William Constable (1783-1861, active in the United States 1806-1808), Bridge on the Delaware at Trenton, New Jersey, September 10, 1807. Pencil and wash drawing. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953. Graphic Arts Collection GC023

Twenty-three year old William Constable (1783-1861) arrived in the United States at the end of June 1806 and spent the summer sketching the waterfalls of New Jersey and New York. For the next two years, he and his brother Daniel traveled across the United States with a dog named Benjamin Franklin.

Constable kept a series of sketchbooks, recording the exact date and location that he painted. Thanks to this, we know he circled back to New Jersey the second year to create this view of the Trenton bridge, only in its second year of operation. The innovative structure was the first bridge across the Delaware and of particular interest to Constable, who returned to England to become a civil engineer and surveyor.

His career took a turn in 1841, when Constable taught himself to make daguerreotypes and opened the first photographic portrait studio in Brighton. To read more about his years in the United States, see Early topographical views of North America by William Constable (1783-1861) (New York, N.Y.: Wunderlich, 1984). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) 2004-0712N

Constable also created the view below of the Mill at Parkman Town, on the Head Water of Grand River in 1806.

William Constable (1783-1861), Mill at Parkman Town on the Headwater of Grand River Emptying into Lake Erie-New Connecticut State Ohio, October 31, 1806. Watercolor. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953. Graphic Arts Collection GC023

David Johnston loved to have fun with art. In the landscape above, the Boston artist embedded a text inside the mountainside and invited his viewers to decode the painting, titling the work “Landscape with a Concealed Message.”

It might help to remove the bright colors and focus closely on the lining in the rock. [spoiler alert, the answer is at the end of this post].

Best known for his cartoons and caricatures, another of Johnston’s paintings in the Graphic Arts Collection is a satire on the innocence of childhood (seen below), originally shown at the Boston Athenaeum annual in 1829.

When the painting was exhibited at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2002, William Zimmer of the New York Times, wrote, “The show offers only one droll moment in the bunch, and it belongs to David Claypoole Johnston, who is identified as an American born in England [he was actually born in Philadelphia]. ”Precocity” is an undated watercolor in which a gaggle of rowdy children imitate the behavior of rowdy adults, including smoking. The inspiration for the work could be the drawings of Hogarth and others, in which grownups often act childishly.”

Johnston’s landscape is signed in the rocks: “D. C. Johnston, Teacher of Drawing & Painting.”

 

In the early twentieth century, a circle of modernist artists came together in Cleveland, Ohio, including William Sommer (1867-1949), Abel Warshawsky (1883-1962), William Zorach (1887-1966), Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), and others. Each spent time outside the city, but overlapped in the early 1910s.

Born in Detroit, Sommer spent a year studying in Munich and then, worked as a lithographer for the J. Ottmann Lithographing Company in the New York City (located in the newly constructed Puck building on Houston Street) before returning to Cleveland in 1907. The younger William Zorach also found the money to travel to Paris and New York before returning to Cleveland in 1911. At that time, both Zorach and Sommer worked at the Otis Lithography Company printing circus posters during the day, saving money to paint nights and weekends.

Around 1910, Warshawsky returned from his sojourn to Paris, bringing with him the vibrant colors of the Fauves (Wild Beasts). Zorach and Sommer quickly incorporated this aesthetic and began exhibiting in the local department store’s Taylor Gallery. The Cleveland ‘secessionists’ came to a  climax in 1914, when they were joined by Burchfield, studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art, as well as New York artists Marsden Hartley and Max Weber.

 

While most of the others eventually left Cleveland, Sommer chose to remain in Ohio for the rest of his life, declining offers to promote his art on a wider scale (the poet Hart Crane being his most vocal supporter).

Today, two dozen of the artist’s paintings and drawings have made their way to the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton University given by Joseph M. Erdelac (1914-2005) in honor of William M. Milliken, Class of 1911 (1889-1978). Here are a few examples.
William Sommer (1867-1949), Untitled [Man with Horse], no date. Oil on board. Graphic Arts Collection GA
William Sommer (1867-1949), Untitled [Two Horses Grazing], October 15, 1933. Watercolor on paper. Graphic Arts Collection GA

This self-portrait by Walter Pach (1883-1958) includes the quote, “Qui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croit” (Who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks) by the French writer François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680). It is a reminder that the American painter was fluent not only in French but also in German and Spanish, and held a college degree in art history, which set him apart from most of his contemporaries.

Pach’s father was a photographer but the young man chose instead to study painting, first under Robert Henri in New York and abroad with William Merritt Chase. His familiarity with European artists and dealers led to his seminal role in the development and hanging of the 1913 Armory Show. In fact, his notebook recording the sales of the exhibition remains one of the greatest artifacts from that time: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/viewer/walter-pach-notebook-recording-sales-new-york-armory-show-14188/39060.

Pach’s writing and collecting eventual overshadowed the artist’s own work. Not surprisingly, the Graphic Arts Collection has only this one drawing and five additional prints.

The obituary for American landscape painter Albert Fitch Bellows (1829-1883) noted, “The life of Mr. Bellows was a rich, beatiful harmony. Into it there entered nothing sensational, nothing spasmodic. It was simple, quiet, beautiful He won his way gradually to the front rank of the American artists and maintained his position there by the conscientious work which was characteristic of him. His paintings were not obtrusive, never aggressive, but reflected the quiet, tender, sympathitic nature of the man, and were lovable as he was lovable.” The Art Union 1, no. 1 (January 1884).

The piece goes on to recognize that he was one of the early members of the American Water-Color Society and in 1868 was elected an honorary member of the Royal Belgian Society of Water Colourists—an honor which requires the unanimous vote of the members, and which is rarely conferred upon foreigners. Also that year, Bellows wrote a treatise on watercolor painting, published under the American Society: Water-color painting. Some facts and authorities in relation to its durability (New York: Printed by the American Society of Painters in Water-Colors, 1868). A copy of this rare volume has yet to be acquired by Princeton.

Bellows was also a talented etcher and thanks in part to gifts from Sinclair Hamilton, the Graphic Arts collection holds a number of books illustrated with his prints, including:

Clarence Cook (1828-1900), A Description of the New York Central Park (New York: F.J. Huntington, 1869) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 1492q

Poets and etchers, Poems by T.B. Aldrich, W.C. Bryant, R.W. Emerson, J.R. Lowell, H.W. Longfellow, J.G. Whittier; etchings by A.F. Bellows, Samuel Colman, Henry Farrer, R. Swain Gifford, J.D. Smillie (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882), Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2006-0920Q

Washington Irving (1783-1859), Sketch book of Geoffrey Crayon, gent. … Illustrated with one hundred and twenty engravings on wood, from original designs (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1864). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 662q

The Sunnyside book, with Bryant, Curtis, Stedman. . .  and artists Wm Hart, Hows, Darley, Nast, Casilear, Smillie, Shattuck, McEntee, Belows, Huntington (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1871) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 673q

Alice Cary (1820-1871), Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 797.