From the late 1980s until his retirement in 1995, Henry Martin, Class of 1948, drew cartoons for The Harvard Business Review, in addition to his better known New Yorker drawings. Nice to see Princeton talent is appreciated, even at Harvard. https://hbr.org/magazine
Mr. Martin generously donated over 50 original HBR drawings to the Graphic Arts Collection today, including both preparatory and final designs. Here are a few examples.
Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (1878-1955), The New York Public Library, [between 1907 and 1911]. Drypoint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.02213
There was a request today for a print by Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (1878-1955). We found only one. While there is no date on this drypoint depicting the New York Public Library at 42nd street, we know that the artist must have scratched the copper plate before 1911 because that was when the marble lions, Patience and Fortitude, were added to the entrance outside this Beaux-Arts building. The cornerstone for the building was laid in May 1902 but Nordfeldt didn’t get to New York to take some classes at the Art Students League until 1907, therefore the print was made some time between 1907 and 1911.
His biography by Alisha Patrick adds the curious note that in 1908, the Swedish artist returned to his native country “to illustrate for Harper’s Magazine.” In addition, the Archives of American Art holds clippings of magazine illustrations dated 1910. While we thought we only had this one print by Nordfeldt, we probably have many others if we can one day identify the work he did for Harper’s and other magazines of that period. Let us know if you see any.
John Sherwood Anderson, Self Portrait, 1938. Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts Collection. GA 2006.02619. Written on the back of the frame “J.S. Anderson (1908-1995), Self Portrait. Son of Sherwood. Purchased by E.A. [Elmer Adler] 1938 at 54 Washington Mews, New York.”
In December 1926, writer Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) and his wife Elizabeth took two of their three children, John (1908–1995), and Marion (aka Mimi, 1911–1996), to Paris. “Within a few days . . . Elizabeth entered Mimi in a private French girls school, and Sherwood placed John in a pension to pick up French and, at Gertrude Stein’s suggestion, in the Académie Julian to study painting. The Andersons joyfully attended the Christmas party Gertrude had invited them to . . . .” While both parents left Paris soon after, it was arranged that Mimi was to stay on at her school until June 1, John at the Académie until September 1.
“John . . . who had expected to find Stein someone ‘arty with a long cigarette holder,’ had seen her several times and was much impressed by her ‘horse sense.’ After the older Andersons had left, John called on her frequently and became one of her favorites. She noted that upon his parents’ leaving he at once changed from ‘an awkward shy boy’ to an assured, handsome young man; decades later he would think of his whole stay in Paris as a young art student as ‘a golden time.’” (Walter B. Rideout, Sherwood Anderson: a Writer in America, v.1 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.)
Sherwood married his fourth wife Eleanor Copenhaver in 1933. The couple lived, on and off, at the exclusive the home of Mary Emmett (Mrs. Burton Emmett) at 54 Washington Mews in Greenwich Village. This painting was purchased by E.A. (presumably Elmer Adler) during the period they were at this address. In 1939, the writer came to Princeton to deliver a Spencer Trask Lecture entitled “Man and His Imagination.” He is quoted as saying, “The use of the imagination on a grand scale can lead to disastrous results. Every good storyteller is a born inventor, but when he lets his invention run away with him he destroys his story.” Daily Princetonian 64, no. 124 (20 October 1939). Elmer Adler brought Anderson’s painting to Princeton the next fall.
“The Curwen wallpapers were my earliest designs to be printed from linocuts,” writes Edward Bawden (1903-1989) in his introduction to David McKitterick’s Wallpapers.
“In 1924 a friend told me about cutting and printing from lino at a time when such prints were generally unknown, though a few by Claude Flight had appeared in the Print Room galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum.”
“I bought a piece of lino, the common sort universally used for covering floors, and with a tube of artist’s oil paint, a brush and a roll of white wallpaper, I went off home to experiment.”
“I had on me a penknife sharp enough for cutting soft lino. There was not much room between the end of the double bed and the gas fire, only enough for a chair, in the cramped space typical of a student’s bed-sit of the period, and it was here on a drawing board with a piece of plain wallpaper pinned to it, that gently I put down my foot on a small cut of a cow stippled red and gave the cut gentle foot pressure. The print was better than expected so naturally the cows multiplied and were a small herd by the end of the evening.”
Between 1927 and 1933 the Curwen Press (founded at Plaistow on the north-east outskirts of London) produced a series of wallpapers that challenged an industry dominated by a few manufacturers, and a public often anxious for change but uncertain where it wished to be led. Nearly all of these papers were the work of Edward Bawden.
McKitterick’s book not only provides a history of Bawden’s work but actual sample sheets printed directly from his blocks. Here are a few images.
David McKitterick, Wallpapers by Edward Bawden printed at the Curwen Press (Andoversford, Gloucestershire: Whittington Press, 1988). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process
In checking the provenance of our Joan of Arc bust, my colleague Steve Ferguson reminds me that Princeton holds a “Collection of reproductions depicting Joan of Arc, scenes from her life, and her childhood home,1630-1937” (Rare Books (Ex) Oversize 1509.142.499.65f).
The gift of Mrs. John P. Poe in honor of her husband John Prentiss Poe Jr. Class of 1895, includes 112 original prints and reproductions depicting Joan in many styles and costumes. The works are by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Marie d’Orléans, Aubrey Beardsley, Henri Chapu, Emmanuel Fremiet, and Anna Hyatt Huntington among others. Here are a few samples.
Robert Fulton (1765-1815), Love’s First Interview, 1806. Watercolor. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02373
Oxford Art Online lists Robert Fulton (1765-1815) simply as “an engineer of genius who developed the steamboat, [who] was initially a painter of portraits and historical scenes.” Dated 1806, this drawing was executed shortly after his return from England, where he had been studying painting as well as experimenting with submarine designs. It would have been completed around the same time he supervised the construction of the North River Steamboat or Clermont.
Fulton certainly was a renaissance man, with a practicing career as a miniature painter before gaining fame for his engineering skills.
“In 1782 when seventeen years of age, Fulton left his native town for Philadelphia, there to seek his fortune. That city was the capital of the State of Pennsylvania, which, under the mild and beneficent rule of members of the Society of Friends, enjoyed the distinction of being the pioneer in the arts of peace among the States of the Union. Hither came men of science and scholarship, finding the atmosphere congenial to work and study. In Philadelphia were founded the first American Philosophical Society, the first public library in America, the first medical and law schools; the first printing press in the middle colonies was set up there, and prior to the Revolution more books were published in Pennsylvania than in all the other colonies combined. It is not surprising that Fulton should develop quickly in the new field of thought and activity which opened before him.
Not much is known of his doings during the first three years of his stay in the Quaker City. It is said that he was apprenticed to a silversmith, but he would be too old for that; another statement which is much more probable is that he was glad to turn his hand to almost any kind of work in drawing plans, designing buildings, and painting portraits. Already in in 1852 by his application and industry, he had established himself as a miniature painter, and during the next two years he met with a considerable measure of success. Several miniatures and one or two portraits of some merit remain to this day to prove his proficiency. Charles Willson Peale was then the principal painter in the city, and Fulton may have had lessons from him.” –H. W. Dickinson, Robert Fulton: Engineer and Artist (London 1913)
This untitled photo album, signed “with best wishes from Grace” holds 24 cut and mounted photographs from the late 1800s. Views include the south shore of Lake Michigan and other Chicago sites. There is reason to believe that the album comes from the family of Robert Burns (1844-1916), Detroit newspaper editor and publisher. We have not yet identified any of the individuals photographed.
Luigi Rossini, 1790-1857. Le antichita romane; ossia, Raccolta delle più interessanti vedute di Roma antica, disegnatè ed incise dall’architetto incisore Luigi Rossini, Ravennate, in numero centuna vedute. Rome: Scudellari, 1829. Gift of Mrs. John G. Winant. Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N6920 .R73e
Following in the grand tradition of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Luigi Rossini (1790-1857) created large scale engravings of Rome and its surroundings. A series of elephant portfolios (77 x 56 cm.) were published from 1918 to 1829 under the title: Le antichita romane; ossia, Raccolta delle più interessanti vedute di Roma antica. [The Rome of Antiquity, a collection of the most interesting Views of Ancient Rome].
Mrs. John G. Winant presented the Princeton University Library with a set of Rossini’s 101 engravings on October 5, 1925. Sometime later, 21 of these beautiful prints were framed and hung on the walls of McCosh Hall (built in 1907). After an exhaustive search, we believe these few prints are no longer at McCosh and will not be found. Thankfully, the rest are here and available to all our researchers.
New York’s Central Park will be the focus of tomorrow’s interdisciplinary studies class: Revisiting Nature’s Nation – An Ecocritical History of American Art. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to offer the group: Richard Morris Hunt (1828-1895), Designs for the Gateways of the Southern Entrances to the Central Park … with a Description of the Designs, and a Letter in Relation to Them, Addressed to the Commissioners of the Park (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1866). Plates and plans lithographed by Julius Bien (1826-1909). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2006-0281Q
In the introduction, the Parks Commissioner writes, “Mr. Hunt’s idea, which by adoption has become the idea of the Park Commissioners, is, on the contrary, that it is impossible to fully carry out this plan of rusticity. While conceding the importance of interfering with nature as little as possible, it is to be remembered that the most faithful endeavors in this direction will still, of necessity, leave the Park, what indeed it already is, and a formal city pleasure-ground.”
“We must, it needs be , so trim and restrain the wildness of nature that it can be called ‘rural’ in no absolute sense, but only by contrast with the bricks and stone surrounding it. And, when we have to provide for a population of some two millions or more, it will be impossible to preserve those narrow and winding walks at the entrance ways which form part of the plan for rural effect. It is folly, the Commissioners think, to attempt rural entrances for a park in the heart of a great city, surrounded by magnificent edifices of fashion, as our Central Park will soon be.”
“Their idea, then, is that the entrances should be in keeping with the future external surroundings of the Park, and establish the connection between the street architecture without and cultivated nature within.”
Gwenn Thomas, Photographs documenting Jack Smith’s “Fear Ritual of Shark Museum” performance, Cologne, December 1974, printed 2005 by the artist. 52 gelatin silver prints. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. One of an edition of 5. Gift of the artist.
Forty years ago on the grounds of the Cologne Zoo during the Kölner Kunstverein’s Projekt 74, Gwenn Thomas photographed Jack Smith (1932-1989) in a performance he called Fear Ritual of Shark Museum. Hildegarde Lutze also appeared in cameo as Smith’s wardrobe assistant.
At the time, Thomas was a contributing photographer for the avant-garde magazine Avalanche and her work appeared as the cover story in issue 10 under the heading “A thousand and one irrational jingoleanisms of lucky landlord paradise. Cologne Museum Festival of Fear, 1974.”
Thanks to the generous donation by the artist, Princeton now holds one complete set of these photographs. Thomas’s work is at once documentation and fine art, capturing the temporal performance of this seminal figure post-war art. Although not as well-known, Smith’s work is often featured alongside such artists as Joseph Beuys, Cindy Sherman, Vito Acconci, and of course, Andy Warhol (who once described Smith as “the only person I would ever copy”).
On the same day, artist Birgit Hein made a separate documentary film also under Projekt 74, which can be viewed on vimeo:
Birgit Hein: Jack Smith in Cologne, 1974 from Christian Siekmeier on Vimeo.Avalanche (New York, N.Y.: Kineticism Press, 1970-1976). Marquand Library (SAX): Rare Books Oversize N1 .A95f