A curious collection of proof etchings of coins and medals from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries from the Papal mint of Bologna, with a few coins depicting ‘temporal’ rulers such as Giovannni II Bentivoglio of Bologna, Giovanni Sforza (first husband of Lucrezia Borgia), and Charles V, the great enemy of the Papacy.

The manuscript notes that accompany a few of the plates, referring to books or noting prices, might suggest that the etchings were produced to document a private collection. It is also possible that these were proof etchings for a publication on the subject, although no numismatic reference book with such illustrations has been found.

“The mint of the Emperor Henry VI was established at Bologna in 1194, and nearly all of the coins struck there bear the motto BONONIA DOCET, or BONONIA MATER STUDIORUM. The baiocchi of Bologna were called bolognini; the gold bolognino was equivalent to a gold sequin. The lira, also a Bolognese coin, was worth 20 bolognini. These coins were struck in the name of the commune; it is only from the time when Bologna was recovered by the Holy See, under Clement VI, that Bolognese coins may be regarded as papal.”–http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10334a.htm

Thanks to the generous gift of Kristina Miller, our colleague for many years in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of The Siamese Cat written and illustrated by the British artist Leon Underwood.

Leon Underwood studied at the Royal College and the Slade School of Art, before founding the Brook Green School of Art in Hammersmith, London, where he trained such artists as Henry Moore in wood carving, and Gertrude Hermes and Blair Hughes Stanton in wood engraving.

By 1925 Underwood moved to New York City where he brought his School of Art to Greenwich Village and became active in the local wood engraving network. He supported his art with commercial jobs illustrating books and magazines while exhibiting his prints alongside John Taylor Arms, Charles Sheeler, and Wanda Gag among others. It was at this time that he wrote and illustrated The Siamese Cat for Brentanos.

Thanks to Elmer Adler, the Graphic Arts Collection also holds two self portraits by Underwood, shown here. [left] Leon Underwood (1890-1975), Self-portrait, 1922. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.00928.

.

Leon Underwood (1890-1975), The Siamese Cat (New York: Brentanos, 1928). Woodcut illustrations by the author. Gift of Kristina Miller. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

A thought and an action or an object are synonymous to most cats.
Leon Underwood (1890-1975), Self-portrait in a landscape, ca. 1921. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.00927.

In 1931 Underwood and Joseph Bard, a Hungarian poet and an expatriot in Britain, co-founded The Island, a journal of art and literature, today only available at the Huntington Library and Emory University Library. He continued to travel, visiting West Africa in 1945 and returning with a large collection of African art, some of which he later sold to the British Museum.

See also the webpage below:

The Portraits of Leon Underwood by Simon Martin

right

center

left

Eric Avery, View Across the Rio Grande, the River of Death, from San Ygnacio, Texas, 1983. Linoleum block print on handmade Okawara paper. 26 5/8 x 73¾ inches. 15/20. Gift of the artist. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Dr. Avery writes, “The image was drawn [in 1983] on linoleum on the Rio Grande River bank, two blocks from my San Ygnacio home. During this time with many undocumented persons, including refugees fleeing the war in Central America, were crossing the river, an occasional body would be found floating in the river. The ones found near San Ygnacio were buried in a paupers section of the cemetery.

On the right side of the print, Michael Tracy is lying on the riverbank, with Henry Estrada, his partner, and myself standing at his side. Fishermen are in their boats in the river. Armed fighters from Central America are crossing in the middle of the print.”

The Texas/Mexico border

The artist notes that he kept a house in San Ygnacio  for 40 years, while also living elsewhere for work.  “Moving back now, the crisis on the Border is much worse than when I made the print. Then, the wars in Central America are represented by the armed men coming north. Now, Trump’s Wall is proposed to be constructed on the Riverbank where I made the print.”

Eric Avery is an artist/printmaker who became a physician during the Vietnam War in the 1970’s. In 1974, he received his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas and then in 1978 completed his psychiatry training at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. For forty years he has worked at the intersection of visual art and medicine, leaving the practice of medicine several times to concentrate on his art career. His social content prints explore issues such as Human Rights Abuses, and Social Responses to Disease (specifically HIV and Emerging Infectious Diseases), Death, Sexuality and the Body. His body of work is more thoroughly represented at www.docart.com.

This semester his work is highlighted in the exhibition: States of Health: Visualizing Illness and Healing on view at the Princeton University Art Museum through Sunday, February 2, 2020. https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/3617

Museum late Sir Ashton Lever’s Albion Place the Surry side of Black Fryers Bridge. Admission ticket engraved by William Skelton (1762-1848) after a design by Charles Reuben Ryley (1752?-1798) [London], ca. 1788. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

In William Hone’s 1838 The Every-day Book and Table Book; Or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Etc, this ticket for the Leverian Museum is illustrated and the following explanation given:

“It seems appropriate and desirable to give the above representation of Mr. Parkinson’s ticket, for there are few who retain the original. Besides—the design is good, and as an engraving it is an ornament. And—as a memorial of the method adopted by sir Ashton Lever to obtain attention to the means by which he hoped to reimburse himself for his prodigious outlay, and also to enable the public to view the grand prize which the adventure of a guinea might gain, one of his advertisements is annexed from a newspaper of January 28, 1785.

J. R. Ashton Lever’s Lottery Tickets are now on sale at Leicester house, every day (Sundays excepted) from Nine in the morning till Six in the evening, at One Guinea each; and as each ticket will admit four persons, either together or separately, to view the Museum, no one will hereafter be admitted but by the Lottery Tickets, excepting those who have already annual admission. This collection is allowed to be infinitely superior to any of the kind in Europe. The very large sum expended in making it, is the cause of its being thus to be disposed of, and not from the deficiency of the daily receipts (as is generally imagined) which have annually increased, the average amount for the last three years being 1833l. per annum.

The hours of admission are from Eleven till Four. Good fires in all the galleries.

The first notice of the Leverian Museum is in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for May, 1773, by a person who had seen it at Alkerington, near Manchester, when it was first formed. Though many specimens of natural history are mentioned, the collection had evidently not attained its maturity. It appears at that time to have amounted to no more than “upwards of one thousand three hundred glass cases, containing curious subjects, placed in three rooms, besides four sides of rooms shelved from top to bottom, with glass doors before them.” The works of art particularized by the writer in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” are “a head of his present majesty, cut in cannil coal, said to be a striking likeness; indeed the workmanship is inimitable—also a drawing in Indian ink of a head of a late duke of Bridgewater…”

The winner of the 1786 lottery was estate agent James Parkinson (1730-1813), who moved the collection to the “Rotunda” near Blackfriars Bridge. Our ticket dates from this time, notably the Blackfriar’s address appears in the title.

Below the image is the text: Whilst Time is unveiling, Science is exploring Nature.

Read more: J. C. H. King, “New Evidence for the Contents of the Leverian Museum,” Journal of the History of Collections, 8, no. 2 (1996): 167–86.
https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/8.2.167

Adrienne Lois Kaeppler, Holophusicon–the Leverian Museum : an eighteenth-century English institution of science, curiosity, and art (Altenstadt, Germany: ZKF Publishers; Honolulu, HI: Distributed in the United States by Bishop Museum Press, 2011). Marquand Library Oversize AM101.L67 K34 2011q