Henry Martin ’48, Sneaking in to say ‘thanks’…, no date. Pen and marker drawing. Henry Martin Cartoon Collection GAX2011.00353. Gift of David K. Reeves ’48.

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 4, 1979

Just 15 days shy of his 95th birthday, New Yorker cartoonist Henry Martin ’48 quietly passed away on Monday evening. An artist of gentle humor and keen insight, Martin also curated the first online exhibition for the Princeton University Library in 1996, proving a talent for many generations. https://lib-dbserver.princeton.edu/visual_materials/gallery/index.html. For that show, he wrote:

…Two of America’s most articulate humorists were E. B. White and James Thurber, who were friends and colleagues at The New Yorker magazine, where they shared an office. “Humor,” remarked Thurber, “is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility,” and E. B. White observed, “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing died in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” I often think of these two when I am studying cartoons and have come to appreciate their sound advice. So, I will not perform any dissections here, but will present a sampling of comic art along with my views on its methods and its mission.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Martin traveled north to Princeton University where he lived in Witherspoon, Pyne, and Patton while studying art history and writing a senior thesis entitled “A Study of Humorous Art” (http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01pn89d693b)

After college Martin spent two years at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. It was there he began sending “spot” drawings to The New Yorker, mailing ten a week for nine months before finally selling one. By the second year, he was supporting himself with his art.

Returning to Princeton, the small stucco house on William and Charlton Streets was a perfect fit for his drawing table and tea kettle, so that became his studio. Not content with only drawing spots, in 1961 Martin began also submitting approximately 20 cartoons each week. This had to be done in person so each Wednesday he would get on the bus at Palmer Square and ride into Manhattan, walking the few blocks to The New Yorker’s office at 25 West Forty-third Street. You could either drop them off, returning later to pick up the rejections or if you were brave, you could stay with the work while the editor considered them. Martin usually stayed.

Today there’s a “Literary Landmark” plaque in front of the building with Martin’s name alongside the other cartoonists.

“That’s Harry Phillipaton and his wild imaginings.”

Late in 1964 he sold his first cartoon and in 1965 two more. Martin became one of the regulars, producing 20 cartoons each week to which The New Yorker had first refusal. Second refusal went to the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News syndicate, followed by Punch, Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and others.

Martin’s first book Good News/Bad News was published in 1977 by Charles Scribner without a meeting or a sales pitch. The artist simply left an envelope with the building’s doorman containing a book he mocked up with cartoons pasted to each page. Scribner called him personally and by the end of the call, a two book contract was assured.

The Graphic Arts Collection is proud to hold over 500 original cartoon drawings by Martin, along with 670 pen and ink drawings for the spots, a complete set of his illustrated books, scrapbooks, tear sheets, and other archives. An oral history and his senior paper can be found in Mudd Library. https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/AC259/c028

He will be missed by one and all.

When the Irish Protestant Orange Day parade kicked off on July 12, 1871, in New York City, artist Thomas Nast was one of 5,000 National Guardsmen called out to protect the marchers from hundreds of Irish Catholic protestors. Shots were fired and the resulting Orange Day Riots left 60 civilians and three guardsmen dead, along with many others wounded. Nast recorded a first-hand account in a double-page wood engraving published July 29, 1871 in Harper’s Weekly.

Although Harper’s printed two texts presenting the two sides to the Protestant/Catholic debate, Nast’s depiction is clearly anti-Catholic, showing the protestors as apes and thugs connected to Boss Tweed who Nast was in the midst of overthrowing. Nast titled his print “Something That Will Not ‘Blow Over’” alluding to the words used by Mayor Abraham Oakey Hall when he dismissed the allegations of Tweed’s corruption, claiming they would soon “blow over.”

At the center of Nast’s design is a globe-like vignette; Washington at the top, California on one side and New York on the other. It is named “The Promised Land. U.S.A.” with an upside-down flag on the left, with the words embedded: “The land of the free, home of the brave.”  Mixed in with the Orange Day rioters below, several figures have been identified as (left to right) Queen Victoria, John Bull, King Victor Emanuel of Italy, Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, and Tsar Alexander II of Russia, along with Uncle Sam at the center. On the left, a lynched black man and the burning Colored Orphan Asylum are references to the 1863 Civil War Draft Riots in New York City.

Thomas Nast (1840-1902), Something that will not “blow over.”–July 11 and July 12, 1871 (New York: [Harper’s Weekly], July 29, 1871). Wood engraving. Graphic Arts GA 2008.01711. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/qv33rw804

Below the central panel we see Boss Tweed with his crew being asked the question, “Well What Are You Going To Do About It?”–a question famously posed by Tweed during the corruption trials.

Nast’s work drew such attention that a New York Times editorial was printed, urging readers to see the Harper’s Weekly issue. “Everybody should see, and seeing, retain Nast’s great ‘Riot Cartoons’ on the New Number of Harper’s Weekly.”

See more: https://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=July&Date=29

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0729.html

Philadelphia Inquirer May 19, 1907

Trained as a fine art painter, Edgar Forrest Wolfe (pen name Jim Nasium, 1874-1958) began his career in the art department of the New York American, eventually becoming manager of the art department of the Pittsburgh Press and then, the Philadelphia Inquirer. His love of sports led to a weekly column that he also illustrated, chronicling American professional sports (especially baseball). During the World’s Series and other championships his cartoons appeared daily, sometimes filling the top half of the page. Originally titled “Letters from an old sport to his son at college,” Wolfe was only 33 years old when the series began and did not have college-age children.

After a few years, still drawing under the name Nasium, his work expanded to include social and political commentary, as long as it did not interfere with reporting on sports. His drawings were regularly on the covers of The Sporting News (https://newspaperarchive.com/st-louis-sporting-news-oct-28-1926-p-7/) and a few on The Saturday Evening Post.

Wolfe stopped his weekly columns in 1929 but continued to write and draw on a freelance basis until his death in 1958. Here are some of his treasures.

Philadelphia Inquirer April 28, 1907

Philadelphia Inquirer May 12, 1907

Philadelphia Inquirer July 28, 1907

Philadelphia Inquirer August 11, 1907

Philadelphia Inquirer March 5, 1908: 10

Philadelphia Inquirer January 11, 1908

 Philadelphia Inquirer July 24, 1910

Philadelphia Inquirer October 29, 1916

December 3, 1916

Philadelphia Inquirer December 19, 1916

Philadelphia Inquirer May 16, 1920

One hundred years ago this month, Katherine Dreier (1877-1952), Man Ray (1890-1976), and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) established the Société Anonyme, Inc. in two rented rooms (gallery and library) at 19 East 47th Street in New York. Dreier wrote that she “places at the disposal of visitors a complete carefully selected Reference Library on Modern Art, including books and magazines from various European countries. [We do] not sell any works exhibited under its direction, but gladly brings any prospective buyer directly in touch with the artist.”

The location was deliberate. J & S Goldschmidt Fine Art [above] was at Fifth Avenue and 47th, while M. Knoedler and Co. [below] operated around the corner at 556 Fifth Avenue. More important, Man Ray’s dealer Charles Daniel’s gallery was just across 5th Avenue at 2 West 47th Street.

With the end of WWI, travel reopened and the development of international exhibitions on the rise. In February of 1921, Dreier and Daniel joined forces to celebrate the Russian artist Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964), exhibiting drawings and watercolors with Daniel and sculpture at the Société Anonyme.

To publicize the exhibitions, Duchamp published a tongue-in-cheek advertisement in The Arts magazine for the “Archie Pen Co.” [at the top]  Beside an illustration of Archipenko’s relief sculpture Woman Standing (1920) is the text:

“For having invented the circle, Columbus, as everyone knows, was tried and sentenced to death. Today an Archie Pen draws automatically a line of accurate length such as, for instance, the hypothenuse of a possible triangle in which the length of the two other sides is given arithmetically. It thinks for you. To use it reveals new experiences, even to the most blasé.

A distinct achievement of the Archie Pen is its ability to bring delicacy of line and graceful poise to a hard dry mechanical drawing. It has already found great favor among architects, draughtsmen, because it covers a third more space than the old-fashioned Fountain Pen and complies with the exigencies of what the French Scientists call: les inhibitions imbibées.

It does away with blotter. For artistic design, quality and value Archie Pens are without equal. Presented for your approval at the Société Anonyme, 19 East 47th Street, New York City. Write us if you are unable to secure genuine Archie Pens at your favorite stationer. The name will be found at the bottom as an assurance. [This brilliant caricature of a modern magazine advertisement is the work of an artist well-known in many fields who, unfortunately, objects to having his identity revealed—Editor]”

The Princeton University Art Museum “Flat Torso” by Archipenko [left] and his Saks Fifth Avenue advertisement, designed by Raymond Loewy. Marquand Library offers:

Société Anonyme, Inc. (Museum of Modern Art) presents the first exhibition in New York of the works of Alexandre Archipenko (Russian sculptor) : at its 7th exhibition, Feb. 1st-March 15th 1921, 19 East 47th Street, New York (New York: Société Anonyme, Inc., 1921). 1 folded sheet. Marquand Library NB689.A6 S624 1921. “The Société Anonyme Inc. has issued a special pamphlet on Archipenko with five full-page illustrations, and an excellent dissertation by Ivan Goll (translated into English by Mary Knoblauch).”

Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964)—Oxford Art Online:

Ukrainian sculptor, active in Paris and in the USA. He began studying painting and sculpture at the School of Art in Kiev in 1902 but was forced to leave in 1905 after criticizing the academicism of his instructors. … In 1908 he established himself in Paris, where he rejected the most favoured contemporary sculptural styles, including the work of Rodin. . . . Archipenko was represented in the New York Armory Show of 1913 and in many international Cubist exhibitions. In 1921 he moved to Berlin and opened an art school. In 1923 he settled in the USA and established a school in New York City. He initiated a summer programme in Woodstock, New York, in 1924, which continued until his death. In 1927 he was granted a patent for his invention of the ‘peinture changeante’ (or Archipentura), a motorized mechanism for the production of variable images in sequence. This machine (which in his view combined the scientific with the emotional), as well as his incorporation of electric light and actual movement into his work, revealed his continued attraction to the Futurist urge to represent the dynamism of the modern era.

European Culture in a Changing World: Between Nationalism and Globalism (International Society for the Study of European Ideas. Conference, 2004)

Charles Williams (died 1830), The Ambassadors Return- or- A New Arrival from Congress, March 1, 1815. Hand colored etching.
Description: Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (1769-1822) says: “My Prince I am returned overwhelmed with glory, to recieve the applauses of a gratefull nation. I am doubtless the greatest negociator in the World.” False praise since Dorothy George tells us that in fact Castlereagh, who left Vienna and landed at Dover on March 3, 1815, was attacked for sacrificing Poland and Saxony, having done his utmost for Poland, and succeeded in defeating the demands of Prussia for the whole of Saxony.

This is one example of the difficulty in online searching of digital images (here done in the Graphic Arts Collection and the British Museum print collection). The above print and the ones below all appeared thanks to a search on Working From Home, words that appear somewhere connected. This can be fun, except when a final paper is due. For today, each is a terrific scene – perhaps not surprising that several concern taxes.

Charles Williams (died 1830), The Two Journals [second of two plates], July 1814. Hand colored etching.

On June 2, 1814, the Prince Regent, on his way to the Drawing Room at Buckingham House, was hooted when his carriage entered the Park. This was on account of his exclusion of the Princess of Wales from the Drawing Room, at which Princess Charlotte made her first appearance.

It ends: The Regent sits at a writing-table, looking round to the left. “Worn with ennui—devour’d with spleen, / Yawn’d—trifled—cursed and drank between / Wrote to the square—got dressed once more, / New stay—new wig—new whiskers wore—”  Finally, the Regent’s empty chair stands at a dinner-table on which are decanters and glasses, some overturned or broken. The drunk Prince is being conducted from the room by McMahon and Yarmouth. “At eight my dinner table graced / With friends select—of kindred taste / I quaff’d till half were on the floor, / Then reel’d to bed—quite drunk—at four—”

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), American Justice!! or the Ferocious Yankee Genl Jack’s Reward for Butchering Two British Subjects!!!-, April 1819. Hand colored etching.

President Monroe (right) receives General Andrew Jackson, offering him “The Government of the Floridas.” Monroe says: “There’s your Reward! Where e’er you catch the English String ’em up like Herrings!—Go, Rob the Indians! Seize their Country! Sell ’em for Slaves! Liberty & Equality are only intended for the inhabitants of the United States! We’ll take care Nobody else shall enjoy any!”

Dorothy George comments that Andrew Jackson was sent in 1818 to attack Seminole Indians from Florida who were making trouble on the frontier. He followed them into Spanish territory, and, setting aside the sentence of a court-martial, hanged two British subjects, Robert Christian Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot, who had been exercising hostile influence with the Indians. The Report of a Committee of the Senate on the ‘Seminole War’ blamed Jackson for the execution of the two British subjects who were prisoners of war.

Attributed to Richard Newton (1777-1798), possibly after a design by George Moutard Woodward (ca.1765-1809), More Visitors to John Bull, or the Assess’d Taxes!!!, December 1, 1797. Hand colored etching.

John Bull (right) says: “What do you want you little Devils – an’t I plagued with enough of you already more pick poket Work, I suppose!!” They reply: “Please your Honor we are the assess’d Taxes.” It is a satire on the tripling of the assessed taxes proposed by Pitt in his famous budget speech on November 24, 1797, his ‘plan of finance’ to support the war without recourse to loans…

See more: Richard Cooper, “William Pitt, Taxation, and the Needs of War,” Journal of British Studies  22, no. 1 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 94-103.

Charles Jameson Grant (active 1830-1852), Taking the Boromongers Home, June 1832. Hand colored lithograph.

The devil is carrying off a group of political dignitaries or boroughmongers. What is that? The OED lists boroughmonger as “One who trades in parliamentary seats for boroughs. (A sarcastic designation coined about the end of the 18th cent., and very frequently used in the discussions on electoral reform up to 1832.) As in 1809   Sir Fr. the Reformer   “He swears eternal detestation to borough-mongers of the nation.”

Princeton, N.J., stopped being a borough on December 31, 2012, so there is no boromongering here.