniature sculptures is the real world scaled to thought—which, of course, must be compact enough to fit into our crowded skulls. . . . Beyond the irresistible “wow” factor of LeDray’s workaholic perfectionism, there’s a profound delight in grasping the quiddity of a specific mop or a lonesome cinder block. Even when the works are fanciful . . . they have the obduracy of righteous Minimalism, defying associations with the cute or the twee.” —https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/charles-ledray

Here is a description from MoMA: “LeDray’s volumes are miniaturized, abridged, and altered versions of eighteen used books that the artist found in secondhand shops, yard sales, or on the streets of New York and his own library. The list of eighteen . . . recall and reveal the multiple histories and fragile aspirations and creations of another era. The artist’s constructed artifacts, seemingly marked by the passage of time, illuminate the journey of a set of books through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

. . . To create miniature ephemera to be placed in each volume, he made over 1,500 drawings based on old bookplates, library cards and other printed or drawn pieces of his own invention that might have been inserted in a forgotten book. These pieces were printed by hand-letterpress by the Grenfell Press and by Peter Kruty Editions in Brooklyn.

. . . Each of these hand-sewn volumes measures less than four by five inches. Some are bound in cloth, some in paper; in all cases their covers have been foil stamped to replicate the covers of the original books. Working from LeDray’s drawings and mostly using letterpress, Miller and Ewing at the Grenfell Press, with the help of Peter Kruty Editions in Brooklyn, New York, printed over 1,100 pieces of ephemera, each unique.”

Of the 177 volumes, most of which went to the members of the Library Council, to libraries, and to the artist, 18 copies were set aside to make a unique sculptural set of 18 unique volumes as a gift from the artist to The Museum of Modern Art.

Mame et Compagnie Bindings

One of the sad aspects in the history of our library, like many other institutional collections, is that many books and magazines were rebound as soon as they are purchased, discarding often decorative and even unique bindings. Although we already hold many books from the publishing firm of Mame et Compagnie or Mame et fils, we have acquired an additional set of ten volumes with their 19th-century French decorative paper bindings intact. Each has the original publishers’ colored embossed paper-covered boards, many with hand-colored lithograph inlays, some with school prize labels.

“The book then undergoes the binding in three workshops, magnificent in their arrangement and comfort, and in which are employed 260 men and 250 women and children.” This is the entire description of the Mame binding workshop given in the 1878 history of the Mame and Sons publishing company, entitled Firm of Alfred Mame and Sons (1796-1893): printing–binding–bookselling: patronal institutions: participation, A. Mame’s endowments, homes for working people, superannuation, mutual aid societies. The report offers little information on production of their books but concentrates on the civic engagement of the company, which promoted the health and well-being of its workers through stock participation, company housing, and other benefits.

“…The situation of the establishment in the centre of a city excluded the idea of giving gratuitous lodgings to the working people: a [site], Peabody’s buildings style, has been constructed, where 62 families are lodged in habitations completely isolated the one from the other, each having its little garden and forming a quadrangle around a vast square planted with trees” …The Firm of Alfred Mame… https://archive.org/details/firmofalfredmame00alfr/page/4/mode/2up

The titles included in this group of decorative bindings
Louis Fridel, Les Naugrages au Spitzberg ou les Salutaires effets de la confiance en dieu. Neuvième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1850.
Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Champagnac, Les Amies de Pension traduit de l’anglais. [Bibliothèque spéciale de la jeunesse]. Paris: P.C. LeHuby, [c. 1851].
Washington Irving, Voyages et découvertes des compagnons de Colomb… 4e édition. [Bibliothèque des écoles chrétiennes]. Tours: Mame, 1851.
Washington Irving, Voyages et découvertes des compagnons de Colomb… 7e édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1858.
Fanny, comtesse de Tilière, Laure et Anna ou la Puissance de la foi sur le caractère… sixième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1859.
Jules Lacroix de Marlès, Histoire de Russie… nouvelle édition. [Bibliothèque des écoles chrétiennes].Tours: Mame, 1861.
Ernest Fouinet, Gerson ou le Manuscrit aux enluminures… dixième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1866.
Anaïs, comtesse de Bassanville, La Gerbe. Rouen: Mégard et Compagnie, 1870.
Catherine-Thérèse Woillez, Le jeune Tambour… onzième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours, Mame et fils, 1872.
Contes arabes tirés des Mille et une nuits… Iere partie. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame et fils, 1879.

The Catholic Encyclopedia published this biography of Alfred-Henry-Armand Mame (1811-1893) https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/alfred-henri-amand-mame

“Alfred conceived and carried out, for the first time, the idea of uniting in the same publishing house, a certain number of workshops, grouping all the industries connected with the making of books: printing, binding, selling, and forwarding. By analogy with the great ironworks of Le Creusot, the Mame firm has been called the literary “Creusot”.

Mame was also one of the principal owners of the paper-mills of La Haye-Descartes; and it could thus be said that a book, from the time when the rags are transformed into paper up to the moment when the final binding is put on, passed through a succession of workers, all of whom were connected with Mame. Daily, as early as 1865, this publishing house brought out from three to four thousand kilograms of books; it employed seven hundred workers within and from four hundred to five hundred outside.

Inspired by the social Catholic ideal, Alfred Mame established for his employees a pension fund for those over sixty, wholly maintained by the firm. He opened schools, which caused him to receive one of the ten thousand francs awards reserved for the “établissements modèles où régnaient au plus haut degré l’harmonie sociale et le bien-être des ouvriers”. In 1874 Mame organized a system by which his working-men shared in the profits of the firm.”

Ida Saint-Elme, the Female Casanova

Ida Saint-Elme on the left, Daumier on the right

Ida Saint-Elme (née Maria Johanna Elselina Versfelt, 1776-1845), La caricature française. Journal sans abonnées et sans collaborateurs [= French Caricature. Journal without subscribers and collaborators] no I-XXV [= all published]. (London: Privately published, 1836). Bound with: Album de la correspondance du prince émigré. Londres, privately published. Imprimerie de Schulze et Cie 1836. Bound with: Portrait d’Alibaud, avec sa défense interrompue par les pairs et des confidences sur sa vie intime, d’une jeune francaise, publié par Mme. Ida St. Elme, 1836. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

The Dutch writer, explorer, and actress Maria Johanna Elselina Versfelt (1778-1845) was also known as Ida Saint-Elme; Elzelina av Aylde Jonghe; and by her pseudonym La Contemporaine. The Getty’s union list of artist names adds: Elzélina van Aylde Jonghe and Elzélina Tolstoy van Aylde-Jonghe.

Her moniker “the Female Casanova” came after she published her eight volume memoir Mémoires d’une contemporaine, 1827-28 [recap 1509.178.7913], which emphasized her romantic adventures. Perhaps to escape this celebrity, she spent the next few years sailing the Nile and exploring Egypt, publishing a six-part travelogue La Contemporaine en Egypt.

Later, while working as a manuscript dealer in London, she also published a satirical magazine modeled after Charles Philipon‘s La caricature, which she called La caricature francaise. Journal sans abonnées et sans collaborateurs. This is possibly the earliest satirical magazine written, illustrated, and published by a woman. However she stole many images directly from Philipon’s magazine, such as her copy of Honoré Daumier’s 1833 lithograph “Ah ! Tu veux te frotter à la presse !” from La Caricature.

“One of the most unusual results of the September Laws was the founding in March 1836 of a French caricature journal in exile, La Caricature Françoise. It was published anonymously (by the Bonapartist intriguer Ida Saint-Elme) in London, in order to escape censorship, at an office it dubbed “The Crowned Pear.” This new extremely rare tabloid-sized weekly, which lasted only six months, consisted of four pages of text and included on the title page a woodcut caricature which was often copied from drawing previously published in Philipon’s journals.” –Robert Justin Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-century France, 1989.

“The magazine contained letters from the king, whether or not forged, which ridiculed him. In April 1841 this led to a legal process against Versfelt, the so-called “Procès des lettres”. But the court could not prove that the published letters were actually falsified and Versfelt was therefore not convicted. But many English prominent people considered her a forger. After this Versfelt left for Belgium, where she would live until her death in 1845. She died on 19 May 1845, blind and penniless, in a hospice in Brussels. She was buried in an anonymous grave.” ~ Enne Koops
https://historiek.net/maria-versfelt-biografie-vrouwelijke-casanova/135805/

Dictionnaire de botanique

Dictionnaire de botanique: 3 vols, folio (340 × 200 mm), containing a total of more than 1200 leaves (Belgium?, ca. 1920s). Graphic Arts Collection 2020- in process

A few weeks ago, we posted some images from the massive four volume hand-drawn, hand-written tome by an unknown amateur scientist. https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2020/09/08/dictionnaire-botanique-or-livre-dartiste-take-your-pick/ Today, we post a few more specifically from the unique, three volume set labeled Dictionnaire de botanique.

Assumed to be the life work of a Belgian naturalist, this extraordinary collection documents and illustrates animal and plant biology, fossil records, cell growth, poisonous plant and germ genealogy, human evolution, insect patterns, and more.

Should it be studied for its scientific presentations? Is it worth the time it would take to research the 1,200 pages of French text and images? Does it make legitimate claims for or against Darwin and other experts? We will continue to share this material, in the hope that someone will recognize its sources or present new theories on its creation.

VOID

With sincere thanks to Eduardo Cadava, Professor of English, and an Associate Member of the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the School of Architecture, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired a wide variety of artists’ books and photobooks from the Athens collective known as VOID. https://void.photo/store According to their website:

“Created in October 2016, Void is a non profit organization focused on alternative publishing, exhibitions and education. Our goal is to engage in a series of projects around photography and other visual arts. We are open to new ideas, and you are more than welcome to get involved and be part of our projects. It’s our goal to make Void a platform for exchanging ideas with people living both in Greece and abroad. We have collaborated with many Greek and International photographers and institutions like American Suburb X, ISSP, Athens Photo Festival, Istanbul Photobook Festival, Lucy Art Residency, PHmuseum, LensCulture among others. If you feel like reading more about Void, here you find a nice feature by Cat Lachowskyj for LensCulture.”

The titles come in all shapes and sizes and formats including a variety of bindings, papers, and electrical devices. Each author appears to have designed their own. To see more information, check out the website where each project is described in detail.

As with several other acquisitions, this order was made long before the virus hit everyone but it was worth waiting for. Please note they are welcoming new projects and portfolios:

“Void is a small but very passionate team, formed by only 3 overworking members, struggling hard to deliver the best results to the projects that are already in-house. For this reason, be patient. If we fall in love with your project, you will know it. One day. But you will. Now, send us that PDF. We are as curious as busy.”
https://void.photo/contact

This is just a tiny sample of the 3 dozen or so publications received.

Parallèle des édifices anciens et modernes du continent Africain

Pierre Trémaux was a remarkable artist, naturalist, and architectural historian, best remembered for his three part publication on the architecture of Africa and Asia Minor: Voyage au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale executes de 1847 a 1854; Parallèle des édifices anciens et modernes du continent Africain; and Exploration archéologique en Asia mineur. We are fortunate to be adding the second part to the Graphic Arts Collection, leaving only the third yet to be acquired.

Trémaux meant to document the people and places he saw using the early paper negative process but the quality of the prints was not good. Ultimately, the majority of the published plates are tinted lithographs. In the second volume, he bound the fading salt prints directly opposite a lithograph of the same scene, providing excellent historical comparisons for art and architectural historians. For our purposes here, only single plates are reproduced since photographing two pages in this oblong volume would make them exceptional small.

Now at Princeton: Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895), Voyages au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale, exécutés de 1847 à 1854: comprenant une exploration dans l’Algérie, le régences de Tunis et de Tripoli, l’Égypte, la Nubie, les déserts, l’île de Méroé, le Sennar, le Fa-Zoglio, et dans les contrées inconnues de la Nigritie; atlas de vues pitoresques, scènes de mœurs, types de végétation remarquables, dessins d’objets éthologiques et scientifiques, panoramas et cartes géographiques (Paris: Borrani, [1852-58]). 37 x 55 cm. Graphic Arts Collection Oversize 2013-0025E. Purchased with funds from the Friends of the Princeton University Library. Fully digitized

Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895), *Parallèles des édifices anciens et modernes du continent africain: dessinés et relevés de 1847 à 1854 dans l’Algérie, les régences de Tunis et de Tripoli, l’Égypte, la Nubie, les déserts, l’Ile de Méroé, le Sennar, la Fa-Zoglo et dans les contrées inconnues de la Nigritie: atlas avec notices (Paris: Librairie L. Hachette et Cie., éditeurs, [between 1854 and 1858?]). 35 x 54 cm. Graphic Arts Collection 2020 in process

*No two extent copies are alike. This copy now at Princeton contains 84 lithographic plates (including title page) and 7 salt prints from paper negatives.

Architect, orientalist and photographer, Pierre Trémaux (1818-1895) made a first naturalist trip in 1847-1848 in Algeria, Tunisia, Upper Egypt, eastern Sudan and Ethiopia; Leaving Alexandria, he sailed up the Nile to Nubia and brought back many drawings. He left in 1853 for a second trip to North Africa and the Mediterranean (Libya, Egypt, Asia Minor, Tunisia, Syria and Greece), from where he brought back this time a precious set of superb photographs, taken on the spot using pioneering techniques for the time, as well as a fascinating travelogue and an interesting collection of natural history.

For this work devoted to the architectural history of Asia Minor and Africa and published in 3 parts over several years (1847-1862), Trémaux drew inspiration from his daguerreotypes, his own sketches and calotypes by the suite to compose the lithographic illustrations. Subsequent issues of his Voyage au Sudan Oriental et dans l’Africa Nord, from 1847 to 1854, contained prints mounted on salted paper which, poorly preserved, had to be replaced by lithographic reproductions.—rough translation from the listing by Pastaud Maison de Ventes aux Enchères

Complete images: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10101719c.image

“These luxe publications, produced with the support of the French government, exploit an array of graphic techniques; they combine salted paper prints, engravings, tinted and colour lithographs, photolithographs, and texts in ways never previously attempted. Their examination provides insights into the ways these media interacted, and how comfortably photography in fact sat amongst its predecessors within the long-established context of the travel narrative.” –https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2017.1399287

Like many pictorial albums, few historians take the time to read Trémaux’s texts but are content to study and enjoy his images. Recently, some scholars have begun to evaluate his racist views on the populations he documented in Africa and later described in Origine et transformations de l’homme et des autres êtres (1865). For a discussion of Trémaux and Darwin, see: Wilkins, John S. and Nelson, Gareth J., “Trémaux on Species: A theory of allopatric speciation (and punctuated equilibrium) before Wagner”, Archives of Philosophy of the Science, University of Pittsburgh, 2008; texte repris dans la revue History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2008, 30, pp 179-206.

This acquisition lives in the Graphic Arts Collection but was made with sincere thanks to Deborah Schlein, Near Eastern Studies Librarian; Alain St. Pierre, Librarian for History, History of Science and African Studies; Holly Hatheway, Head Librarian, and Nicola Shilliam, Western Bibliographer for Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology; and Patty Gaspari-Bridges, Assistant University Librarian for Collection Development.

Anaïs Nin’s first American Publisher

When Anaïs Nin bought a printing press and set up shop in Greenwich Village, Jimmy Cooney made a number of trips into town to give her printing lessons and publishing advice. Who was he?

In the 1930s, Blanche and James Cooney moved “on the Maverick,” an artists’ colony outside Woodstock, NY, founded by Hervey White in 1905. They had no telephone or indoor plumbing but acquired a full stockpile of metal type and a small hand press. Notices were placed in The New York Times Sunday book review section and the Herald Tribune asking for manuscripts to be published in a new magazine. “We would print it ourselves; it would be the rallying point, through it we would spread the word of a community of separate dwellings and shared land and stock and tools; …We would publish writers whose unpopular or seditious views would have no chance in the commercial press.” It would be called The Phoenix, in honor of D.H. Lawrence.

Henry Miller wrote from Paris that both he and his friend Anaïs Nin would send material, happy that someone welcomed their provocative stories. Each was published in The Phoenix several times before they were forced to leave Paris for New York City.

As soon as Anaïs was settled, she and her husband Hugh Guiler (Hugo) made a pilgrimage to meet the Cooneys and the press that was not afraid to publish her work. Anaïs’s famous diaries do not mention of this trip, probably because Hugo asked her not to write about him and she agreed. However, the visit is chronicled in Blanche Cooney’s autobiography:

“In 1940, on her return from Europe, Anaïs came to Woodstock with her husband Hugh Guiler to stay with us for a few days. She wanted to meet her first American publisher, we wanted to meet the fabled Etre Étoilique [Miller’s 1937 short story about Anaïs]. A great pleasure to look at, she moved like the dancer she was, a fluid supple line in a dress of purple wool. . . Hugo—Anaïs called him Hugo and he said we were also to call him Hugo—was the banker, an international banker. A tall lean Scotsman, gentle, handsome, he deferred to Anaïs, his adored one, his indulged one. No whim, no quirk, no passion, or bizarre appetite would he deny her, Yes to a houseboat on the Seine, Yes to the Miller connection, to a fling with a woman, an English poet, a Peruvian Indian, Yes….

Hugo, Anaïs said, will be studying engraving with Stanley Hayter at the New School. Hugo had a definite talent; he will do the covers and illustrations for her books, she said; they will find a printer and publish privately. “my text and Hugo’s decorations.” Anaïs smiled into Hugo’s eyes with intimate secret reference. The visit went well, no explosions, no denunciations . . . .”–Blanche Cooney, In My Own Sweet Time (Ohio: Swallow Press, 1993). Z473 .C755 1993

The Phoenix ([Haydenville, Mass.: Morning Star Press, 1938-1984.]). Vol. 1, no. 1 (Mar./May 1938)-v. 9, no. 3 & 4 (1984). AP2 .P464

Natashia Troubetskoia, Anaïs Nin, ca. 1932. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Want to know more? Please join us at 2:00 p.m. on September 25, 2020 for the fifth in our series of webinars highlighting the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University. Register for free here: https://libcal.princeton.edu/event/6949414

The history of the Maverick: https://player.vimeo.com/video/11435652

Kaloolah or Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri: by someone related to the Folgers, the Macys and the Starbucks

We recently digitized another sensational female-slave narrative with a frontispiece by Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822-1888), engraved by Benjamin F. Childs (1814-1863):
William Starbuck Mayo (1812-1895), Kaloolah, or, Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri : an autobiography of Jonathan Romer edited by W.S. Mayo, M.D. (New York : George P. Putnam; London : David Bogue, 1849). Graphic Arts Collection Hamilton 603(a) https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/2526136

The following letter will best explain the way in which these pages came into the editor’s hands, and the degree of credit that may be fairly given to them as an authentic record of the travels and adventures of a young American:

Dear Doctor : You must know that I have recently come into the possession of a manuscript, purporting to be the travels and adventures of a young American, in various parts of the world, but mainly in the deserts of Africa, and in the unknown, and hitherto unvisited countries south of the Soudan. The manuscript strikes me as being curious, interesting, and apparently authentic; but I have so little confidence in my own judgment, in such matters, that after a deal of patient and painful cogitation upon the subject, I find myself utterly unable to decide two questions that present themselves, to wit, is it worth publishing? and if so, what will be the best manner of giving it to the world?

“Life of adventure may be justly considered my birthright. Descended, on both sides of the house, from some of the earliest settlers of Nantucket, and more or less intimately related to the Coffins, the Folgers, the Macys and the Starbucks of that adventurous population, it would seem that I have a natural right to a roving disposition, and to a life of peril, privation, and vicissitude. Nearly all the male members of my family, for several generations, have been “followers of the sea.” Some of them in the calm and peaceful employment of the merchant service; others, and by far the greater number, in the more dangerous pursuit of the ocean monster. Whaling, it is well known, has been, almost from the first settlement of this country, the chief employment of the inhabitants of “the Island.” All were directly or indirectly interested in it. By it were bounded the hopes of the young and the memories of the old.”

Expedition to the Dead Sea, Petra, and the Left Bank of the Jordan

Honore Theodore Paul Joseph D’Albert Duc de Luynes (1802-1867), Voyage d’exploration à la Mer Morte, à Petra, et sur la Rive Gauche du Jourdain [= Expedition to the Dead Sea, Petra, and the Left Bank of the Jordan] (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, n.d. [ca.1868-74]). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage RECAP-33945831

Alphonse Poitevin (1819-1882) won both of the 1856 photographic competitions sponsored by the Société françoise de photographie to discover a way (in short) to stop photographic prints from fading. Poitevin’s prize money was donated by Honoré d’Albert duc de Luynes (1802-1867) but when the Duke needed someone to print the photographs from his 1864 expedition to the Dead Sea basin and interior of Jordan, he passed on Poitevin and chose Charles Nègre (1820-1880).

An amateur archaeologist, Luynes organized the expedition to examine the region’s ancient ruins and perform geological and scientific observations. He took with him scientists, historians, and Lieutenant Louis Vignes (1831-1896), who served as the expedition’s photographer after receiving extensive training from Nègre. Vignes made both paper and glass plate negatives, which were carefully transported back to Paris and printed in ink as photogravures for the atlas documenting the expedition. Voyage d’Exploration a la Mer Morte à Petra et sur la Rive Gauche du Jourdain.

“Nègre was to complete the work by January 1868 for the sum of 23,250 francs. The photographs, made by the Duke’s second in command, Lieutenant L. Vignes, are for the most part rather contrasty and lacking in detail in the shadow areas. It is remarkable how Nègre was able to open up the shadows and fill them with light, detail and space. But undoubtedly the main reason the Duke chose Nègre to perform this task lay in the quality of the prints Nègre was capable of producing. Quite possibly de Luynes had expected the artist to win the prize of the Société Francaise competition, for he had achieved a control over his process which resulted in prints of rich tones, fine detail, transparency and effect.” – Borcoman, Charles Negre, pp. 45-46 and plates 199 and 200.

Together with three volumes of text, the atlas volume presents 64 of the Nègre photogravures; plus 18 lithographs, 2 maps, and 1 chart. Rachel Stuhlman, George Eastman House, writes that Nègre produced “printing plates capable of reproducing the entire gradation of tones, from the white of the paper to the strongest black…” and that he “…transformed the dull photographs into evocative images of great poetry.”

Contents: t. 1. Relation du voyage.–t. 2. De Petra à Palmyre, par m. Vignes.–Voyage de Jérusalem à Karak et à Chaubak, par mm. Mauss et Sauvaire.–t. 3 Géologie, par m. L. Lartet.–Atlas.

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