Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Prospect der Königlichen Börse an dem Haupt Canal zu Cadix

 

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Balthazar Frederic Leizelt (ca. 1727-1796), Prospect der Königlichen Börse an dem Haupt Canal zu Cadix, wo man zugleich mit spanischen Gondlen spazieren fahret. / Vuë de Bourse Royale au Canal de Cadix ou les Chevalliers et Dames se prome=nent dans les Barques, after 1770. Engraved optical print. Graphic Arts Collection GC138

This 18th century prospect of the Royal Exchange in Cadiz is one of our Vues d’Optique or Perspective Views. The back is prepared with colored paper so that when it is held to light, or seen in a peep box, the lights in the windows turn on creating a bright night scene.

Based in Augsburg, Balthazar Frederic Leizelt published dozens of these city views with captions in multiple languages for maximum sales potential. Not all scenes are realistic views. Leizelt and his staff also made-up city views, especially from the United States, which were too difficult to draw in person.

 

Keisai soga

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keisai soga1Kitao Masayoshi (1764-1824), Sanryō ezu Keisai soga ([Nagoya: Tōhekidō, 1839). Volume 4 only. Graphic Arts Collection uncatalogued

The Japanese painter and book illustrator Kitao Masayoshi (also known as Kuwagata Keisai, 1761-1824) was only a teenager when he began studying under the master printmaker Kitao Shigemasa. Graphic Arts is fortunate to own volume 4 of his 5 volume set of “Keisai soga” or various pictures by Keisai published around 1830. These simple designs show the talent and versatility of the artist, in particular his use of multi-color inking on a single block.
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Sangue de poveri cavato per mano degli Arabi moderni

mitelli1Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634?-1718), Sangue de poveri cavato per mano degli Arabi moderni [Blood of the poor gouged by the hands of modern Arabs], 1699. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA2014-in process

In this Italian satire, Arabian doctors are performing a bleeding on poor Italians but instead of blood, it is money that they are collecting. Mitelli made a number of satirical prints but unfortunately, he is not as well known in the United States as English or French caricaturists. This is the first print by Mitelli to enter the Graphic Arts Collection and the only other example of the artist’s work on campus is the 1690 print in the Cotsen Library “Gioco della pontica assediata da smaniosi gatti [Game of the castle besieged by cats]” (Item no 6526643).

mitelli2Sotto questa inhumana cerusia / L’afflitta povertà languisce e suiene, / Volendo i Professor d’Arte siria / D’altrui sangue arrichir le proprie uene

 

Lantern slides of Hamlet

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Joseph George Holman ?1764-1817. 1st Hamlet America: Sept. 28, 1812. Artist unknown, Garrick Club, London. Graphic Arts Collection GC136

Within the Graphic Arts Collection there are 100s of lantern slides. Several dozen document various productions of Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Here are a few examples.

At the bottom is a wonderful video on the documentation and performance of Charles Dickens’s novels using lantern slides.

 

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Basil Sydney. Claudius: Charles Waldron, Booth Theatre 1925. Graphic Arts Collection GC136

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Maurice Evans, Graphic Arts Collection GC136

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Mrs. Shaw (Mrs. Thomas S. Hamblin). 1st performance Hamlet February 21 1940, Graphic Arts Collection GC136

hamlet5 raymond massey

Raymond Massey 1931. Horatio: Leon Quartermaine. Design: Norman Bel Geddes. Graphic Arts Collection GC136

hamlet4forbes robertson

Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson 1853-1903. Graphic Arts Collection GC136

hamlet3john keller

John E. Kellerd 1863-1929. Start of forced run of 102 performances November 18, 1912, Graphic Arts Collection GC136

Thanks go to the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture and Prof. Mervyn Heard for this video:

Suzanne Samary

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Chalot (active 1900s), Melle. Suzanne Samary de la Comedie Francaise, ca. 1888. Photogravure. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02436

This portrait of Suzanne Samary, a famous comédienne with the Comedie-Française, was taken around 1888, by the French photographer know simply as Chalot. He was a sought-after artist, in particular for his large, almost life-size images. In the January 1890 issue of American Journal of Photography, Chalot’s Parisian studio is described in minute detail. Here are a few sections:

“Chalot catches the sun at 18, rue Vivienne, where a small window shows off a few of the platinums by the firm. Through a courtyard and upstairs one arrives at a grand reception room, which it would be hard to equal. It is preceded by a tiny entrance lobby for coat and hat-racks, and made pleasant by plants in boxes. The beauty of this fine receiving-room consists above all in the exhibition of the platinum prints, mingled judiciously with the carbon and silver portraits and colored enamels. …

chalot melle“M. Chalot claims the platinum process worked by him to be a special one and his formula is kept secret. To produce such photographs is indeed worthy of a patent. He rightly terms the ordinary process a coarse and unsatisfactory one, and there is certainly no comparison between the two. …

“The printing room is a model of its kind, and fitted at sides and roof with white blinds to foil the sun. His studio is small, but all sufficient, and poses are made at either end. It has blinds that roll up from the bottom or down from the top of the side windows; otherwise, the horizontal two-feet wide sliding curtains, etc., are the same as with other ateliers. A very fine instrument is the camera by Joute—about fifteen inches square—the lens being a Voigtlander. …

“Complete as are the other departments, remark is only necessary on the office, which surprises one directly on leaving the magnificent reception or show room, for here behind the curtains a counter of the most uncompromisingly business style is found manned by three clerks. It has been noticed in some establishments Payments positively in advance, and the business-like caisses in others certainly leads one to think that a photographer might be left, like a tailor, without proper precaution. Hence the necessity of ostentatiously introducing the desk in some place where customers are bound to pass….”

 

 

Moses Taylor Pyne in his garden at Drumthwacket

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[Moses Taylor Pyne in the gardens at Drumthwacket], ca. 1905. Gelatin silver print. Graphic Arts Collection.

The Princeton Historical Society identifies this as Moses Taylor Pyne and another man, in the gardens at Drumthwacket, 354 Stockton Street, Princeton, New Jersey. Moses Taylor Pyne (1855–1921) bought Drumthwacket in 1893 and worked with architect Raleigh Gildersleeve to renovate and expand the house and gardens.

Drumthwacket was built in 1835. The house was the private residence of three owners, Charles Smith Olden, Moses Taylor Pyne, and Abram Spanel, before being purchased by the State of New Jersey in 1966. Intended for use as the official residence of the governor, it was not until 1981 that funds were raised by the New Jersey Historical Society to begin to accomplish the task.

Here are a few of the other photographs in the Graphic Arts Collection.

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Archive of proofs and samples from the Société Engelmann, père et fils, ca. 1839

engelmann volume11Archive of Proofs and Samples from the Société Engelmann père et fils, ca. 1839. 3 vols. Chromolithography. Purchased with funds from the Graphic Arts Collection and Rare Books. 2014- in process

Princeton recently acquired a set of three elephant folios, which Michael Twyman calls, “the most interesting collection of its kind that I have ever come across.” These albums hold hundreds of specimens of early chromolithography from Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839) and his Société Engelmann père et fils.

The provenance of the albums is not clear though Twyman states that they probably came into the market within the last ten years from the Engelmann descendants. They turned up, not surprisingly, in Paris. Here are ten sample pages:

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What is clear is that the 250 leaves hold an unprecedented archive of printing samples, many still uncut, from the Engelmann company under both the father and son, beginning with a complete copy of The Album Chromolithographique (1837). Other proofs range from ephemeral playing cards and labels to the most elaborate chromolithographic broadsides and publications.

Other highlights include:
Large trade card dated 1839 (280 x 120 mm), reads as follows: “Engelmann, Pere & Fils à Mulhouse – J. Engelmann, Cité Bergere Paris. Chromolithographie ou impression lithographique en couleurs.”

Female portrait. “Premier essay du procédé chromo-lithographique de Mr. Engelmann par E. Viennot” (for approval of the Société d’Encouragement in Jan. 1837). And a similar male portrait without caption.

Uncut sheets with playing cards for different games (Loto graphique, Rebus, Jeu de la Mythologie, Jeu de cartes syllabaire Européen, and Jeu de cartes de l’histoire de France par un professeur d’histoire).

Jean Landais, printer in Rennes, announcement of the reopening of his business and starting with lithographic color printing of all kinds in Rennes, 25 June 1840.

Jean Engelmann, announcement of the invention of chromolithography and the opening of his press in Paris, 1 January, 1838.

Many uncut glazed paper sheets with pages from missals and other religious texts in the style of mediaeval manuscripts (‘Paroissiens’).

Many examples of book illustrations, book covers, trade cards, posters, window displays, carte-de-visites, tobacco labels, cigar bands, illustrated writing papers, paper toys, religious cards, etc. etc.

Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839), biographic details from the British Museum: “Lithographic printer, famed ‘Körner’ (grinder) for crayon-lithographs and patentee of chromolithography. Originally from Colmar; trained in Munich; set up press in Paris in June 1816. He improved lithography, particularly by developing lithographic wash in 1819. In 1825 he created a new company in association with Jérémie Graf and Pierre Thierry and named ‘Société Engelmann et Cie’. In 1826 an annex company is founded in London and named ‘Société Engelmann, Graf, Coindet et Cie’, which was dissolved in 1833. Then Engelmann returned to Mulhouse and created the company ‘Société Engelmann, père et fils’.

Kent’s Princeton Tiger

DSCN7944Each year from 1941 to 1952, the Princeton Print Club commissioned a print by a contemporary American artist for their membership. In 1947, T.M. Cleland (1880-1964) was on campus talking about his work and asked the students if he could be considered for the 1949 membership print. Happy to have their first pochoir, the executive committee agreed.

By the next summer, the meticulous (dare I say finicky) artist had not yet begun and wrote to the students that he was afraid he might not meet their deadline. “Would it be feasible,” he proposes, “to commission another man to make a print to be ready by November with the understanding that if mine was finished by that time, the other one would be used the year following?” With most of the student gone for the summer, their supervisor Elmer Adler declined on their behalf.

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Preliminary sketches for Princeton Tiger. Rockwell Kent papers, ca.1885-1970. MS#0702. Series III: Titled Drawings, Lithographs, Prints and Proofs, box 7. Columbia University, Rare Books and Special Collections

Now desperate for another artist, Adler wrote to his old friend Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) asking if he would undertake to cut a wood engraving for the Club. “Although we were saving you for a special print,” he confided, “it would seem now that you might be the savior.” Kent agreed and sketched some ideas over the fall of 1948, pulling a few preliminary proofs for the students that winter. Kent’s wood engraving, which some historians have called, “Tiger Tiger Burning Bright,” and others simple “The Princeton Tiger,” was a nighttime scene of an enormous roaring tiger cradling Nassau Hall.

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Preliminary proof for Princeton Print Club membership print by Rockwell Kent. Princeton Print Club scrapbook,
Graphic Arts Collection.

When the students saw Kent’s design, they were unimpressed. The roar of the tiger was taken to be a yawn and the committee was nervous that alumni would not want to purchase the image of a bored Princeton tiger. They decided to ask Kent come up with another idea and sent one of their members, Bates W. Littlehales, Class of 1948, to meet with Kent in person.

Unfortunately, the dates were confused and the meeting never took place, leaving Adler to deliver the bad news through the mail. He tried to explain to Kent that unlike other Print Clubs, no member of Princeton’s Club had to take a print that he didn’t like. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “most of our sales are made to the old guard Princetonians who believe in this place and want to give the best possible impression of Princeton.” Adler asked Kent to make a new print.

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Hans Alexander Mueller, The New Library, 1949. Graphic Arts Collection

“I am astounded,” replied Kent, who argued that the image had been clearly described months ago. In the end, he donates the many hours he spent working on the block to the Club, as “a token of my grateful appreciation of your steadfast interest in my work.”  He refuses to do more but suggests that “some day I may enlist the interest of some Princeton grad to have me finish the block.” So far, the Princeton tiger has never been editioned.

The Club scrambled to find a third artist to make the membership print for 1949 and was saved by Hans Alexander Mueller (1888-1963), who created one of the most popular prints the Club ever had: “The New Library,” a chiaroscuro woodcut of the recently built Harvey S. Firestone Library, sold for the membership price of $7.50.

 

Scotland and Ireland 1894

ireland 8Knox’s House, Edinburgh. James Valentine (1815-1879)

Thanks to the bequest of Hamilton Cottier, Class of 1922, the Graphic Arts Collection holds this photograph album dated 1894, with commercial prints of Scotland and Ireland. Here are a few samples.

ireland 7Edinburgh Castle

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ireland 5Central Station Hotel, Glasgow

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ireland 3Tunnel near Glengarriff, Ireland

ireland 2Blackrock Castle, County Cork 1840. W.L.

Ireland and Scotland 1894 [photograph album]. Albumen prints. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.01472. Bequest of Hamilton Cottier, Class of 1922.

Robert Cresswell, Class of 1919

cresswell by olinskyIvan Gregorewitch Olinsky (1878-1962), Robert Cresswell, 1897-1943, no date [ca. 1943]. Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts Collection

When Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cresswell, Class of 1919, died on a mission for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, the Princeton University Library chose the Friends’ Room in the Graphic Arts Division of Firestone Library as a memorial to him. The room was chosen because it was largely through Cresswell’s imagination and skilled effort that the graphic arts collection, together with Elmer Adler, came to Princeton in 1940.

As a member of the class of 1919, Cresswell’s undergraduate education was interrupted by service during World War I, returning to campus to graduate in 1920. He joined the New York Tribune, later the New York Herald-Tribune, as a 25 year old reporter and by the age of 35, Cresswell was director the company. In 1940, as chairman of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, it was Cresswell who arranged the financing to establish a three year experimental program of graphic arts led by Adler. Later that year, Cresswell resigned from the Tribune and purchased the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, where he became director and publisher.

Cresswell’s life was again interrupted, this time by World War II, and he reenlisted in 1942. It is unfortunate the not long after he arrived in England, Cresswell contracted an infection that spread quickly and he died in 1943. Happily, the three-year experiment in graphic arts was taken over by the Princeton University Library and continues to thrive today. The Friends’ room has been renovated and recently reopened as administrative offices.