Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Egypt in photogravure

“Fred Boissonnas (1858-1946) was invited to Egypt in 1929 by King Fuad I to take photographs for the lavish publication L’Egypte (1932), and he returned to complete his Egyptian journey in 1933. During the later trip he embarked on a photographic expedition to Mount Sinai, following the route of the Israelites as recorded in the book of Exodus, and photographing the traditional biblical sites that he encountered on his journey. This work became the book project he never finished.”–Boissonnas in Egypt

Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946), Égypte; avec la collaboration de Gustave Jéquier, Pierre Jouguet, Henri Munier … [et autres]. Edition: 337 (Genève: Paul Trembley, 1932). “Sout la haut patronage et avec l’appui de sa Majesté Fouad 1er roi d’Egypte.” Marquand Library (SAX) Oversize DT47 .B64 1932e


Swiss photographer François-Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946) was 71 years old when he received the commission from the King of Egypt and Sudan, but he was up to the task having already produced two dozen books of photographs.

“L’Egypte, which was published in 1932, is a fascinating example of the art of nation-branding. Royal patronage gave Boissonnas free rein to go where he wanted (only Tutankhamun’s mummy remained out of bounds due to stipulations from Howard Carter’s editors) . . . The book featured essays on the glory days of the pharaohs, on the Greeks, Romans and Copts, and the medieval period when Islamic culture flourished. The Ottoman Empire got a brief mention (King Fuad’s ancestor was a renegade commander who seized power from the Sultan at the beginning of the 19th century) but the British protectorate was conspicuously absent. This was soft power at its most sophisticated.” –Fleur Macdonald, “The Swiss Photographer Who Rebranded Egypt,” The Economist (November 8, 2017).

The typography for this luxury publication was by the Paris firm of Ducros et Colas and the photogravures were printed in Paris by Leblanc and Trautmann (who were also Pablo Picasso’s printers). The entire edition was printed on a special handmade paper by Van Gelder of Amsterdam and each book bound in full parchment with gold ornaments and color by Jacques Wendling.

This is Boissonnas’s portrait of Fuad I (1868-1936) King of Egypt and Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, Kordofan, and Darfur.


If you are in London over the winter holidays, you can visit the exhibition “Boissonnas in Egypt” at the Saint Catherine Foundation. We have already missed the November conference. To learn more, see: https://www.saintcatherinefoundation.org/boissonnas-in-egypt

 

See also his many other books, most in rotogravure (that is, printed with a screen, not continuous tone images).

Holiday Feasting

One hundred and ninety-three years ago, Charles Williams (active 1797-1850) etched a set of four caricatures called Feasting or Feasting Scraps ridiculing December holiday dinner parties. The set was published by S.W. Fores on December 15, 1824 but still seems timely.

In the print titled “A Pic Nic,” a family gnaws bare bones at a table covered with a ragged cloth.  Note the stand-off between the starving cat and dog. The poem reads:
On meagre fare the humble Curate’s fed;
Severe his labour—dearly earned his bread.
Tho all the duty on his shoulders fall
A paltry Thirty Pounds a Year his all.

 

“A Tuck Out” features a well-fed family attended by three liveried footmen, feasting on a sucking-pig, possibly a pheasant, and other dishes. Dorothy George was able to identify the picture on the wall as “Balthezar’s [sic] Feast”. This poem reads:
But see the bloated Vicars gaudy state,
Profusion surfiets, pamper ‘d menials wait;
Preaches Humility, his practice pride
Lived like an Infidel, and so he died.

 

At the dinner for “A Burster”, we can spot a large tureen of soup, pheasant, hare, pig, sausages, wine, and a painting of a frog looking at an ox. The poem reads:
A greasy chin the Aldermans delight
Their stomachs quite prepaid since yesternight
Anticipating, Turtle, Venison, Jellies,
To Cram, to Gorge nay e’en to burst their Bellies.

 


The final scene, “A Gorge” shows seven fox hunters (their caps are hung on the antler coatrack) drunk and partying. The two servants can barely keep up and their hounds are already falling asleep. Their poems reads:
See l’Esquire seated, at the festive board,
His Tenants squeez’d to satiate their lord,
Who squanders all in riot and excess,
His Family leaves in Want and deep distress.

**Williams also drew under the pseudonyms Argus; C. Lamb; Ansell; Tom Truelove; Timothy Squib and others. He should not to be confused with the American caricaturist William Charles.

View of the World from Nassau Street

_____________________________________________________

In his “Rally ‘Round the Cannon” column published January 19, 2010, Gregg Lange ’70 recounts how two students produced one of Princeton Alumni Weekly’s most memorable covers. Now thanks to Colleen Finnegan at the PAW, the Graphic Arts Collection acquired a copy of this homage to Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) and his iconic March 29, 1976 design for The New Yorker, known as “View of the World from 9th Avenue.” Only five years later, Rob Smiley ’80 and Jim Ryan ’82 re-imagined a “View of the World from Nassau Street,” for the pre-reunion May 4, 1981 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

 

Reproduced as a 23 x 30 inch full color poster, Smiley’s design highlights various Princeton clubs across the country along with Mount Princeton in the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains southwest of the Town of Buena Vista in Chaffee County, Colorado. The Garden Theater, Princeton Historical Society, and local pancake house are a few of the landmarks seen on Nassau Street.

 

In 2005, Steinberg’s cover design was voted no. 4 by the American Society of Magazine Editors’ list of the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years. See all 40 at: http://www.magazine.org/asme/magazine-cover-contests/asmes-top-40-magazine-covers-last-40-years

 

“La Sainte Bible” wants to have it all

James Tissot (1836-1902), La Sainte Bible (Ancien Testament) (Paris: M. de Brunoff, 1904). 2 v.: 400 illus.  “… deux états de tous les sujets horstexte, dont l’un en héliogravure … l’autre en couleur.” Rare Books: William H. Scheide Library (WHS) 199.2. Copy 374 of 560.

Late in 1882, James Tissot had a vision while praying in the church of St-Sulpice. “This prompted him to renounce formally all things secular and to devote his time to illustrating episodes drawn from Holy Scripture. In order to gather material he travelled to Palestine in 1886 and again in 1889.” (Benezit, Dictionary of Artists).

The resultant volume, The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ (commonly known as Tissot’s Bible) includes reproductions of 250 watercolors and was so successful, Tissot joined Samuel Sidney McClure to form a publishing house to market the bible exclusively.

 

James Tissot (1836-1902), The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ; three hundred and sixty-five compositions from the four Gospels (New York: McClure-Tissot Co., 1899). Firestone Oversize ND553.T52 A3 1899q

Tissot worked from 1896 to 1902 on a companion volume of Old Testament stories. Hundreds of watercolors were planned but only a few were completed before Tissot died. His assistants painted and printed most of the scenes under the direction of his French publisher Maurice de Brunhoff (1861-1937).

Two years after Tissot’s death, La Sainte Bible was published with 400 reproductions in two ostentatious volumes. The images are heavy-handed and dull, 360 of them crowded into elaborate text pages and the other 40 printed as separate full-page plates. What’s more, each plate was printed twice: once in photogravure and once in color halftone.

Twenty copies of the “Imperial Memorial Edition” sold for $5,000 and 560 others sold for much less. Discount offers began appearing, with one 1907 sale offering both volumes for $16. Jacob Schiff (1847-1920) purchased the watercolors and donated them to the New York Public Library.


 


Actor Mezzotints

The Princeton theater collection holds many 18th-century British mezzotints of actors and actresses in some of their most popular roles. Below is a portrait of Frances Kemble (1759-1822), the younger sister of Sarah Siddons, who married Shakespearean scholar Francis Twiss. It is an early proof before the engraved lettering was added.

 

John Jones (ca. 1745-1797) after Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Miss Kemble, 1784. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00395

 

 

Edward Fisher (1722-1785) after John Berridge (1740-active 1804), Miss Rose in the Character of Tom Thumb. Act II. Scene II, August 30, 1770. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00396.  Inscribed “Ha! Dogs, Arrest my Friend before my Face!… Tom Thumb shall shew his Anger by his Sword / Kills the Bailliff and his Followers…”.

Andrew Miller (active 1739-1763) after Thomas Blisse (active 1740), Mr. Turbutt in the Character of Sosia in Amphitryon, ca. 1740. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00401.

Portrait of Robert Turbutt (died 1746) as Sosia.

 

 

William Lawrenson (active 1765-1780), Mr. Smith in the Character of Iachimo, in Cymbaline. Act II. Scene III, November 10, 1772. Mezzotint. 1st state. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00400.

Portrait of William Smith (1730-1819) playing the role of Iachimo in Cymbaline by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

 

 

Giuseppe Marchi (ca.1735-1808) after Johan Joseph Zoffany (1733-1810), Mr. Moody in the Character of Foiguard, ca. 1769-1771. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00399.

This is a portrait of John Moody (born John Cochran, 1727-1812) as the Irish priest Foigard in George Farquhar’s The Beaux Stratagem.

Princeton Party at Twin Lakes, 1877

Detail: Francis Speir Jr., and William Berryman Scott second row left

 

William Berryman Scott (1858-1947) was 15 years old when he passed the oral entrance examination to enter Princeton as a member of the Class of 1877. “It was at Princeton that Scott began a life-long friendship with Henry Fairfield Osborn and Francis Speir; the 3 were inseparable and were given the nickname “The Triumvirate” by their classmates. In their junior year, they were inspired by a Harper’s Magazine article describing O.C. Marsh’s Yale College Scientific Expeditions and decided to undertake their own expedition to the West in search of fossil vertebrates. Planning continued throughout their senior year, and in the summer of 1877 the first Princeton Scientific Expedition set out for Colorado and Wyoming.” — Peabody Museum of Natural History


“In 1876 the Nassau Scientific Association was formed. It was organized by members of the class of ’77, and was An Association to undertake the work of Western Exploration. Under the leadership of Professors Brackett and Karge the first party started in the early part of the summer of 1877. The party was divided into two sections, the geologists, botanists and mineralogists working in Colorado, while the palaeontologists and typographers worked in Utah and Wyoming.” —Alumni Princetonian 1, No. 32 (20 March 1895)

“The University Library has recently received from Miss E. Leßaron Schanck, of Princeton, daughter of the late Professor Schanck, a full set of fifty large photographs of the Princeton Scientific Expedition to Colorado, in 1877. The expedition was composed of twenty members and was led by Professor C. F. Brackett and the late Professor Karge, whose military experience in the west was of great service.”–Daily Princetonian 26, No. 120 (11 November 1901)

The Players

In May 1888, Edwin Booth (1833-1893) paid $75,000 to purchase a townhouse at 16 Gramercy Park South to give The Players Club a permanent home in New York City. According to Club history, the name, The Players, was suggested by author and friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich, after one of the lines from Jacques’ speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Booth with fifteen colleagues and friends were the incorporators of The Players.

On January 28, 1903, Richard Hoe Lawrence (1858-1936) arranged a dinner at the Club for the ten members of the Society of Iconophiles and commissioned an engraving by Joseph Winfred Spenceley (1865-1908) to mark the occasion. Spenceley’s work goes unrecorded within the sets of Society’s member prints and may not have been editioned in time. Lawrence’s copy, with correspondence between the two men, is held in the Graphic Arts Collection.



Society of Iconophiles. History of the Society of Iconophiles of the City of New York: MDCCCXCV: MCMXXX, and catalogue of its publications, with historical and biographical notes, etc. Compiled under the direction of Richard Hoe Lawrence, president, assisted by Harris D. Colt and I.N. Phelps Stokes (New York, 1930). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2010-0138Q

Society of Iconophiles. Catalogue of the engravings issued by the Society of Iconophiles of the city of New York, MDCCCXCIV – MCMVIII / Compiled by Richard Hoe Lawrence with an introduction by William Loring Andrews (New York: The Society, 1908). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2009-0518Q

Cadet Theatricals

Boston’s 1st Corps of Cadets, also known as the Company of Gentlemen Cadets, was chartered in 1741 (history: http://www.afcc1741.org/). In the 1890s, William Gibbons Preston (1842-1910) was commissioned to build them an armory at the corner of Arlington Street and Columbus Avenue, financed through the Cadet Theatricals, musical performances with all-male casts.

The 1897 production at the Tremont Theater was called Simple Simon, with a score by George Lowell Tracy (1855-1921) and Alfred Baldwin Sloane (1872-1926). The Boston Globe noted on January 19, 1897 that high premiums were paid for tickets.

“Society itself . . . was out in force at the Tremont theater yesterday afternoon at 1.30, when the auction sale of seats for “Simple Simon,” this year’s Cadet theatricals, opened for the first two performances . . . . There were fully 300 people in attendance, including many of the best-known professional and business men of Boston, together with a goodly sprinkling of the cadets themselves, a dozen or more speculators and quite a number of “proxies.” …The sale lasted from 1.30 o’clock to 5, when, according to the figures of manager Seymour and his associates, a total of nearly $4000 was represented for the opening night alone.”

 

This photograph was taken by Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins (1847-1922), a member of the Boston Yacht Club and author of several books on sailing, including American and English Yachts. Illustrated by the photogravure process, plates from the Press of Lithotype Printing and Publishing Company, Gardner, Mass. (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1887).

“Norman White, who had been active in the Pi Eta shows while at Harvard, played the lead role, making his entrance on a bicycle in a costume so loud that the orchestra cannot be heard when he has it on, and so bright that the electric lights can be turned off and no one notice it.”– Anne Alison Barnet, Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theatre (2004).

 

Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins (1847-1922), Simple Simon, 1897. Gelatin silver print. GA 2013.00503.Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

 

Testament

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired copy 42 of Testament, with text by Colm Tóibín and images by Rachel Whiteread, one of a limited edition of 75 published by Galleria Lorcan O’Neill in Rome. They note: “Testament is the only printed reproduction of Tóibín’s original one-woman play written for Marie Mullen and the 2011 Dublin Theatre Festival. The book’s ten unique photographs by Whiteread were made by the artist expressly for this project.”

 

Writing for The New York Times 11/2012, Mary Gordon called Tóibín’s play “a beautiful and daring work. Originally performed as a one-woman show in Dublin, it takes its power from the surprises of its language, its almost shocking characterization, its austere refusal of consolation. The source of this mother’s grief is as much the nature of humankind as the cruel fate of her own son. Her prayers are directed not to Yahweh but to Artemis, Greek not Jewish, chaste goddess of the hunt and of fertility, but no one’s mother. Mary’s final word on her son’s life and death is the bleak declaration: ‘It was not worth it.’”

 

 

 

From 2009 to 2011 Tóibín taught at Princeton University as the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Visiting Lecturer in English and Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Chancellor of Liverpool University.

Rachel Whiteread: see Tate review

Colm Tóibín and Rachel Whiteread, Testament (Rome: Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, 2015). 45 pages, including 10 leaves of plates. Plates printed on double leaves. The accompanying untitled print (“an edition for Testament“), dated 2014, has been signed and numbered in pencil by Rachel Whiteread and inserted into printed folded leaf. “Designed by Peter Willberg, London; photography by Mike Bruce, London; coordinated by Laura Chiari, Susanna Greeves and Lorcan O’Neill. Images printed by Pureprint, Uckfield; binding and letterpress printing by BookWorks, London; set in Plan Grotesque and printed on Naturalis Absolute Matt”–Colophon. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

 

 

Photogravure of Monotype

Houses on Battery Park, 1905.

Monotypes are almost never seen in books since each individual print is unique, painted and printed directly from one wet plate. A way of getting around that is to take a photograph of the monotype and transfer it to another copperplate, which is etched and printed as a photogravure. This is what Charles Mielatz chose to do when the Society of Iconophiles requested a series of downtown Manhattan buildings for their October 1908 portfolio.

St. John’s Chapel, Varick Street, 1904.

Richard H. Lawrence, Iconophiles treasurer wrote to subscribers:

“Our process of reproduction of the monotypes is the photogravure process, but we have made plates for each separate color, some of the subjects requiring five plates, and then printed by the superimposed method. The difficulty of getting a perfect register by this method (we are obliged to wet the paper before each printing) has been so great as to make it almost impossible heretofore even with two plates, but we have succeeded with five plates and the plate mark, which really makes six separate printings for some of the subjects.

Color printing from photogravures is usually done from one plate, and the printer fills in the color on the plate, using colored inks, and then pulling one impression. But prints generally require retouching with water color, and are not, strictly speaking, entire prints, as is the work we have done for you. It seemed to us that this method would make the most perfect reproductions of your subjects, and enable us to use paper similar in character to that used in your monotypes, and we are happy to say we have met with success.”

Oyster market on West Street, 1903.

Van Cortland Manor House, 1901.

 

 

Society of Iconophiles, Picturesque New York: twelve photogravures from monotypes by C.F.W. Mielatz (New York: Society of Iconophiles, 1908). “Edition limited to one hundred sets. Published in October, 1908.” Graphic Arts RECAP-91157352