Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Stanhopes


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two Stanhopes, also called Bijoux Photomicroscopiques. Rene Dagron (1819-1900) patented these devices, using a variation of the process developed by John Benjamin Dancer (1812-1887) to affix images to a miniature magnifying convex lens. Dagron enhanced the novelty by hiding them inside pieces of jewelry, tiny monoculars, or other souvenirs.

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) described the Stanhope in a piece titled “On the Photomicroscope,” The Photographic Journal, January 15, 1864:

Under the name of bijoux photomicroscopiques, M. Dagron, of Paris, sent to the Exhibition of 1861 a series of these beautiful little optical instruments, which consisted of a plano-convex lens of such a thickness that its anterior focus coincided with the plane side of the lens. By placing the eye behind the convex side, these photographs, invisible almost to the eye, were seen so distinctly and so highly magnified that they excited general admiration. M. Dagron had presented some of them to the Queen, who admired them greatly; and as he was the only exhibitor, he naturally expected that the ingenuity with which he had produced a new article of manufacture would have received a higher reward than ‘Honorable Mention.’ . . . In 1860 M. Dagron had taken out a patent in France for this combination of an elongated or cylinder lens with a photograph, under the name of Bijoux Photomicroscopiques. He placed the lens in brooches and other female ornaments; and the combination became so popular, and the sale so great, that fifteen opticians in Paris invaded the patent, and succeeded in reducing it.

The first newly acquired piece is a jeweled cross with lens at the center. When you look deep inside, you see a microscopic Lord’s Prayer.

 

The second Stanhope now in the Graphic Arts Collection is a tiny monocular, no more than two centimeters long, with a small ring so it can be attached to a watch chain or necklace.

If you look inside, you can see a tiny reproduction of the 1882 lithograph From the Cradle to the Grave. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Gen. James A. Garfield, produced as a remembrance of the recently murdered President Garfield.

Stanhope with the miniature From the Cradle to the Grave. Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Gen. James A. Garfield (New York: J.W. Sheehy & Co.; printed by Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, 1882). Miniature photograph of a lithograph with James A. Garfield (1831-1881) at the center, surrounded by his family and fifteen vignettes with scenes from Garfield’s life. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

Below is a reproduction of the original lithograph, a little easier to see.

What about the author who doesn’t want to be illustrated?

 

At the beginning of Balthasar Anton Dunker’s 1787 collection of etchings designed to “serve the different editions” of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Panorama of Paris, there is a notice to the public stating (roughly translated): “The Publishers of this series of little sketches for the Panorama of Paris, have thought it would be very agreeable to the public to see beside the most interesting Chapters of this book, figures which represented to the eyes what Mr. Mercier said with so much elegance & precision.”

The name of the publisher who wrote this note is conveniently omitted since Mercier was explicit in his disdain of painters, sculptors, engravers, and the other visual artists of the day. All eight volumes of Mercier’s book were specifically published without illustrations or decoration of any kind.

In The Unfinished Enlightenment [Firestone PQ265 .S72 2010], historian Joanna Stalnaker notes:

“Tableau de Paris [is] peppered with venomous condemnations of painting and painters. Painting, the ‘idiot sister’ of poetry, is ‘a childish production [un enfantillage] of the human mind, a continually impotent enterprise that is in most cases laughably intrepid.’ And painters are ‘the most useless men in the world, charging exorbitant prices for an art that in no way interests the happiness, tranquility, or even the pleasures [les jouissances] of civil society; a cold and false art of which any true philosopher will sense the inanity.” .

On the other hand, Mercier often equates his writing with painting, stating “I held nothing but the brush of the painter in this work” and referring to his text as “mots-couleurs” or word colors. Dunker must have noticed this and for the frontispiece to his accompanying etchings, the artist begins with a personification of Paris turning away from a physical painting labeled “Tableau of Paris.” The caption: “Let’s put our brushes together! Let’s see black!”

The chapters from Mercier’s book chosen to be illustrated by Dunker are predominantly those dealing with the arts, leading readers to wonder whether the artist is having fun at the author’s expense, rather than simply illustrating him. Perhaps Dunker is the satyr on the frontispiece, peering out at Mercier from behind his canvas.

 

Balthasar Anton Dunker (1746-1807), Tableau de Paris, ou explication de différentes figures, gravées à l’eauforte, pour servir aux différentes éditions du Tableau de Paris (Yverdon: [publisher not identified], 1787). SAX DC729. D765 1787

Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814), Tableau de Paris (Amsterdam: [s.n.], 1782-1783). ReCAP Ex 1514.635.1782 v.1-8

 

 

Can anyone make out the Latin below?

Undergraduate Life at the Hampton Institute

During his years as an undergraduate at the Hampton Institute, Willis J. Hubert (1919-2007) kept a scrapbook, filling it with programs, report cards, newspaper articles, and many informal photographs of his classmates. This enormous volume bound in carved wood boards, 30 x 46 x 7 cm, provides an intimate look at undergraduate life at this primarily black school from 1936 to 1940.

According to his obituary, published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from May 15 to May 17, 2007, Hubert went on to have a distinguished military career in which he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Not  long after he graduated from the Hampton Institute, he entered the U.S. Air Force and trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field, where Hubert was one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. He went on to be the first African American to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. (New York University) while on active duty, as well as the first to complete the Harvard Business School (Military Co-op) Statistics Training Program.

There are a number of programs from plays and musicals in the scrapbook, including a program for an appearance by the opera singer Marian Anderson.

Hubert studied agriculture at Hampton, so his horticultural club prizes and programs are also included, as well as by-laws of the college Poultry Producers Association.

Also included are a few items from other historically black colleges, which Hubert visited, including Fisk, Howard, and Tennessee State.

The Murder of Ted Smith in 1908

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a set of photographic postcards documenting the “Burning of the Negro Smith.” Two are captioned in white ink. None of them were ever addressed or mailed. The postcards came in a plain envelope marked with the caption in pencil: “Greenville, TX, 28 July 1908”.


The dealer’s note is quoted here in full:

“Ted Smith, aged 18 years old, was accused of raping a young white woman in Clinton, Texas. He was arrested and brought to jail in nearby Greenville. A mob took him from his cell at eight the next morning. Rather than the usual hanging, they covered him under a pile of wood, doused him with kerosene, and burned him alive in the center of town, in front of a large crowd. The postcards depict the horrible scene, with the crowd gathered around the fire. One shows the wood pile, apparently just before the fire started. The last two in the series show Smith’s charred remains after the wood had burned away.

Texas History site notes: From the early 1920s through the late 1960s, Greenville was known for displaying a large sign emblazoned ‘The Blackest Land, the Whitest People,’ across its main street, and the town has a history of racial tension and violence. One of the most notorious events in Greenville’s history occurred on July 28, 1908. Acting on allegations of rape from a white girl, a crowd of over 2,000 people seized a young African-American man named Ted Smith and burned him in the town square.

Despite national outrage, city and county officials refused to prosecute the case and even issued statements in support of the action. Although no issues of the Morning Herald pertaining to Smith’s lynching seem to have survived, the paper reveals a widespread acceptance of such violence in a 1908 article on another case. The article, which deals with the murder of a sheriff in a neighboring county, concludes with the suggestion, ‘The negro escaped but posses of citizens are searching for him. Feeling runs high and a lynching may follow the negro’s capture.’

The lynching of Ted Smith was covered extensively in the Greenville Messenger and the Herald’s rival, the Greenville Evening Banner. These papers provide important sources documenting the culture and history of Greenville and Hunt County. https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/GVMHD/ An extended account can be found in the Waxahachie Daily Light, Wednesday, July 29, 1908″

La tour de trois cents mètres

Detail of photogravure after Louis-Emile Durandelle (1839-1917), printed by Société des imprimeries Lemercier and published by Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) in La tour de trois cents mètres (1900).

 

 

Throughout the construction of the Eiffel Tower, from January 1887 to March 1889, many photographers documented the Tower’s progress as it rose over Paris. By the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1889, the photographs were almost as popular as the site itself.

The most complete record was produced by the firm Delmaet and Durandelle, led by Louis-Emile Durandelle (1839-1917) and Clémence Jacob Delmaet (died 1890), the wife of his former partner who he later married.

As one of the leading architectural photographs of the 19th century, Durandelle established his reputation documenting the construction of Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra from 1862 to 1875. Durandelle and Delmaet also photographed the reconstruction of the Hôtel-Dieu (1868) and the abbey of Mont-Saint Michel (1874-78), and the construction of the Bibliothèque Nationale (1870), Sacré-Cœur (1877-90), the theater at Monte Carlo (1880) and the Eiffel Tower (1887-89).

In 1889, Delmaet and Durandelle published an elaborate album of 58 albumen silver prints of the construction of the Eiffel Tower and then, one year later he retired, selling the firm to his assistant.

Louis-Émile Durandelle (1839-1917), Travaux de construction de la Tour ([Paris: s.n., 1887-1889]. 58 albumen silver prints from collodion glass negatives. Previously owned by Adolphe Salles, the son-in-law of Gustave Eiffel. Ex 2017-0004E

 


In his biography of Gustave Eiffel, David Harvie writes,

“There had been considerable use made of photography during the tower’s construction, and apart from rather formal engineering records, there are many sequences showing the advancing construction taken from precisely fixed camera positions. The great French architectural photographer Louis-Emile Durandelle, who with his partner Hyacinthe-César Delmaet had photographed the construction of Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera and the basilica of Sacré-coeur in Montmartre, also undertook a long series of painstaking, large-format photographs of the building of the Eiffel Tower.

These photographs were masterpieces of the difficult nineteenth-century wet collodion process, and certainly did not constitute popular or commercial exploitation. … Durandelle’s photographs reignited the claims for the tower’s beauty in a way that natural human observation somehow didn’t, and helped ensure that the controversy over the tower’s presence and its aesthetic qualities would be brought to an end”— Eiffel: The Genius Who Reinvented Himself (2006)

When the Tower was complete and the well-earned celebrations ended, Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) partnered with the Lemercier printers to publish a complete record of the design, engineering, and construction of the project from beginning to end. The two limited-edition volumes were prepared at the author’s expense and distributed free of charge to libraries, universities, and scientific societies. To augment his own documents, Eiffel arranged to have 11 of the Delmaet and Durandelle photographs (and 2 small details) transferred to copper plates and printed in photogravure for the monumental conclusion of these books.


Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), La tour de trois cents mètres (Paris: Société des imprimeries Lemercier, 1900). “Il a été tiré de cet ouvrage 500 exemplaires sur papier vélin, numérotés”–Verso of half-title page. Ex oversize Item 7599347q and oversize item 7599727e.

This was one of the last great projects for Imprimeries Lemercier & Cie, which had been one of the largest of the French publishing houses, known not only for their spectacular lithographs but also for their photogravures (sometimes released under the imprint Héliog. & Imp. Lemercier).

Unfortunately, after the death of their founder, Rose Joseph Lemercier and the rise of photomechanical printing at the end of the 19th-century, the shop was forced into bankruptcy. There is no record of a single individual responsible for the printing of the copper plates.

Albumen silver prints [above and below] from collodion glass plate negative by Louis-Émile Durandelle (1839-1917), published in Travaux de construction de la Tour (1889).

 

Thanks to Eric White, Curator of Rare Books, who acquired these volumes and is allowing them to be used in the upcoming exhibition “Turning Light into Darkness,” documenting our photogravures.

 

This portrait and short life-path of Wilhelm Weber


Dieses Bildniß, und kurtzen Lebens-Lauff, Wilhelm Webers. Dieses Bildniss und kurtzen Lebens Lauff, Wilhelm Webers, gewesenen gekrönten Poeten und Spruchspechers in Nürnberg, verehret die hinterlassende Witwe … Nuremberg, bey mir Anna Maria Weberin, hinterbliebenen Wittiwen, zu finden, bey St. Jacob, [1661]. Graphic Arts Collection 2018- in process

Although Dante never received a laurel wreath during his lifetime, Wilhelm Weber (1602-1661) was honored as Poet Laureate in 1647 at the age of forty-five. Thanks to a recent acquisition, the Graphic Arts Collection now holds two variant broadsides celebrating Weber, both published in 1661, the year of the poet’s death in Nuremberg. The central focus of both are similar engraved portraits of Weber wearing his twelve honorary medals.

Eigentliche Bildnuß, Deß Ersamen Wilhelm Webers... was published by Hans Weber, presumed to be the poet’s son, with a publication line: “Dieses Exemplar ist zufinden bey mir Hannß Weber, bey S. Jacob auffm Hohenpflaster.” The second: Dieses Bildniß, und kurtzen Lebens-Lauff, Wilhelm Webers... was published by his widow Anna Maria Weber, has the publication line: “Dieser Spruch, ist bey mir Anna Maria Weberin hinterbliebenen Wittiwen, zu finden, bey St. Jacob.”

According to Werner Wilhelm Schnabel, “A form of poetry situated outside the world of the cultural elite flourished in the 17th century. One of the best-documented representatives of this genre was the “Spruchsprecher” Wilhelm Weber . . . [who] worked as a journalist and publisher, and also as a contract poet and popular elocutionist.” A spruchsprecher was a spokesperson who recited rhymes, told stories, and spoke at public events, weddings, and New Year’s Day celebrations. More details on Weber and his broadsides can be found in Poets Laureate in the Holy Roman Empire by John Flood (2011).

One of Weber’s own New Year’s broadsides and other publications about the poet can be found in the digital collection of the State Library in Berlin. Too bad there is no broadside to celebrate the 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the United States, Tracy K. Smith, Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of the Humanities, Director and Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University.

 

Eigentliche Bildnuss : Dess Ersamen Wilhelm Webers, gekrönten Teutschen Poeten, und Spruchsprechers in Nürnberg, seines Alters 60. Jahr ([Nuremberg] : Dieses Exemplair ist zufinden bey mir Hannss Weber, bey S. Jacob auffm Hohenpflaster, [1661]). Text ends: So hat gesprochen/ Wilhelm Weber. Graphic Arts Collection Q-000551.

 

Comparing them in size below:

The Constitution in Photogravure

Nestore Leoni (1862-1947), The Declaration of Independence, and Constitution of the United States. Facsimile in Photogravure of the Thirteen Illuminated Parchments, Containing the Text of the Great Documents, and Reproducing in Chronological Order the Portraits of the Presidents, Statesmen, Admirals and Generals, with Illustrations of the Most Important Events and Episodes of American History from its Discovery Up to the Present Time (Roma: N. Leoni, 1910). Provenance: Author’s presentation inscription to H. Blakiston Wilkins, dated 1921. Wilkins was executive secretary to the American Academy in Rome 1919-1921 and also the honorary curator of musical instruments at the Library of Congress. Rare Books Oversize 2006-0207F

 

In 1902, critic Charles Caffin (1854-1918) reviewed Nestore Leoni’s illuminations of The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States recently completed in Rome and on exhibit in New York City. He noted that manuscript illumination had a resurgence during the Renaissance and then continued:

“It was the examination of these latest examples that fired Leoni with the longing to revive the art. Encouraged by Baron Podesta, the curator of the manuscripts in the National Library at Florence, and by the Abate Anziani, of the Laurenziani Library in the, same city, he began his studies, which extended over ten years. His first work was the illumination on parchment of the six strophes of the ‘Canzone di Cina da Pistoia,’ for presentation to Queen Margherita by a group of Florentine ladies”

“…Then [Leoni] commenced the illumination of the Constitution of the United States of America, a work which occupied him ten years. It has been recognized by the highest authorities as combining with extraordinary success the rich color and perfect craftsmanship of the old work with the spirit of modern art.”–Everybody’s Magazine 7, no 1 (July 1902).

Soon after the thirteen illuminations returned to Rome, they were photographed and reproduced in photogravure. The artist self-published a portfolio in limited edition, distributed in conjunction with the New York bookseller George D. Sproul.


Also illuminated by Leoni:
Luigi Luzzatti (1841-1927) and Nestore Leoni, Sulla costituzione degli Stati Uniti a proposito delle miniature di Nestore Leoni (Roma: Direzione della Nuova antologia, 1901).

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Nestore Leoni, Shakespeare’s Sonnets ([New York]: Geo. D. Sproul, 1901).

John Milton (1608-1674) and Nestore Leoni, Comus ([S.l.]: G.D. Sproul, 1902)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Nestore Leoni, The Holy Grail ([New York?]: George D. Sproul, 1902).

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) and Nestore Leoni, Li Trionfi de messer Francesco Petrarcha poeta laureato (Roma: Tipi dell’Unione cooperativa editrice, 1904).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Nestore Leoni, Sonnets from the Portuguese (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909).

Dante Alighieri and Nestore Leoni, La vita nuova : nel sesto centenario della morte di Dante Alighieri (Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’arti grafiche, 1921).

 

 


Japanese matchbook labels

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a collection of 425 or more matchbook labels, mainly Japanese although there are a handful of Scandinavian and German examples. The color is wonderfully bright and fresh. Here’s a small sample.

A great list of international links, if you want to see more: http://www.phillumeny.dk/, then click on links.

PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture

The three-day PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture conference has begun, with 300 curators, collectors, educators, and enthusiasts disregarding the Thursday snow and gathering in Rochester, NY.

R.I.T. designed the conference to focus on the presentation of original scholarship on the broad subject of photography’s history and future. As the conference program reveals, “presentations include applications, education, connoisseurship, conservation and preservation, and accessibility. Conference presentations in panel format offer scholarly research, exploration, analysis, interpretation and assessment about dimensions of photography’s past and future as viewed through multiple disciplinary lenses. We anticipate attendance by a wide range of academic disciplines and by practitioners from an equally broad range of professions: educators, practitioners, administrators and managers from both the for-profit and the not-for-profit sectors.”

The program notes, “Photography is simultaneously understood as “making” and “taking”: from the four-year-old’s worldview images of knees and the vacationer’s tedious snapshots of very, very distant vistas, to the event-defining, stop-action of news shots and the wordless narrative of the propagandist or polemicist. Photography documents, it inspires, acts as a memory and prompts memories. Photography stops motion and captures the action, instructs and demonstrates, entertains, reveals and conceals what is otherwise (un)noticed or (un)seen, directs attention and evokes a broad range of emotions. And there has never been more of it than there is today.”

 

PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture is sponsored and organized by RIT Press, the Institute’s scholarly book publishing enterprise, and The Wallace Center at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Following the presentation of scholarship, the conference concludes with a photography-focused Antiquarian Show and Sale on Sunday. https://www.rit.edu/twc/photohistoryconference/

Art 425 The Japanese Print

Torii Kiyomitsu I, 1735-1785. The actor Ichikawa Yaozō as Tengawaya Shihei resting on a large chest. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00703

 

Prof. Watsky’s class ART 425/EAS 425 The Japanese Print split their time on Wednesday between the Marquand Library collection and the Graphic Arts Collection. This seminar has been examining Japanese woodblock prints from the 17th through the 19th century, including the formal and technical aspects of prints, the varied subject matter–including the “floating world” of the brothel districts and theatre, the Japanese landscape, and urban centers–and the links between literature and prints. At the end of the class, the students will select a print or two to purchase for the University.

Our session included not only final prints but the tools and techniques used to make them. Scrolls, bound books, and individual prints were examined.

Nicole Fabricand-Person, Japanese Art Specialist showed the famous “whale” book, by Nanki Josuiken from 1794. This was the first time the whale is identified as a mammal. She also talked about Nanshoku ōkagami: Honchō waka fūzoku [The Great Mirror of Male Love: the Custom of Boy Love in Our Land] written by Ihara Saikaku in 1687. Read her wonderful post on the series here: http://library.princeton.edu/news/marquand/2018-02-09/marquand-art-library-acquisition-great-mirror-male-love

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1798-1861. Half-length portrait of an actor as a sumo wrestler. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00746

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1839-1892. Geisha seated for her photograph, 1881. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00737