Category Archives: Medium

mediums

George Morgan’s Prospect Farm

house at prospectGraphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02561

house text

Shortly before her death, Julia Morgan Harding (1854-1943) offered Princeton a drawing of the 18th-century Prospect Farm, near Princeton, “with the condition that it should not be exposed to strong light.” We agreed and happily the view of the Morgan Prospect shows little sign of wear.

Harding was a great-great-grand-daughter of Colonel George Morgan (1743-1810) and the great-grand-daughter of General John Morgan (1770-1817). The Colonel was a United States Indian agent during the American Revolutionary war and played an important role negotiating the European settlement of what became Pennsylvania.

According to campus history, the current Prospect House, “was built circa 1850 by the American architect, John Notman, and is one of the few University buildings not originally part of the campus. Prospect House owes its name to the stone farmhouse first constructed on the site in the mid-18th century by Colonel George Morgan, western explorer, U.S. Agent for Indian Affairs and gentleman farmer. The superb eastern view from that farmhouse prompted Colonel Morgan to name his estate “Prospect.” Morgan’s estate, a popular stopping of place in Revolutionary times, was visited by such diverse groups as a delegation of Delaware Indians, 2,000 mutinous soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line and the Continental Congress.”

“When Prospect was acquired in 1849 by John Potter, a wealthy merchant from Charleston, South Carolina, he replaced the colonial structure with the present mansion. In 1878 Robert L. and Alexander Stuart of New York bought the house and accompanying 35-acre estate and deeded it to Princeton University, known at that time as the College of New Jersey.”

Writing for the 1903 Princeton University Bulletin, Varnum Lansing Collins notes, “The erection of the Seventy-Nine Dormitory goes far to complete the transformation of a property which in the last quarter of the eighteenth century became famous through the Middle States as “Prospect near Princeton,” the home of the Indian agent, explorer and scientific farmer, Colonel George Morgan. A single mutilated gravestone, overshadowed by the new dormitory, is all that is now left to give hint of a past of which none need be ‘ashamed; and it seems high time to sketch, though it be but fragmentary, the history of which that stone is a pathetic reminder.”

Former Princeton Instructor Thomas B. Cornell, 1937-2012

 

cornell                                                       cornell

Thomas Browne Cornell, the Richard E. Steele Artist-in-Residence Emeritus at Bowdoin College and former Princeton Instructor, passed away on December 7, 2012. We hold a number of books with original prints by the artist, as well as a dozen proofs for The Monkey (Northampton, Mass.: Apiary Press, 1959). Graphic Arts Collection Oversize NE 2210.C6 M6 1959Q.

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From 1969 to 1971, Cornell taught in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University and then, transferred to Bowdoin where he established their studio arts program. While at Princeton, Cornell was one of the first instructors to teach from the newly established classrooms at 185 Nassau.

cornellIn the Daily Princetonian Special Class of 1974 Issue, (20 June 1970), Andrew Wilson noted that, “Princeton’s Creative Arts Program is in the ascending mode, both in terms of student interest and instruction offered. Created in 1939, the Program has only come into its own in the last few years. Now, it has its own building — 185 Nassau Street, a converted elementary school — a full range of courses, and cooperative programs with the English and Art and Archaeology departments.”

“The Program is graced with an outstanding staff; writers-in-residence of recent years have been Phillip Portnoy’s Complaint Roth, Elizabeth Bowen, and National Book Award winner Jerzy Kosinski. This year’s writers include: one of England’s most noted men of letters, Anthony Burgess, author of The Long Day Wanes, A Clockwork Orange, and many more novels and critical works; …The Program’s staff in other fields is equally impressive. It includes artists Esteban Vicente, Lennart Anderson and Thomas Cornell.”

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Although he later focused on painting, Cornell’s early work was in printmaking. According to the Bowdoin obituary, “his  first publication, The Monkey, examined the process of evolution.  His next publication by the Gehenna Press was The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf, including twenty-one portraits of French revolutionary figures.  In the 1960’s, he established the Tragos Press, and the first editions focused on Frederick Douglass and Bayard Rustin. Responding to the Vietnam War, Cornell painted a triptych, The Dance of Death, in 1969.  In the 1970s, he returned to the exploration of images of nature, using them to address modern social and environmental ethical concerns.”

cornell-monkey7Printer’s proof

The Ragged School

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George Cruikshank (1792-1878), The Ragged School In West Street (late Chick Lane) Smithfield, [1846]. Pencil, ink, and watercolor. Original design for an etching published in Our Own Times, 1846. Graphic Arts Collection GA2013- in process

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When in London, you can visit the Ragged School Museum, housed in three canalside buildings that once formed one of the largest ragged or free schools. According to the museum’s history site, “when Thomas Barnardo came to London from his home city of Dublin in 1866 … he was confronted by a city where disease was rife, poverty and overcrowding endemic and educational opportunities for the poor were non-existent. He watched helplessly as a cholera epidemic swept through the East End…. He gave up his medical training to pursue his local missionary works and in 1867 opened his first “ragged school” where children could gain a free basic education.”

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Ragged or free schools for London’s poor children existed long before Barnardo’s, usually set up in one room of a house. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) designed a view of such a classroom to illustrate his book Our Own Times, (Cohn 193). Published monthly from April to July 1846, each part had one original etching along with a total of 41 other illustrations.
Cruikshank’s scene divides the school into two sections, one for girls on the right and one for boys on the left. Note the self-portrait at the bottom right corner, signed “self, GC.”

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Goethe remarked, “One cannot have a sense of humour unless one be without conscience or responsibility.” By the end of the year, Cruikshank’s moral conscience had overtaken his interest in caricature and frivolous entertainment. He gave up drinking and smoking, joined the temperance movement, and in 1847 began the 8 plates for The Bottle.

 

Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey

woodrow wilson 3 Drawing for On to Washington (New York: Puck magazine, 1912). Pen and ink, watercolor on board. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00472

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a preliminary drawing for the cover of Puck magazine’s special campaign number of October 23, 1912. It features the classic Puck cherub and vignettes of Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Marshal. Unfortunately, Princeton’s copies of Puck do not include the 1912 issue and the digital version is in black and white. Happily, the Italian site “tipsimages” offers a thumbnail of the issue’s cover, seen below.

Wilson won the election with 41.9 percent of the vote to Roosevelt’s 27.4 percent and Taft’s 23 percent. Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs won 6 percent. In the electoral college count, Wilson won in forty states, giving him 435 votes. Roosevelt carried only six states, earning 88 votes.

On to Washington!http://www.tipsimages.it/

Here’s is a campaign film made by the Democratic National Committee for Wilson in 1912, making fun of Taft.

Waud draws the Battle of Memphis

monarch

According to the Naval Historical Center under the Department of the Navy, “the CSS General Beauregard, a 454-ton side-wheel river steamer, was built at Algiers, Louisiana in 1847 as a towboat. Under the name Ocean, she was taken over by the Confederacy in January 1862 and converted a “cottonclad” ram.

Renamed General Beauregard, she was commissioned as part of the River Defense Fleet in April 1862 and sent up the Mississippi to Tennessee. She took part in the naval actions off Fort Pillow on 10 May 1862 and Memphis on 6 June. In the latter action, General Beauregard closely engaged the Federal ram Monarch and ironclad Benton before being disabled and sunk.”

Londwaudon-born Alfred Rudolph Waud (1828-1891) was one of 30 soldier/sketch artists documenting the American Civil War. Often incorrectly listed as Ward, the artist immigrated to Boston in 1850, went to work for the New York Illustrated News in 1860, and transferred to Harper’s Weekly a year later.

Waud was present for the Battle of Memphis or Battle of the Rams on June 6. Three weeks later, a series of his sketches had been translated into wood engravings and published in Harper’s Weekly June 28 issue. Although this image was not included in the magazine, it was engraved and prints of the scene are held in public collections.

Alfred Rudolph Waud (1828-1891), Monarch Ramming the Beauregard, [1862]. Pencil, ink and wash sketch. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02563

Ex libris of Laurence Hutton

hutton

One of several bookplates used by Laurence Hutton (1843–1904) was drawn by his friend and colleague at Charles Scribners’s Sons, Edwin Howland Blashfield (1848-1936). The plate shows Hutton’s library with the theatrical mask of tragedy and a statue of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), who Hutton met as a young boy. The graphic arts collection is fortunate to hold the original drawing for this ex libris.

Together, Blashfield and his wife, Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield (ca.1859-1918), wrote and illustrated a number of magazine articles for Scribners, as well as six monographs. A copy of their Italian Cities (1902), was inscribed to Hutton as follows: “To the dear Huttons, with Xmas greetings from their friends, Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Edwin Howland Blashfield.” [Rare Books: Laurence Hutton Collection (HTN) N6911 .B6]

Edwin Howland Blashfield (1848-1936), Laurence Hutton bookplate, ca. 1900. Pen and ink drawing. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02562
thackeray-figurineHutton’s figure of Thackeray, once on his bookshelf, is held in Princeton’s collection as well.

The European Race

mosley european4
London engraver Charles Mosley published four satirical prints, 1737 to 1740, on the ‘European race’ between nations. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired two of the rare set in honor of it former curator, Dale Roylance.

euo raceCharles Mosley (ca.1720-ca.1756), The European Race Heat IId Anno Dom. MDCCXXXVIII, November 26, 1738. Graphic Arts Collection. Purchased in honor of Dale Roylance with the support of the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

mosley european6Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745) figures in each scene, as he struggles to prevent war, against the wishes of the King and the House of Commons. In 1739 Walpole gave in and sent British forces into what became known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

Many animals and riders are competing, including the Turkish elephant, the Dutch boar, the French Fox, the Austrian eagle, and the Russian bear, among others. The skies are full of iconography, with a partial eclipse in 1738 along with cobwebs forming around the doves. By 1740, the devil has given up flying a kite and holds a small banner reading “un autre conven pour l’angleterre” [another convention for England].

euro raceCharles Mosley (ca.1720-ca.1756), European Race for a Distance Anno dom. MDCCXXXX, Inscrib’d to the Political Club, by their humb. servt. An Englishman, February 26, 1740. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection. Purchased in honor of Dale Roylance with the support of the Friend of the Princeton University Library.

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The Graphic Arts Collection also holds a pirated edition of Mosley’s 1738 engraving, laterally reversed, revealing that an unidentified artist copied Mosley’s positive image onto a copper plate, resulting in a flipped copy.