Category Archives: Medium

mediums

That Little Game

From 1916 to 1927, a daily poker game was played inside the pages of the Pittsburgh Press. Bert Link (1884-1964) drew the popular comic strip, using a single panel each day to move the game forward. Ancestry.com lists a few details about Bertin Frederick Link’s real life, including his draft card from WWI and his official death certificate [below].

They don’t mention that Link began drawing an almost miniature strip called Looey the 8th, running the full eight column width of the newspaper. Difficult to read, even in person, this was quickly replaced by his iconic poker table, first called “Penney Ante” and then, “That Little Game.” Link continued to publish drawings after the poker game ended and was celebrated by the Pittsburgh Press for his 40 year career.

Here are a few games with Bob, Eddie, and the other boys.

 

 

 

Victorian humor digitized


A newly acquired Victorian album of hand-drawn cartoons and watercolors titled “Scraps by many hands,” has been digitized allowing the online reading of pages, which are difficult to decipher even in person. Not surprising, the jokes are based on degrading ugly women, fat men, indigenous people of British India, Asians, Africans, and others outside upper class Victorian London society.

It is surprising the number of drawings collaged with original photographs, such as the image above, where a British gentleman recommends a casual pose while having a photograph taken – head in hand. The album can be enjoyed at https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/12197569.

caption enlarged below:

The album is clearly inspired by George Cruikshank (1792–1878) who published a collection, called Scraps and Sketches, each year between 1824 and 1834. See Special Collections – Graphic Arts Collection » Oversize 2015-0065, 0066, 00677F, and many other copies.

Here are a few pages from “Scraps by many hands” but it is worth a few minutes to browse the digital pages.

 

There are many references to Malvern, a spa town in Worcestershire, England, where the owner of the album may have lived. Wikipedia notes:

C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are among the authors that have frequented Malvern. Legend states that, after drinking in a Malvern pub one winter evening, they were walking home when it started to snow. They saw a lamp post shining out through the snow and Lewis turned to his friends and said “that would make a very nice opening line to a book”. The novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Lewis later used that image as the characters enter the realm of Narnia. J.R.R. Tolkien found inspiration in the Malvern landscape, which he had viewed from his childhood home in Birmingham and his brother Hilary’s home near Evesham. He was introduced to the area by C. S. Lewis, who had brought him here to meet George Sayer, the Head of English at Malvern College. Sayer had been a student of Lewis, and became his biographer, and together with them Tolkien would walk the Malvern Hills. Recordings of Tolkien reading excerpts from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were made in Malvern in 1952, at the home of George Sayer. The recordings were later issued on long-playing gramophone records. In the liner notes for J.R.R Tolkien Reads and Sings his The Hobbit & The Fellowship of the Rings, George Sayer wrote that Tolkien would relive the book as they walked and compared parts of the Malvern Hills to the White Mountains of Gondor.

The Legend of John Brown’s Last Kiss

John Brown Meeting the Slave Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charleston Jail on His Way to Execution, 1863. Published by Currier & Ives. Hand colored lithograph heightened with gum arabic. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

[left] Attributed to Martin M. Lawrence, John Brown in 1859. Salt print, reproduction of daguerreotype. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

 

John Brown (1800-1859) led a raid on a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in October 1859. He was arrested and after a brief trial, convicted and executed by hanging at Charles Town (Charleston), Virginia, on December 2. The anti-slavery New-York Daily Tribune editor Horace Greeley published more than 176 articles on these events, climaxing on December 5, with Edward H. House’s greatly embellished account of Brown’s last day.

“As he [John Brown] stepped out of the door a black woman, with her little child in arms, stood near his way. His thoughts at the moment none can know except as his acts interpret them. He stopped for a moment in his course, stooped over, and with tenderness of one whose love is as broad as the brotherhood of man, kissed it affectionately.”–“John Brown’s Invasion: John Brown’s Remains,” New-York Daily Tribune, December 5, 1859: 5.

 

This fictional account was reprinted in many other newspapers and in early Brown biographies, as well as in paintings, prints, songs, and poems. The Utica, New York, artist Louis Ransom (1831-1926) was so inspired by House’s story that he began painting a 7 x 10 foot canvas entitled “John Brown on His Way to Execution.” P.T. Barnum was the first to exhibit Ransom’s painting in 1863 at his American Museum in New York City. So incendiary was the scene, and so great was Barnum’s fear of violence due to the New York City draft riots, that he removed the painting in July 1863 (replaced by Tom Thumb).

At the same time, two blocks east, the firm of Currier & Ives released a black and white lithograph (priced extra for hand coloring) reproducing Ransom’s painting, entitled  John Brown Meeting the Slave Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charleston Jail on His Way to Execution, 1863 (Gale 3514). Their excellent distribution system placed the print in homes and schools across the United States, where it was accepted as a true account of the events around Brown’s death. Meanwhile Ransom’s painting remained unsold and was eventually given to Oberlin College in exchange for $1.

 

The poem “Brown of Ossawatomie” by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) appeared in the New York Independent three weeks after Brown’s death and three years later Thomas Satterwhite Noble (1835-1907) painted John Brown’s Blessing (1867), [currently on view at The New-York Historical Society]. https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/john-brown-the-abolitionist

As the Civil War faded in the public conscience Currier & Ives issued a second version of the print in 1870 (Gale 3515), minus its political references [below].

 

 

Perhaps the most celebrated of all the artistic scenes was The Last Moments of John Brown (1884) by Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895) and it was the 1885 exhibition of this painting [left] that made historians question the John Brown legend. “How the Story About Kissing the Negro Child Originated,” appeared in New York Sun October 1885, reprinted in Daily Alta California, October 9, 1885, and other papers, reveling or at least confirming that House invented the story published in the Tribune:

“An interesting discussion about an alleged historical incident is now going forward in the columns of the Index of Boston. The question has been mooted before, but it has arisen in the present instance in consequence of a picture painted by Mr. Thomas Hovenden, now on exhibition in Philadelphia. The theme is The Last Moments of Old John Brown and the particular episode represented is that of the old man, while on his way to the scaffold, stooping to kiss a colored child lying in its mother’s arms.”

“…Mr. House was present during the entire trial of John Brown and remained at Charlestown until after the execution. His correspondence was, upon the whole, the most valuable, as it was the most copious that appeared respecting the whole affair. …[but] there was no truth in the published statement of the old man kissing the colored child, and that he (Redpath) had been informed by ” Ned House” that he had ‘invented it.’”

Mr. Edward F. Underhill, who was then attached to the Tribune assigned to the duty of eliciting the occurrences which Mr. McKim had learned, and putting them into the form of correspondence . . . Mr. McKim told the story in question, not as an incident that he had himself seen, for he had not been in Charlestown, but one that he had heard …, had got it by hearsay. …But in 1861 [Underhill] had an opportunity at the Jail in Charlestown of investigating the matter, and was informed by the jailer then in charge that there was no foundation whatever for the story; and he further said that from his own knowledge of the surroundings at the time that it was impossible for the incident to have occurred.”

Published Currier & Ives, 1870.

Brown of Ossawatomie by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:
‘I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery’s pay;
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!’

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;
And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh:
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro’s child!

The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart,
And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart;
That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,
And round the grisly fighter’s hair the martyr’s aureole bent!

Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good!
Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood!
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underlies;
Not the borderer’s pride of daring, but the Christian’s sacrifice.

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the Northern rifle hear,
Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro’s spear;
But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes scale,
To teach that right is more than might, and justice more than mail!

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array;
In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow with clay!
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not harm the dove;
And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide to Love!

 

 

Read more: “The John Brown Legend in Pictures. Kissing the Negro Baby” by James C. Malin in Kansas Historical Quarterlies November, 1940 (Vol. 9, No. 4), pages 339 to 341. https://www.kancoll.org/khq/1939/39_4_malin.htm

Social distancing with hats

William Heath (1794-1840), We Have the Exhibition to Examine (Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing) Paul Pry says, “ah if one could but see”, ca. 1828. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection

included in:

Select collection of humourous engravings, caricatures &c. by various artists ; selected and arranged by Thomas McLean ([London]: Thomas McLean, [1827-1829]). Graphic Arts Collection Oversize 2013-0002E. Album of hand-colored caricature engravings created by various British artists. Most prints signed by William Heath; three signed by Robert Seymour (a.k.a. Shortshanks); one signed by Robert Cruikshank; one signed “M.E.”; three unsigned. Entire album digitized: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/7206565

Much Ado About Nothing
Act 4, scene 2
DOGBERRY
Is our whole dissembly appeared?
VERGES
Oh, a stool and a cushion for the Sexton.
[A stool is brought in. SEXTON sits.]
SEXTON
Which be the malefactors?
DOGBERRY
Marry, that am I and my partner.
VERGES
Nay, that’s certain; we have the exhibition to examine.
SEXTON
But which are the offenders that are to be examined? Let
them come before Master Constable.
DOGBERRY
Yea, marry, let them come before me.
What is your name, friend?
[BORACHIO and CONRADE come forward]
What’s your name, friend?
BORACHIO
Borachio.
DOGBERRY
Pray, write down, “Borachio.”—Yours, sirrah?
CONRADE
I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.

“From the only poet to a shining whore,” Samuel Beckett for Henry Crowder to sing.

Photomontage by Man Ray (1890-1976)

Two complementary volumes were recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection, greatly enhancing the fine press holding of Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press and more generally, expanding material on Harlem Renaissance expatriates living in Paris during the 1930s:

Henry Crowder (1890-1955), Henry-Music. Poems by Nancy Cunard, Richard Aldington, Walter Lowenfels, Samuel Beckett, and Harold Acton. Music by Henry Crowder (Paris: Hours Press, 1930). Edition: 100. Cover photomontage by Man Ray. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process. Acquired thanks to funds provided by the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

Anthony Barnett, Listening for Henry Crowder: A Monograph on His Almost Lost Music with the Poems and Music of Henry-Music (Lewes, East Sussex, England: Allardyce Barnett Publishers, 2007). “This 128 page monograph with previously undocumented materials includes an essay, roll/discography, some 90 photos, documents, music, CD insert with rolls and recordings including the Crowder-Cunard composition Memory Blues aka Bouf sur le toit and new recordings by New York vocalist Allan Harris of six compositions by Crowder including his collaboration with Samuel Beckett.” Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Here is a brief snippet of music by Henry Crowder from Listening for Henry Crowder:

Born in Georgia, the Black jazz pianist Henry Crowder (1890-1955) first met the White shipping heiress Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) in Venice while performing at the Hotel Luna. They fell in love and moved to Cunard’s home outside Paris. Together they converted an old farmhouse in Reanville into a fine press printing studio, called Hours Press, where they set type, designed and printed small editions, and published the work of Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, Norman Douglas, Laura Riding, and others. The young Samuel Beckett won a poetry contest sponsored by the press and became a valued friend.

 

In Cunard’s book These Were the Hours: Memories of My Hours Press, Reanville and Paris, 1928-1931, she writes about their 1930 publication Henry-Music. Richard Aldington, Harold Acton, Walter Lowenfels, and Beckett each gave Crowder poems to be set to music during an August vacation in the village of Creysse. “Nearly everything was written here in the course of four weeks, so that we went back to Paris with the Opus almost finished. … To do the covers Man Ray’s name came to me at once, for he had not only a strong appreciation for African art but for Henry as well. I had known Man Ray and had admired his work for several years.” Crowder later wrote an account of his years spent with Cunard, published posthumously, with almost no mention of this publication.

Princeton’s copy of Henry-Music includes a lengthy inscription from Crowder to Mr. & Mrs. Otto Theis: “Dear friends, if this little effort of mine brings you one moment of pleasure, I assure that I am amply repaid for whatever effort went into the making of it. You two people are realy [sic] nearer to my heart than you may suspect. Probably I am presuming when I say that, but nevertheless the Gods themselves (whoever they are) don’t always know who loves them.”

See also: Henry Crowder, As Wonderful as All That?: Henry Crowder’s Memoir of His Affair with Nancy Cunard, 1928-1935 (Navarro, CA: Wild Tree Press, 1987).

Nancy Cunard, These Were the Hours (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969).

Below is the poem twenty-four years old Samuel Beckett gave Henry Crowder for Henry Music, and above is a snippet of vocalist Allan Harris’s recording. The complete recording is available on our CD included in Listening for Henry Crowder. **It begins very quietly**

From the Only Poet To a Shining Whore
for Henry Crowder to Sing

Rahab of the Holy Battlements,
bright dripping shaft
in the bright bright patient
pearl-brow dawn-dusk lover of the sun.

Puttanina mia!
You hid them happy in the high flax,
pale before the fords
of Jordan, and the dry red waters,
and you lowered a pledge
of scarlet hemp.

Oh radiant, oh angry, oh Beatrice,
she foul with the victory
of the bloodless fingers
and proud, and you, Beatrice, mother, sister, daughter, beloved,
fierce pale flame
of doubt, and God’s sorrow,
and my sorrow.

Love Among the Games

verso

recto

L’Amour parmi les jeux, le Souvenir du bon temps, Dédié aux Belles [=Love Among the Games, the Memory of the Good Times, Dedicated to the Beautiful] (Paris: Boulanger, [1785]) with paintings by François Marie Isidore Queverdo (1748-1797). Provenance: bookplate of Robert de Beauvillain.  Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

The complete description that came with the volume: “24mo (binding size 98 x 57 mm). Entirely engraved. 44 leaves = 22 bifolia, a “nested” construction, irregularly paginated: engraved title, Remarques pour la présente année 1785on verso, conjugate with advertisement leaf at end, 6-leaf engraved calendar for 1785 enclosing central quire, paginated 3-62, containing: 12 leaves engraved text, each text leaf alternating with one of 12 full-page engraved “plates” (printed on 6 conjugate bifolia), the printed sides included in the pagination; at center a separate quire of tables of gains and losses, with separate imprint, but included in the pagination (pp. 21-44).”

 

The Graphic Arts Collection has a new, quietly erotic almanac in an embroidered binding set with painted miniatures by or after François Marie Isidore Queverdo (1748-1797). The interior engravings are described elsewhere as by Jean Dambrun (1741-1808) after Queverdo. If you look closely, each print displays various amorous encounters while the poetry describes seduction involving both men and women, husbands and wives, humans and angels.

 

The games mentioned in the title are both actual sports: in January there is bowling, in February is hide and seek, and so on. But they are also the adult games played by men and women throughout the year.

 

Benezit lists Queverdo as born 2 February 1748, in Josselin (Morbihan) and died 24 December 1797, in Paris. “The father of Louis Marie Yves Queverdo, François Queverdo appears on the register of pupils of the Académie Royale as being the protégé of the duchess of Rohan-Chabot and living in her house. He was a pupil of Pierre and Longueil. He collaborated as a draughtsman and engraver on the plates for the Abbé de St-Non’s Picturesque Journey Through Italy ( Voyage pittoresque d’Italie). He also made many engravings from his own drawings of fêtes galantes. His works are not without talent although the forms are heavy and often inaccurate and some of his pieces are highly prized. He imitated the style of Baudouin.”

 

Les quatre-coins (Puss in the Corner), see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puss_in_the_corner_(children%27s_game)

Prints wearing out? Paste in new ones.

Engraved allegorical title page by Adamo Scultori (1530–1585) with a medallion scene of the Virgin and Child, flanked by Saint Dominic and Saint Vincent. Note the close trimmed print.

When the information on this new acquisition is loaded into our online catalogue in a few weeks, the link to this physical book will probably disappear, superseded by one for the Hathi Trust digital copy. During this odd year, it is one or the other. This is too bad, given the unique material properties of our copy.

First published in 1573, compiled by the Dominican Andrea Gianetti da Salò (d. 1575) from the writings of Luis de Granada (1504–1588), the book offers a guide to the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. Scultori’s engravings caught the attention of the book’s many reader, leading to its reprinting over twenty times in the following thirty years. When Scultori’s plates became worn, they were sometimes re-engraved in later editions. This 1578 Varisco edition holds a number of prints beginning to show wear.

What is most interesting in this individual book are the rich, dark prints someone pasted on top of seven original engravings, a conservation procedure not yet found in any other copy. Our dealer notes “The lack of other similarly ‘improved’ copies seems to indicate a later intervention rather than something made at the time of printing, although the skill with which the new engravings have been pasted suggests a professional, maybe a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century binder or bookseller, rather than a former owner. See: Mortimer 218 (for the 1573 edition).”

Other owners might want to check their copies.

 

Luis de Granada. (Andrea GIANETTI, editor.) Rosario figurato della Sacratissima Vergine Maria Madre di Dio nostra avocata... (Venice, Giovanni Varisco, 1578). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

Here are some biographical details on Adamo Scultori (1530–1585) from Brown University:

Son of the Mantuan sculptor Giovanni Battista Mantovano (Mantuano) and brother of the engraver Diana Mantovana (Mantuana, Scultori), Adamo, like his sister, was taught to engrave as a child by his father. His earliest known work, done when still a youngster, was a series of figures from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel. His made many engravings after the Roman court artist in Mantua, Giulio Romano, and also after the antique. He also engraved frontispieces for book illustration, and in the case of the phlebotomy manual Discorsi di Pietro Paolo Magni Piacentino sopra il modo di sanguinar… he not only designed and engraved the frontispiece of Magni’s first, 1584 edition, but also engraved–and most likely designed-the other illustrations in the book. He was active as a print dealer and publisher in Rome between ca. 1577-80.

George Boileau Willock cartoons

The Graphic Arts Collection recently added an album of 259 original cartoons, watercolors, and pen-&-ink sketches on 170 pp., along with a few printed cartoons, including one “sent to Punch January 1868.”

 

George Boileau Willock (born 1832), Gore Wynyard Willock (1861-1910), et al., Scraps by Many Hands, [ca. 1855-1885]. Embossed cover “G.B.W.”

Some work has already been done on the albums provenance, which is repeated here:
A collection of original art work by G.B.W. (George Boileau Willock, born 1832) and his artistic friends. The album was passed to his son, G.W.W. (Gore Wynyard Willock, 1861-1910). George came from an Imperial family that included Alexander Willock, London merchant and slave owner in the West Indies, his son Francis (1785-1834), naval officer and brother of Sir Henry Willock (1790-1858) chairman of the East India Company, and Captain Frank Gore Willock (1829-1857) who died at Delhi.

The son of Sir Henry Willock and Elizabeth Davis, George married Georgina C.M Willoughby in 1857 and together they had three children, Beatrice, Gore and Frank. Gore was born at Mussoorie, (a hill station pictured in the album) in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, north of New Delhi, and served in the Indian army before retiring to London. The Boileau connection was through Mary Elizabeth Boileau (1838-1919), who married Henry Davis Willock in 1859.

It is assumed that Gore compiled his father’s drawings into this album, including 124 cartoons signed G.B.W. or G.B. Willock; and about 80 others unsigned but probably by Willock. George was clearly an accomplished artist but many of the drawings present racist views of Asian, African, and Indian people, both in the image and the text. They are not included here. A portrait [at the top] presumed to be George Willock is included with a photograph of his face pasted to a sketch of a man on horseback

 

There are 20 non-humorous watercolors or pen-&-ink drawings of landscapes in England, Scotland, and India.. Eighteen cartoons are signed with the initials of other artists: 8 by C.A.R., 4 by J.L., 2 each by H.M.J. and W.T., one each by W.F.L. and M.E.
The two printed items laid into the album are:
Legend of Broadstairs. For Private Circulation only (Broadstairs: Printed by E. Cantwell, ca. 1875). Signed G.B.W. at end. Inscribed to “Gore from the Author,” [ca.1875].
A True Tale told by Mariah Hanne to Sarah Jane. 3pp. on a single folded sheet [ca.1880], inscribed to “Gore from the Author.”

 

 

Ragamuffin Day cancelled


“The entire Ragamuffin Parade Committee is heartbroken,” wrote the 2020 committee, “that we will be disappointing so many children and, of course, their parents by not having this big, fun event along Third Avenue this year.”

 

Don Freeman (1908-1978), Dress Up Day, ca. 1936. Lithograph.

First held on Thanksgiving in 1870, American children would dress as beggars or street urchins and go door to door asking for candy and pennies. Eventually, uncontrolled begging was replaced with an annual costume parade. Last held in Manhattan around 1956, the parade was revived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and continues along Ragamuffin Way each year (except during the present Covid 19 epidemic).

James Greenwood (1832-1929), The True History of a Little Ragamuffin (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1867). Not yet at Princeton University Library. See David Croal Thomson , Life and labours of Hablôt Knight Browne, “Phiz” (London, Chapman and Hall, 1884). Graphic Arts Collection oversize 2008-0463Q. 20-volume set, extra-illustrated with tipped-in works by Browne, including: etchings (some hand-colored); engravings; aquatints; lithographs; wood engravings; pencil drawings (some with added gouache); pen and ink washes; watercolors; one albumen photograph of a drawing; illustrated letters; and book covers.

 

 

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.princeton.edu/docview/1830982791/B3CDF9747F384D93PQ/1?accountid=13314

Le Gueux = The Beggar

Eugène Héros (1860-1925) editor, Le gueux. January 1891-October 1892. Monthly. [Paris, 35, rue d’Hauteville: Gueux, 1891-92]. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired 16 individual fascicles, a complete run, of the short lived satirical monthly Le gueux (The Beggar), edited and printed by the lyricist Eugène Héros. A trained lawyer and member of Le chat noir, Héros later became managing director of the Théâtre du Palais Royal (1907-1910) and manager of La Scala (1914-1918). In between writing popular songs, he published the pamphlet Suppression de l’assistance publique (Paris: P. Andreol, 1890), followed by La partie de baccara: comédie-vaudeville en un acte, the first of many plays.

 

 

Each issue of Gueux has a singular color lithograph on its cover designed by H. Gray (Henri Boulanger 1858–1924), Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868–1938), Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923), Victor Sorel, Lilé, Jasmin, and Tzar. Number 9 has the a center fold by Steinlen, also seen on sheet music, titled Mon petit salé (My salted pork).

 

Also included in one issue is a subscription card and receipt card designed by H. Gray (Henri Boulanger 1858–1924).