Giovanni Vendramini (1769-1839) after drawings by Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842), A Series of Engravings after Drawings … from the Celebrated Odes of Anacreon, translated by Thomas Moore, Esq. (London: John P. Thompson, [1805]). Soft-ground etchings.
Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in proces

This suite of 26 soft-ground etchings by Giovanni Vendramini reproduces the drawings of Sir Robert Porter. The plates are variously dated 1803 to 1805 although Porter may have begun the drawings as soon as the Moore translation was published in 1800.

The Scottish artist Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842) had an international life and career. He served with the British army in Spain before being knighted by Gustav IV of Sweden (1806); by the Prince Regent (1813); and receiving the order of the Lion and the Sun by the Qajar ruler Fath Ali Shah.

Give Me the Harp of Epic Song by Anacreon (570-488 B.C.E.) translated by Thomas Moore

Give me the harp of epic song,
Which Homer’s finger thrill’d along;
But tear away the sanguine string,
For war is not the theme I sing.

Proclaim the laws of festal rite,
I’m monarch of the board tonight;
And all around shall brim as high,
And quaff the tide as deep as I!

And when the cluster’s mellowing dews
Their warm, enchanting balm infuse,
Our feet shall catch th’ elastic bound,
And reel us through the dance’s round.

Oh Bacchus! we shall sing to thee,
In wild but sweet ebriety!
And flash around such sparks of thought,
As Bacchus could alone have taught!

Then give the harp of epic song,
Which Homer’s finger thrill’d along;
But tear away the sanguine string,
For war is not the theme I sing!

Anacreon (570-488 B.C.), Odes of Anacreon, translated into English verse with notes by Thomas Moore (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1800). Rare Books: Oversize (Exov) 2571.2800

After Henry Smeathman (1742–1786), British Humanity or African Felicity in The West Indies,
March 8, 1788. Etching and engraving. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

“In the late 18th century, between 5,000 and 7,000 black people lived in London,” writes Simon Schama in Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (available online through Dixon eBooks) “More than 20 years before the legislation of William Wilberforce finally ended slavery in Britain, the practice was still legal – but ambiguously so. Most blacks in London were free, but not all, and slave catchers operated widely in the capital, kidnapping runaways.”

“…To his friends, Henry Smeathman was “Mr Termite”. No one knew more about ants. In 1771 he had been sent by the scientist and future president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, to the Banana Islands off the coast of Sierra Leone to collect botanical specimens for Banks’s collection at Kew. He had stayed there for three years, turning himself from botanist into entomologist.”

“In the 1780s he had pottered along giving his insect lectures, a harmless and slightly marginal figure in the scientific and philanthropic communities of which he considered himself a member. But then, in 1786, the cause of the black poor gave him a sudden, belated opportunity, and Smeathman set before the Lords of the Treasury his Plan of Settlement for the creation of a thriving free black colony in ‘one of the most pleasant and feasible countries in the known world’– Sierra Leone.”

To illustrate his articles and pamphlets, Henry Smeathman made crude sketches, later reproduced and published by the London dealer G. Graham. The graphic arts collection recently acquired one entitled “British Humanity or African Felicity in The West Indies.”

The inscription continues, “This Plate Being a Slight Sketch of the Inhuman Punishments Inflicted on the Miserable Slaves is Taken from an original drawing of a whipping after Henry Smeathman. March 8, 1788 … The Slaves both Male & Female are fastened to four Stake’s in the Ground, and lashed till they are hardly able to walk without Assistance. This shocking sight is so common that although it is executed in the Public Market Place, the People buy & sell as though nothing was doing.”

See also:

Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (London: BBC, 2005). Firestone Library (F) E269.N3 S33 2005

Deirdre Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Firestone Library (F) DA16 .C627 2005

Starr Douglas, “The Making of Scientific Knowledge in an Age of Slavery: Henry Smeathman, Sierra Leone and natural history,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 9, no. 3 (Winter 2008)

Eugen Spiro (1874-1972), Das Podium: Künstlergesten aus dem Concertsaal (1906). 37 lithographic portraits; “Exemplar No. [1].” Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

      In 1904, the German-American portrait painter Eugen Spiro (1874-1972) moved to Berlin and joined the Berliner Sezession, publishing in the Jugendstil journal Jugend (Cotsen CTSN Press Q 19871). When his marriage ended, Spiro planned a trip to Paris but not before overseeing the publication of his lithographic portraits of musicians, Das Podium. Künstlergesten aus dem Concertsaal (The Podium. Sketches from the Concert Hall). The edition of 30 copies includes 37 plates, each in a paper mat.

Among the subjects are violinists Willy Hess, Suzanne Joachim-Chaigneau, and Franz von Vecsey; cellists Max Baldner and Hugo Becker; pianists Paul Goldschmidt and Richard Buhlig; conductors Richard Strauss and Siegfried Ochs; singers Elisabeth Ohlhoff, Jeanette Grumbacher de Jong, and Lilli Hehmann, as well as many others.

After thirty years teaching and exhibiting, Spiro was prohibited from working by the rising Hitler government. He resigned his honorary posts and in 1936, resigned his German citizenship, immigrating to the United States. For more about his fascinating life, see Eugen Spiro: 1874 Breslau-1972 New York: Spiegel seines Jahrhunderts (Alsbach: Drachen, 1990). Marquand Library (SA) ND588.S644 A232 1990