Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Paul Dujardin (1843-1913)

Princeton University students and researchers are fortunate to have Bernard Picart’s celebrated engravings for the nine-volume set, Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, published between 1728 and 1739, freely available for study and pleasure (Ex Oversize 5017.247.11F).

Not everyone is so lucky and so in 1884, the French publisher Alfred Durlacher commissioned Paul Dujardin (1843-1913), one of the leading photomechanical printers in Paris, to make facsimile reprints of sixteen Picart engraving and released the limited edition portfolio as Scènes de la vie juive or Scenes of Jewish Life.

Dujardin used his own secret variation of heliogravure (French for photogravure) to transfer each paper print to a new copper printing plate, which was then etched and printed. Usually we think of photogravure with rich, continuous tone images and so, it is surprising to see how often it was used to reproduce line engravings.

The plates depict the life of the Portuguese and Spanish Jewish community in Amsterdam during Picart’s lifetime. The subjects are listed as: 1, Cérémonie du Schofar; 2. Office de Yom-Kippour; 3. Fête de Souccoth; 4. Procession des Palmes; 5. Office de Simhat Torah; 6. On reconduit le hatan-torah et le hatan-bereschit; 7. La recherche du levain; 8. Le Séder; 9. Cérémonie nuptiale, rite allemand; 10. Cérémonie nuptiale; 11. La circoncision; 12. Le rachat du premier né; 13. Les Iltkafoth autour du cercueil; 14. La dernière pelletée de terre; 15. Exposition de la loi; 16. Bénédiction des Cohanim.


Bernard Picart (1673-1733). Scènes de la vie juive. Dessinés d’après nature par Bernard Picart, 1663 [i.e. 1673]-1733 [Scenes of Jewish Life Drawn from Nature, by Bernard Picart, 1673-1733] (Paris: A. Durlacher, 1884). 1 portfolio ([16] plates). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0013E.

A Collection of Grimaces

No 38. L’Enfance no 2 [Childhood, no. 2].

Like many international print collections, Graphic Arts held a couple satirical prints after the French painter Louis-Léopold Boilly, acquired here and there over the years. One was even used at the top of this blog for a while. We have now acquired the original complete bound set of Boilly’s lithographs known as A Collection of Grimaces, including a title page and 95 prints published between 1823 and 1828.

In the Infinite Jest exhibition catalogue, Nadine Orenstein wrote:

“Long active as a genre painter and portraitist, late in his career Boilly began a series entitled Recueil de Grimaces that comprised ninety-six lithographs showing tight clusters of heads set against blank back-grounds. The first few prints were mainly studies of expression, but he soon extended the images into representations of social types ranging from beggars to art connoisseurs. These extremely successful social satires served as important sources for caricaturists of the following decades, including Honoré Daumier.” —Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine (2011)

Here are a few samples:
No 39. Les Moustaches no 2 [The Whiskers, no. 2].

No 43. La Sortie d’une maison de jeu [Leaving a Gambling House].

No 84. Les Bossus [The Hunchbacks].

No 82. Les Nez longs [The Long Noses].

No 81. Les Nez ronds [The Round Noses].

No 73. Les Chantres [The Singers].

No 65. Les Cornes [The Horns].

No 61. Les Aveugles [The Blind].

No 49. Les Petits ramoneurs [The Little Chimney Sweeps].

 

Louis Léopold Boilly (1761–1845), Recueil de grimaces [Collection of Grimaces] (Paris: Chez Delpech, Quai Voltaire no. 23, [1823-1828]). 95 lithographs with gouache highlights. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process. Printed and published at the shop of François-Séraphin Delpech (1778-1825).

See also: https://www.princeton.edu/~graphicarts/2007/11/the_print_shop_of_f_delpech.html

Africa in photogravure

Sir Alfred Edward Pease (1857-1939), Travel and Sport in Africa (London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1902). Rare Books Off-Site Storage DT12 .P35 1902q

Princeton owns a beautiful three-volume set of Pease’s illustrated journals titled Travel and Adventure in Africa, with his personal photographs along with some by the French photographer Emile Frechon (1848-1921), the English aristocrat Sir Edmund Giles Loder, 2nd Baronet (1849-1920), and the environmentalist Edward North Buxton (1840-1924). Arthur Humphreys arranged to have several dozen printed in photogravure, providing a spectacular record of Somaliland in particular, along with other African locations. The group shown above is only a small selection. Surprisingly few document of killing of animals and focus instead on the people he and his wife met along the way.

“Pease was adventurous,” wrote his editor Peter Hathaway Capstick. “Between 1891 and 1912, he visited Asia Minor, Algeria, Tunisia and the Sahara, Somaliland, Abyssinia, Kenya, and Uganda, hunting wherever he could. He was Resident Magistrate of the Transvaal in Komatipoort, next to present-day Mozambique, from 1903 to 1905, and he worked in the Allied Remount service from 1914 to 1918. A keen explorer and hunter, Sir Alfred also sketched. He went on to write thirteen books embracing subjects as varied as wildlife, a dictionary on the North Riding dialect, and oases in Algeria!”—Editor’s note, The Book of the Lion (1911).

Pease’s epigram on the title page comes from the Latin:

Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis
Arbor a stiva recreatur aura,
Quod latus mundi nebulae, malusque
Jupiter urget.
Pone, sub curru minium propinqui
Solis in terra dominibus negata;
Dulce rideutem. Lalagen amabo,
Dulce loquentem.

Place me where never summer breeze
Unbinds the glebe, or warms the trees;
Whereever lowering clouds appear,
And angry Jove deforms th’ inclement year.
Place me beneath the burning ray,
Where rolls the rapid car of day;
Love and the nymph shall charm my toils,
The nymph who sweetly speaks, and
sweetly smiles.

Façade

Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Façade: Twelve original serigraphs in Homage to Edith Sitwell (New York: Abrams; in collaboration with the Pace Gallery, [1966]). Copy 36 of 150. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2008-0019E

Only one serigraph from Louise Nevelson’s portfolio, Façade, Twelve Original Serigraphs in Homage to Edith Sitwell, can be found in the Graphic Arts Collection. It’s called “The Drum” after the Sitwell poem it accompanies. Arne Glimcher financed the elephant folio and arranged for Nevelson to work at Chiron Press with master printer Steve Poleskie and his studio assistant Brice Marden.

“Nevelson was enthusiastic about making the silkscreen prints,” writes Laurie Wilson, “and showed up daily for several months in the winter of 1965-66, producing Façade. Poleskie remembered Nevelson as being ‘easy to work with and very calm, almost mellow.’ He said that though she didn’t talk about Edith Sitwell, whose poetry and person had ostensibly been the inspiration for the prints, ‘she dressed like Sitwell in big hats and a fur coat. She talked a lot with her lyrical voice and seemed to enjoy herself working on the prints.’”

“Nevelson’s modus operandi at Chiron may have started out like other artists, using silkscreen to quickly produce multiple images that would sell quickly [but] after reproducing the silk screens of five photographs from her 1964 show . . . she felt they looked too flat and began to cut them up and collage the parts together into new images. She and Poleskie [seen above] experimented until they figured out how to construct the collaged images on acetate, and then they photographed the result into what would be the final screen from which the twelve different original prints for the portfolio would be made.” —Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow (2016).

 

 

 

Jerusalem through the Stereoscope

Wretched Lepers Outside of Jerusalem.

 

The Jews’ Wailing place, Wall of Solomon’s Temple, Jerusalem.

Jerusalem through the Stereoscope (New York: Underwood & Underwood, 1896-1908). 81 albumen silver prints with descriptions in six languages on the verso.

The Graphic Arts Collection has added this group of stereos to our already substantial stereo holdings. These photographs show locations in Jerusalem including the Jaffa Gate, the Valley of Kedron and village of Siloam, the pool of Siloam, the Tombs of the Prophets, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Russian Church of the Magdalene, the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, the Garden Tomb (Golgatha), the interior of the Dome of the Rock, and the minbar in the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Masjid al-Aqṣá), among others.

 

A Greek Priest Blessing the Village Children in Ramah, Palestine [below]

The Beautiful Church of the Armenian Christians, Jerusalem [above]

 

Jerusalem Through the Stereoscope is one part of the series Traveling in the Holy Land sold by Underwood and Underwood. Instructions to canvassers selling the sets insist that workers read the book by Dr. Hurlbut that accompanied the series:

“And this year every agent should possess and study carefully our new book, Traveling in the Holy Land, Through the Stereoscope, by Jesse L. Hurlbut, D.D., which accompanies our new tour of 100 stereographs of Palestine. The attitude which Dr. Hurlbut takes to stereoscopic photographs in this book is of great importance to the work of education in general, and especially of immediate importance to ail our men in their work.

In a word, Dr. Hurlbut holds that the representations of places and objects furnished in the stereoscope are not only life-size–as large as the places or objects would appear on the spot–but that these representations serve, when used aright, as the very places and objects themselves, in their power to teach and affect us. In this book, therefore, Dr. Hurlbut treats the stereographs as actual places.

This is the attitude which every agent should come to have toward stereoscopic photographs, not an attitude assumed just for the purpose of selling more, but an attitude conscientiously arrived at after seeing good reasons for it. Dr. Hurlbut gives some of the reasons for his position in the Introduction to his book. This Introduction should be carried by every agent, read and pondered over a great deal. Its conclusions apply to our stereographs of all countries, not Palestine alone.

. . . Let us consider some of the mistakes men are liable to make: Stereoscopic photographs are especially striking and attractive at the first glance, and can be, to a degree, quickly and easily appreciated by any one. Consequently, agents have found that, because of these qualities alone, stereoscopic views can be sold more easily and extensively than any other article. Therefore, many agents have never found it necessary to make any effort to see whether there are higher considerations which can be made use of in selling stereoscopic views. This has been a great mistake.

These men have depended upon the weaker, less important considerations. the striking, amusing, entertaining qualities, etc., to lead people to buy. The most important considerations have in general, not been made use of. The result is that, although the sales have been enormous, still the possibilities of the sale of stereoscopic views have never yet begun to be realized. This must continue to be the case while most agents and people do not appreciate their higher value, nor even know how to use them to get the most from them.”

Rubáiyát


Over 100 editions of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) are listed in the Princeton University Library catalogue. Many have special bindings and illustrations. One of the most unusual was published in September 1905 by Dodge Publishing Company with illustrations by the California photographer Adelaide Hanscom (later Leeson, 1876-1932).

In 1903, Hanscom gathered writers and artists to her San Francisco studio and like Julia Margaret Cameron, dressed and posed them in exotic scenes for her book’s illustrations. Joaquin Miller (the pen name of Cincinnatus Heine Miller, 1837-1913), George Sterling (1869-1926) and George Wharton James (1858-1923) are thanked individually. Charles Augustus Keeler (1871-1937) was not, nor were any of the female models.

Hanscom not only took the photographs but also drew the borders. This edition was first announced in the column “Books and Authors” in the New-York Tribune on August 26, 1905:

Omar Khayyam. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated into English verse by Edward FitzGerald; with illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom (New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1905). “… my gratitude to Joaquin Miller, George Sterling, George W. James, and others who have rendered valuable assistance in posing for these illustrations …” Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2003-1063N

 

 
Joaquin Miller

 

 

 

 

George Wharton James

 

 

 

George Sterling

 

 

 
See also
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Sonnets from the Portuguese with photographic illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (New York: Dodge Pub. Co., [1916?]). Marquand Library (SAPH): PR4189 .A1 1916

Adelaide Hanscom Leeson (1876-1932), Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, Pictorialist Photographer, 1876-1932 (Carbondale, Ill.: University Museum, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1981).Marquand Library (SAPH) TR647 .L415 1981

Laughter for the Languid


With the morning mail came a question about volume 3 of a reissue (c. 1830) by S. W. Fores of Pigmy Revels (originally published in 1800-1801) under a new title: The Lilliputian Museum, or, Panoramic Representation of Pigmy Revels: Calculated to Create Joy for the Juvenile, Laughter for the Languid, Fun for the Feeble, Sauce for the Serious, and Mirth for the Melancholy: Containing Wit without Indecency, Humour without Vulgarity, Mirth without Malice, and Satire without Personality.

Does our copy (Rowlandson 1800.4) have extraneous material included? At approximately 20 feet in length, with many sections separated and/or re-taped together, it is difficult to tell but this section of two plates (below) does seem to stand along. What do you think?

Glyptogravure of the Naver Ceremony

Above: Shapoor N Bhedwar, The Naver Ceremony. The First Ablution. Glyptogravure by Waterlow & Sons Limited. Frontispiece to The Photogram, 1, no.4 (April 1894).

 

Catharine Weed Barnes Ward (1851-1913) and her husband Henry Snowden Ward (1865-1911) founded the monthly magazine, The Photogram in 1894 with the ambitious plan to include a photograph or photomechanical print tipped into each issue. The variety and quality of prints mailed to subscribers that first year is surprising.

The April supplement in particular offers a glyptogravure (meaning engraved on stone, elsewhere called woodbury-gravure) from the postage stamp and certificate engravers Waterlow & Sons.

More on the photographer Shapoor Bhedwar can be found here: http://www.photo-web.com.au/gael/docs/Shapoor-Bhedwar.htm and more on the Naver Ceremony related to the consecration of a priest into the Parsi (Parsee, i.e. Zoroastrian) priesthood can be found here: https://www.zoroastrian.org/articles/The%20Iranian%20and%20Parsi%20Priests.htm

An obituary for Catherine Weed Ward was published in American Photography, 7 (1913), which reads in part:

The brief announcement in our September number of the death of Mrs. H. Snowden Ward, formerly Catherine Weed Barnes, on July 31 at her English home, Golden Green, Hadlow, Kent, England, will, we are sure, be received with regret and sorrow by her numerous American friends, occurring as it did about eighteen months after her husband’s death here in December, 1911.

It was between 1887 and 1888 that Mrs. Ward began the practice of photography. With the aid and advice of a professional photographer at her Albany, N. Y., home, she fitted up there a studio and darkroom facilities for photographic work. She was interested in the Historical Society at Albany, and made many photographs of historical places, buildings, and articles in and about the city. She soon acquired the technique of negative making and became a proficient photographer. Shortly after this she became one of the first women members of the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York, and contributed prints and slides to its exhibitions.

About 1890 for two or three years she was an associate editor with our Mr. Beach, and also at one time with Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, of this magazine, then known as the American Amateur Photographer. In the summer of 1893 she was married to Mr. H. Snowden Ward in Rochester, N. Y., at which time he was editor of an English monthly magazine called the Practical Photographer, published in London. Mrs. Ward then made her home in England, and continued her photographic work there with the same zeal and interest as here. The publication of a new monthly photographic magazine was begun in 1894, called The Photogram, which Mr. Ward edited, assisted by Mrs. Ward in a literary and pictorial way, supplemented by the publication of an annual book entitled “Photograms,” containing superior halftone illustrations of the best work that had been exhibited during the previous year.

With apologies for my camera, here are some of the other prints included in The Photograms of 1894.
Harold Baker (negative), printed by J. Martin & Company on Paget Matt Surface Print Out Paper, An Artist. The Photogram 1, no. 9 (September 1894).

 

The Eastman Company (positive) after W.J. Byrne (negative), A Portrait. Nikko Bromide paper print. The Photogram 1, no.3 (March 1894).

 

Thomas Fall, My Friends. Woodburytype. The Photogram 1, no.2 (February 1984).

 

Erwin Raupp, [Portrait of a Lady], printed on Three Star Brilliant Albumen paper. Albumen silver print. The Photogram 1, no. 6 (June 1894).

 

The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company, Specimen print on Scholzig’s “Otto” paper. Otto silver print. The Photogram 1, no. 7 (July 1894).

 

Thank you to David Magier, Associate University Librarian for Collection Development, for explaining the Parsi consecration ceremony.

The Photogram (London, 1894-1903). RECAP 4597.7171

 

In case you missed the opening of the Graphikportal

In case you didn’t see the dozens of announcements this weekend about the unveiling of the Graphikportal, https://www.graphikportal.org/, here’s the YouTube introduction in English. The site is currently only in German but we are told there will eventually be an English language option.

The working group for the Graphic Arts Networks joined forces in March 2011 at the conference “Kupferstichkabinett online” in Wolfenbüttel. Its members include around 70 print collections from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and the Netherlands (museums, libraries, archives, etc.). The aim is to agree on common digitization standards and to develop strategies for the further digital networking of graphic collections.

“250,000 works of art are now available online, including works from major museums, libraries and research institutions, such as the Kupferstichkabinette of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Prussian Cultural Heritage, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden or the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Also included are the Albertina and the MAK-Bibliothek and Kunstblättersammlung in Vienna, the prints collections of the ETH Zurich and the Zentralbibliothek Zürich or the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome. Last but not least, the holdings of the Virtual Print Room, a cooperation of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum Braunschweig and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, will be integrated.”

All institutions are members of the international working group “Graphik vernetzt.” You can follow their progress on twitter:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Graphikportal?src=hash

Isabella Piccini and Angela Baroni, 18th-century engravers

Detail “Suor Isabella Piccini Sculpi”

Detail “Angela Baroni Scrisse Ve.a”

From: Bernardo Lodoli, Serenissimo Venetiarum Dominio ill[ustrissi]mo, et ecc[ellentissi]mo Arsenatus regimini Bernardi Lodoli … fidele votvm … ([Venetiis], [1703]). 12 leaves. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process. Thanks to Gail Smith, Senior Bibliographic Specialist. Rare Books Cataloging Team, who worked out the description of this item.

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a rare all-engraved publication by two eighteenth-century female printmakers, Sister Isabella Piccini (1644-1734) and Angela Baroni (active 1700s), with text by Bernardo Lodoli.

The bound compilation announces and endorses a forthcoming work, including its printed index and engraved title page.: Il cvore veneto legale formato dalla compilatione delle leggi … et altre cose notabili stabilite nel corso di cinque secoli per la buona a[m]ministratione … dell Arsenale di Venetia … Opera dal dottor Bernardo Lodoli … [Venezia] 1703. There are three full-page engravings and engraved title page by Piccini and “Cvore” title page; along with four leaves of text (one illustrated) engraved by Baroni.

For more information see: Morazzoni: Libro illustrato veneziano del settecento, Graphic Arts reference (GARF) Oversize Z1023 .M85 1943q, p.239.

Detail

Thanks to Eric White’s Bridwell Library exhibition “Fifty Women,” we now know “that Elisabetta Piccini (1644–1734) was the daughter of the Venetian engraver Giacomo Piccini (d. 1669), who trained her in the art of drawing and engraving in the styles of the great masters, particularly Titian and Peter Paul Rubens.

In 1666 she entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice and took the name Suor (Sister) Isabella. She continued to work as an engraver, accepting numerous commissions from Venetian publishers to illustrate liturgical books, biographies of saints, and prayer manuals. However, as a Franciscan nun dedicated to a life of poverty, she divided her earnings between her convent and her family living in Venice. Her long and productive career ended with her death at the age of ninety.”

For more, see the entry in the Enciclopedia delle donne: http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it/biografie/elisabetta-piccini/

In this work, Piccini was partnered with Angela Baroni (active 1700s), who specialized in calligraphic engraving.

Detail

 

Detail

Piccini’s work can also be seen in: Missale Romanum : ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V. Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII. & Urbani VIII. Auctoritate recognitum ; in quo missæe novissimæ Sanctorum accuratè sunt dispositæ (Venetiis: ex Typographia Balleoniana, 1727). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2012-0009F

Carlo Labia, Dell’imprese pastorali (Venetia: Appresso Nicolò Pezzana, 1685). Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N7710 .L12q

Carlo Labia, Simboli predicabili estratti da sacri evangeli che corrono nella quadragesima, delineaticon morali, & eruditi discorsi da Carlo Labia….(Ferrara: Appresso B. Barbieri, 1692).Rare Books (Ex) Oversize N7710 .L122q