Category Archives: Medium

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Photography and the Princeton Print Club

The Princeton Print Club (PPC) was established in October 1940 by Princeton University’s newly christened Research Associate in Graphic Arts, Elmer Adler (1884-1962) with exhibitions, a print lending collection, and annual print publications, among other events. Two months later, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) held its first exhibition of photography. Although there were no classes in photography at Princeton, through the PPC the undergraduates began studying and exhibiting contemporary American photography.

Little more than a year after the club was established, an exhibition of twenty exceptional color photographs of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico by David Hare (1917-1992) opened in January 1942 at the PPC’s headquarter at 40 Mercer Street. The son of Elizabeth Sage Goodwin, an art collector and a backer of the 1913 Armory Show, Hare grew up in a house filled with artists. As a professional photographer, he was an early practitioner in color photographic processes. This led to an assignment for the American Museum of Natural History to make photographic portraits of Hopi, Navajo and Zuni Indians in the Southwest. Hare exhibited the color-dye transfer prints in 1939 and then, published twenty of them in a limited edition portfolio. Adler introduced his students to Hare’s work and helped them borrow the portfolio for an exhibit (WA Oversize 2005-0041F).

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The return of many young men after WWII reinvigorated the club with a strong focus on modern technologies, in particular the photographic arts. In April of 1947, the PPC announced an exhibition of photographs by Brett Weston (1911-1993) of scenes in and around Princeton. The photographs were loaned by David H. McAlpin, Class of 1920, an early supporter of contemporary photography, only recently returned to his Princeton home from service as a Navy commander. Before the war, McAlpin had commissioned and purchased Weston’s work and it is possible that McAlpin was hoping the PPC would select one of Weston’s campus photographs for their annual print (they chose to publish George Jo Mess’s acquaint “Stanhope Hall, Princeton University”).

In October of the same year, again thanks to McAlpin, the PPC sponsored a large exhibition of photography by Ansel Adams (1902-1984). The photographer himself accepted an invitation to visit Princeton and give a talk about his work on October 23, held at the PPC’s new headquarters at 36 University Place. Adams told the students how he intended to have a career as a concert pianist, but a six weeks’ walking trip through the Sierra Nevadas turned his interest toward photography. When MoMA formulated plans for a photographic wing, Adams was appointed vice-chairman of the photographic committee, which also included McAlpin.

Student photographers were encouraged to enter their prints the following April 1948, when McAlpin sponsored a photography contest “under the auspices of the Princeton Print Club.” Each print was to focus on the theme of roofs and chimneys found on the Princeton campus and prizes included both cash and photographic equipment. So successful was the event that another contest was held the next November, and each semester that followed.

Fifty student photographs were exhibited by the PPC in the fall semester and the Daily Princetonian announced that prizes would be awarded during a lecture by Beaumont Newhall, although it was in fact Nancy Newhall who had been invited and spoke to the students. As MoMA’s curator of photography during the war, Nancy Newhall was active in assembling the museum’s photography collection. She focused her remarks on the cross-section of contemporary camera work currently on exhibit at the print club.

Also during the fall of 1948, the students of the PPC were invited up to MoMA and allowed to personally select a group of photographs for a Princeton exhibition. Photography: Works of the Greatest Contemporary Masters included “a variety of artistic nude studies and the works of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston [Brett’s father], and Alfred Stieglitz.”

In conjunction with this exhibition, a lecture was given by color photographer Eliot Porter (1901-1990). The Daily Princetonian reported that Dr. Porter told the students that as a young man he was an enthusiastic birdwatcher. However, his love of nature and photography did not seem suitable for a career and so after majoring in chemical engineering at Harvard, he went on to earned an M.D. at the Harvard Medical School.

Porter never lost his fascination with birds, however, and continued to photograph them. “Encouraged by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who presented a show of Mr. Porter’s photographs at his New York gallery, he finally gave up teaching and started work full-time as a freelance photographer in 1939.”

“The Exact Instant,” was the title of a lecture given to the PPC in March of 1949 by Edward Steichen (1879-1973), curator of photography at MoMA. Several years earlier, a group of photographs taken by the U.S. Navy’s photography unit in the Pacific, under the direction of Captain Steichen, had been held by the New Jersey State Museum and Adler had selected a group for Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection. The PPC made a selection of these prints and in conjunction with this exhibition welcomed Steichen to the Club.

In the same month, Adler announced the gift of 72 photographs by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) including portraits of Katherine Cornell, Salvador Dali, Theodore Dreiser, Joe Louis, and Gene Tunney, among others. The Van Vechten collection was to be used in connection with Princeton Print Club activities and the students complied immediately by mounting an exhibition.

On October 31, 1949, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) wrote to his old friend Elmer Adler, “this afternoon at the Modern Museum picking prints for your show. There will be 25 in all.” Once again, MoMA had approved a loan for the PPC and the museum prints were carried to Princeton by Steiner on New Jersey Transit.

He stayed to deliver the Spencer Trask Lecture entitled simply, “Photography.” That evening prizes were also delivered to the winners of the photo competition, including first prize to Arthur D. Haas, Class of 1951, and second prize to William B. Hall, Class of 1947, and special mention was given to A. Perry Morgan Jr., Class of 1946, along with $5.00.”

One final photography show was arranged under the PPC before Adler left Princeton and the graphic arts collection moved into Firestone Library. For this April 1952 event, Edward Steichen personally selected the work of 44 young and upcoming photographers in MoMA’s collection, most only a few years older than the Princeton students. Nine of the men and women whose work was shown at the PPC were winners in Life magazine’s recent “Contest for Young Photographers,” certainly an inspiration to the young men of the PPC.

With thanks to Charles E. Greene

Alf Cooke (1842-1902), Queen Victoria, the Sovereign of Sixty Years, 1897. Chromolithograph. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. Gift of Charles E. Greene.

On Sunday 20 June, 1897, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) celebrated her Diamond Jubilee Accession Day at Windsor Castle. To commemorate the event, a number of paintings, sculpture, medallions, posters, and all types of printed materials were created.

The master printer Alf or Alfred Cooke (1842-1902) of Leeds, was no exception. Cooke’s first printing factory opened in 1866, was rebuilt twice after fires, and managed to grow into one of the largest chromolithography plants in Great Britain. This led to Cooke’s appointed as “Colour Printer to the Queen” and later, Mayor of Leeds.

His third and final factory, which operated until 2005, was called “New Crown Point Printing Works” and claimed to be the “largest, cleanest, healthiest and most completely fitted printing works in the world.” At its height, Cooke had 300 presses run by a staff of over 600 workers.

Thanks to Charles E. Greene, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of Cooke’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee portrait of Queen Victoria, which was later reproduced hundreds of times in posters and advertisements.

from W. Herbert Scott, The West Riding of Yorkshire at the Opening of the Twentieth Century: Contemporary biographies (W.T. Pike, 1902)

Ephraim George Squier

“In 1865, in the ancient Inca city of Cuzco, Ephraim George Squier, explorer, archeologist, ethnologist, and the U.S. charge d’affaires in Central America, received an unusual gift from his hostess, Senora Zentino, a woman known as the finest collector of art and antiquities in Peru. The gift was a skull from a vast nearby Inca burial ground.” — Dr. Charles G. Gross (Department of Psychology) “A Hole in the Head” by in The Neuroscientist 5, no. 4 (1999). Keep reading: https://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/neuroscientist_99_hole.pdf

The Graphic Arts Collection holds one box of Squier’s drawings in watercolor, pencil, and pen-and-ink intended for illustration in his publications on Central and South America. There are drawings of artifacts, plans and sections of buildings, and archaeological remains, including twenty-four published in Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877). As far as we can tell, there are unpublished drawings of archaeological sites in Ollantaytambo and Sacsahuaman in Peru, include some of the “Seat of the Inca.” In addition there are fourteen color photographs of selected Squier drawings and five albumen photographs of Peruvian artifacts by Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908).

Among Squier’s other books are Serpent Symbols (1852); Nicaragua: its People, Scenery, and Monuments (New York, 1852); Notes on Central America (1854); The States of Central America (1857) and Monographs of Authors who have written on the Aboriginal Languages of Central America (1860).

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) and E.H. Davis, Ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley (New York: Bartlett & Welford; Cincinnati, J. A. & U. P. James, 1848). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 1929q

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888), Central and South American drawings of E. G. Squier, 1864-1877. One box. GAX Graphic Arts Collection

One of the many obituaries for Squier begins, “Dr. Ephraim George Squier, the well-known archeologist … was born in Bethlehem, N.Y. in 1821, graduated at Princeton in 1848. His first work of note was the investigation, in company with Dr. E.H. Davis, of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, the results of which, formed the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.

…In 1863 he visited Peru, but his account of his investigations in that region was cut short in the middle of its publication by a mental disorder, which left him for the last seventeen years of his life utterly incapacitated for work.” The American Naturalist 22, No. 258 (June 1888): 566-69.

The Chimera and The Princeton Print Club

Guy Crittington MacCoy (1904-1981), Abstraction #2 [later called Yellow Heads], 1937. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 3 (winter 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01781.
Leo John Meissner (1895-1977), Oyster Shells, 1933. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 2 (autumn 1942). Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01851.

In the February 4, 1943 Daily Princetonian Bulletin it was noted that beyond the exhibitions and lectures sponsored by the Princeton Print Club (PPC), “the Club is endeavoring to produce a silk screen lithograph for each issue of the newly formed publication, Chimera.” When the little magazine began in the spring of 1942, Elmer Adler was asked to join the publication’s advisory board and Kneeland McNulty, Class of 1943 and the second president of the PPC, was made art editor. For the second issue, Adler arranged for a wood engraving by Leo Meissner (1895-1977) entitled Oyster Shells, to be printed for the Princeton journal.

In October of 1942, the PPC mounted an exhibition of 40 prints by contemporary American artists, to be sold for $5 each to benefit the club and to enrich the lives of the students. Adler arranged for the prints, including Meissner’s Oyster Shells. Highlighted were a number of serigraphs, which was a new variation in screen printing Adler wished to promote. A Princeton reviewer wrote, “A group of serigraphs make Guy MacCoy the find of the show.” The Chimera published MacCoy’s Abstraction in their winter 1943 issue with a note, “It is the belief of the editors that this is the first serigraph to appear in a widely distributed magazine.”

Although Adler hoped the students would print a new serigraph for each issue of Chimera, only one other print was ever included. The book illustrator E. McKnight Kauffer (1893-1954) often created designs to be reproduced in pochoir or stenciled prints. For Chimera’s spring 1943 issue, he designed a portrait of Homer, which was presumably printed at Princeton for the magazine. Seven years later, Kauffer was given an exhibition of his work by the PPC in their new headquarters in 36 University Place.

E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Homer, 1944. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 4 (spring 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01503

Next year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Princeton Print Club. If you or your father were members, please let us know. We are gathering stories and memories.

Collection décors et couleurs

Near the end of his life, the French painter Georges Valmier (1885-1937) discovered abstraction and created a number of design based works in vibrant colors. Twenty were translated into pochoir or stencil prints by the French master Jean Saudé, commissioned for a series entited Collection décors et couleurs (Decoration and color collection). Only one more portfolio was published in the series featuring the work of Jean Burkhalter.

Album no 1: Georges Valmier (1885-1937), Collection décors et couleurs (Paris: A. Levy, [1930?]). 20 pochoir plates in portfolio. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize NK8667.S28 V34f

Album no 2: Jean Burkhalter (1895-1982), Jean Burkhalter : soixante-dix motifs décoratifs en dix-huit planches (Paris: A. Lévy, [ca. 1930]). 18 pochoir plates in portfolio. Collection décors et couleurs. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0011F

Alonzo Chappel

At the age of twelve, Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887) was selling his portraits on the streets of New York City for the price of $10 and within only two years was able to raise his price to $25. With no formal art education, Chappel went on to paint hundreds of portraits specifically to be steel engraved as book plates.

Among the books Chappel designed and authored (although the caption writers usually get the credit) were Jesse F. Schroeder’s Life and Times of Washington (1857), Jesse A. Spencer’s History of the United States (1858), Evert A. Duyckinck’s Lives and Portraits of the Presidents of the United States (1865) and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (1861-1862), as well as plates for the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William Cullen Bryant (1888).

Many of these portraits were done after existing paintings rather than from life, with the original sometimes noted on the print and sometimes not. The many talented engravers hired to complete the prints after Chappel’s paintings are not identified.

Princeton has several copies of the two volume National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (E176 .D98 1862) and the Graphic Arts Collection holds a number of unbound sheets from this project. Seen here are portraits of John James Audubon (1780-1851), Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), James Madison (1751-1836), and George McClellan (1826-1885).

Affair of Princeton, January 3, 1777

Henry Schenck Tanner (1786-1858), Affair of Princeton, January 3rd, 1777, [1816]. Engraving. Graphic Arts collection GA 2008.00875 Provenance: On deposit from A.C. Smith III.

We leave map collecting to our colleagues but this plan for the 1777 Battles of Princeton and Trenton was recently found in the Graphic Arts Collection. It turns out to be one of the maps published in James Wilkinson (1757-1825), Diagrams and Plans Illustrative of the Principal Battles and Military Affairs Treated of in Memoirs of My Own Times (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1816). Happily, it was not removed from our own copy (Rare Books (Ex) E353.1.W6 W6).

The rare Revolutionary War battle plan details the area from the Delaware River northward, depicting the movement of troops from late December 1776 to January 3, 1777. Shown in particular are Washington’s Route, the Road to McKinley’s Ferry, and the Hessian surrender. Princeton College is seen at the very top of the plan with a tiny view of Nassau Hall, built in 1756. Below, you see what is now the Princeton Battlefield State Park.

A different perspective was offered by the artist John Trumbull (1756-1843) and we are fortunate to hold several of the preliminary sketch done in 1786 for Trumbull’s The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton. Here is one:

For a complete set of Trumbull’s sketches and final oil paintings of this battle, see: http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2011/06/the_death_of_mercer_at_the_bat.html

An Original “Brownie” Picture

The Canadian illustrator Palmer Cox began drawing Brownies for a February 1883 issue of St. Nicholas magazine. By 1895 there was a Brownies theme song with illustrated sheet music and by 1900 the pixies were so popular that Kodak named its new camera after them.

Cox published seventeen books using these characters, beginning with The Brownies, Their Book, the same year as this drawing. He wrote and drew for St. Nicholas, Harper’s Young People, Ladies’ Home Journal, Scribner’s Monthly, and many others but it is his Brownies for which he is best remembered.

The Brownies in Successful Return Engagement by Rebecca Deming Moore. “Every once in a while a new race of beings is discovered by some intrepid explorer, into the realm of fancy. The scantily attired Kewpies, the rolypoly Happifats, the Goops, those horrible examples of infant depravity, have come, been seen, and conquered. Brownies, to be sure, had existed for ages, but not until Palmer Cox came along to act as their publicity agent were they widely introduced to a public of little folk.

Palmer Cox took some liberties with these little creatures who, according to tradition, obligingly did the farmer’s chores, if only a bowl of milk were left out for their consumption. He gave them nationality, to wit: the Chinaman, the Indian, the Irishman. He gave them occupation: the sailor, the policeman and so on. But he did not rob them of their original virtues. Palmer Cox’s Brownies have always been the maddest and merriest of small beings, but ever in the front ranks when some kind act needed doing.

If one were statistically inclined, it would be interesting to estimate just how many little fingers have felt their way over Palmer Cox’s pictures and how many little squeals have followed of “There’s the dude,” “I’ve found Uncle Sam,” etc. For there have been thirteen Palmer Cox Brownie books, all told, dating back to 1887 . . . Indeed, there be a few people who were not brought up on Palmer Cox’s Brownies.” — The Publishers Weekly 94, Pt.1 (F. Leypoldt, 1918).

Palmer Cox (1840-1924), The Brownies in the Toy Shop, January 1887. Pen drawing. Drawn for Saint Nicholas Magazine XIV (January 1887). Also reproduced in Roger W. Cummins, Humorous but Wholesome: A History of Palmer Cox and the Brownies, N.Y., 1973, p. 238. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02370.

See also: Palmer Cox (1840-1924), Squibs of California or Every-day life illustrated (Hartford, Conn.: Mutual Publishing Company, 1874). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton SS 605

Palmer Cox (1840-1924), How Columbus found America, in pen and pencil (N[ew] Y[ork]: Art Printing Establishment, [c1877]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) PN6161 .C674

Palmer Cox (1840-1924), The Brownies: Their Book (New-York: Century Co., c1887) Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) Eng 20 unprocessed item 6815855

John Latrobe

John H.B. Latrobe (1803-1891), Pass of the James River two miles below Balcony Falls, no date. Watercolor. Inscribed in pencil, l.r.: “Pass of James River 2 miles below Balcony Falls- looking West.” Inscribed, verso: “30 Facing [?] pp. 17 m s Chap.XI.” Graphic Arts Collection Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953.

The architect John Latrobe (son of the architect of the United States capitol), visited White Sulphur Springs in 1832 and made a number of watercolor sketches. He described his visit in a letter to a colleague:

“Truly, this is a lovely spot, in the heart of the mountains,” he wrote, “but the owner is not as energetic as he might be, so the place is susceptible of ten-fold improvement. In the hands of the Yankees it might and would become a veritable paradise. The same money that is being used now could be expended in furnishing accommodations for everyone who desired to stay here, and a little management would soon introduce order, where all now is confusion.”

“Crowds collect around the dining room when the bell rings, and when they are opened there is a rush, like that at the booth at a contested election. Every man, woman and child rush to any seat which they may happen to find and in a very short time the food upon the tables disappear consumed by the hungry mob.”

“If you have a servant of your own, he must bribe the cook. If you have no servant, you must bribe one of those attached to the place, or you run the risk of getting nothing. Bribery furnishes you with the best of what is to be gotten in the place, and avoids the rushes at meal time.”

“The day after I arrived two waiters quarreled over an apple pie; one floored the other and neither got the pie, which was floored in the scuffle and this scene took place while the guests were seated at table. Bribe high and you live high; fail to bribe and you starve; look sharp and eat fast, you forget good manners. This is the motto of the dining room of the White Sulphur.”

[above] John H. B. Latrobe (1803-1891), Baltimore Cottages, White Sulphur, no date [after 1830]. Watercolor. Inscribed in pencil, lower margin “Baltimore Cottages White Sulphur S. Latrobe”. Graphic Arts Collection Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953.
John H.B. Latrobe (1803-1891), Near the White Sulphur [Springs], no date. Watercolor. “Near the White Sulphur.” Inscribed in pencil. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953.

See also: John Edward Semmes, John H. B. Latrobe and his times, 1803-1891 (Baltimore, Md.: Norman, Remington Co. [c1917]) Firestone Library (F) CT275.L277 S4 1917

Ingenious new study center at CMA

The designers of the Cleveland Museum of Art study room have come up with an ingenious system for the viewing of two dimensional works, whether they are prints, drawings, paintings, manuscripts, photographs or other similar materials. The wall folds out when in use and can be adjusted to the height or width of the objects. Then, it miraculously folds back into a flat wall when not needed for a class or researcher’s visit. The wall is large enough for several dozen works of smaller size but flexible enough (and strong enough) to accommodate large, framed work of significant weight.