Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Memorials of the Old College of Glasgow

Thomas Annan and others. Memorials of the Old College of Glasgow (Glasgow: Thomas Annan, Photographer, 202 Hope Street. James Maclehose, Publisher and Bookseller to the University, 61 St. Vincent Street. MDCCCLXXI [1871]). 41 albumen silver prints. Graphic Arts Collection 2016- in process

“On July 28, 1870, the Senate of the University of Glasgow met for the last time in the Old College Buildings to confer degrees to outgoing students. The following year the ceremony was moved to the New Buildings.

Annan conceived the present volume as a both a memorial to the 450-year history of the university and as a record of the ‘venerable structure before it underwent any change’. Consequently he here presents fifteen interior and external views of the buildings with various aspects of the Inner and Outer Courts, the Professor’s Court and the Hunterian Museum.

Three professors, Dr. Weir, Professor Veitch and Professor Cowan, agreed to contribute texts in which they record the history and work of the individual faculties. To their notes Annan added twenty-six portrait photographs of members of the Senate at the time of its removal to the New Buildings.”

This is the eleventh album of photographs by Annan acquired by Princeton University Library, in an attempt to document this man’s work in its entirety. Whether in portraiture, landscape, or architectural photography, Annan remains one of the most accomplished artists of his time.

New Henry Martin Scrapbooks

To help us through the end of a sad week, here are some cartoons from the recently aquired scrapbooks of Henry Martin, Princeton University Class of 1948. Although Martin’s work for the New Yorker magazine is best remembered, these albums document his published work for the Harvard Business Review, Parade, Good Housekeeping, Audubon, Writers Digest, Better Homes and Gardens, National Law Review, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Applause, Rotarian, and many other journals.

The Inaugural Gillett G. Griffin Memorial Lecture

Please save the date for the Inaugural Gillett G. Griffin Memorial Lecture:

The London Circle: Early Explorations of Photography

delivered by
Sara Stevenson

on Sunday, 2 April 2017 at 3:00 p.m. in The Friends Center, Princeton University
corner of William Street and Olden Street, Princeton, New Jersey

Dr. Sara Stevenson was chief curator at the National Galleries of Scotland for thirty-six years and responsible for building and developing the Scottish National Photography Collection. She is the author of numerous books and catalogues, the most recent written together with Alison Morrison-Low is Scottish Photography: The First Thirty Years (2015).

The focus of Dr. Stevenson’s talk will be the Richard Willats album of early paper photography purchased by Gillett G. Griffin for the Graphic Arts Collection, Rare Books and Special Collection, Princeton University. Additional information forthcoming.

This lecture series is held in honor of Gillett Good Griffin (1928-2016).

“Born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 22, 1928, Griffin grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. While attending Deerfield Academy, he developed an interest in and began to collect New England children’s books printed before 1846. In 1951, the same year he graduated from Yale, he wrote, illustrated, and printed A Mouse’s Tale, which was nominated one of the Fifty Books of the Year for its design by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Griffin came to Princeton in 1952 as curator of graphic arts in the Princeton University Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections division, a position he held until 1966. In 1957 he took a leave of absence to design books for Princeton University Press and write articles on the history of printmaking and related graphic themes.” -Jamie Saxon, Arts and Humanities Writer. For the complete obituary see: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/story/gillett-griffin-collector-curator-and-scholar-dies-87

Don’t miss it

All photography seen here was reproduced from the Richard Willats album, permanent link: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/k930bx11x

Les Fantasies

Joseph Alexander Pecsenke (1942-1989), ‘Les Fantasies’, Vita et, Historia del Commedia dell’Arte (New York: n.p., 1981). 10 etchings printed in different colored inks on various colored papers. Graphic Arts collection GC097.

A reference question came to the department recently concerning the Hungarian/American artist Joe A. Pecsenke. As an actor, director, painter, printmaker, musician, and graphic designer, Pecsenke is particularly difficult to search because he worked under many different names in so many different mediums. Some work is listed as Joe A. Pecsenke, some under Giuseppe Pecsenke, Joseph Pecsenke, József Pecsenke, and other variations.

Born in Hungary, Pecsenke graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1967 and worked as a book illustrator, poster designer, and muralist while also acting in several motion pictures. Here are a few sources for additional information. http://budapestposter.com/artists/pecsenke-jozsef ; http://opa.uchc.edu/Artists/Joe%20A.%20Pecsenke.pdf ; http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0669811/

In 1974, Pecsenke moved to New York City where his work continued to merge visual arts with theater and music.

He wrote, “My first creative activity took place when I was eight years old. I painted stripes on a pushcart at the market and also made a sketch on a sheet from my school notebook of the pushcart owner bear-like face. That same year I became an apprentice in the studio of a painter. During the following two decades I had many teachers, still I consider this first one as my real master. His name was Jules Hornyánszky. He taught me how matter, form, light and color compose . . . In the Spring of 1974, Midnight Cowboy starring John Voight was shown in a small German movie house. Four weeks later I was on my way to New York with eighteen dollars in my satchel, one hundred photos of my work, and the obligatory toothbrush.”

Marx Memorial Library

In 1934 Viscount Hastings, who studied under Diego Rivera, executed a large fresco for the Marx Memorial Library’s first-floor reading room. A number of influential figures within the history of British labor are depicted in this painting, entitled The Worker of the Future Clearing Away the Chaos of Capitalism.

Here are a few more of the many graphic arts that decorate the walls of the library, along with a little of their history.

A Welsh Charity school was built on the site of Marx House in 1738. It educated boys and later a few girls, the children of Welsh artisans living in poverty in Clerkenwell. Gradually the intake became too large and the school moved to new premises in 1772. After this the building was divided into separate workshops one of which became the home to the London Patriotic Society from 1872 until 1892.

The Twentieth Century Press occupied what had by then been labelled as 37a and 38, and expanded into 37 by 1909 – thereby returning the site to single occupancy for the first time since its days as a charity school. The Twentieth Century Press was founded by the Social Democratic Federation as printer for its journal Justice and was the first socialist Press in Clerkenwell. An early benefactor was William Morris, who guaranteed the rent of the Patriotic Club to the Twentieth Century Press. During its time in Clerkenwell Green, the Twentieth Century Press produced several of the earliest English editions of the works of Marx and Engels. The Twentieth Century Press remained at the building until 1922.

Lenin was exiled in London and worked in the building from April 1902 to May 1903. During this period he shared the office of Harry Quelch, the director of the Twentieth Century Press, from there he edited and printed the journal ISKRA (The Spark), which was smuggled into Russia. The office is still preserved and open to visitors.

In 1933, the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, a delegate meeting comprising trade unionists, veteran socialists belonging to the Labour Party and Communist Party, and representatives of the Labour Research Department and Martin Lawrence Publishers Ltd., considered setting up a Permanent memorial to him. That year also saw the Nazis in Germany burning books. In these circumstances the meeting resolved that the most appropriate memorial would be a Library. Thus the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School (as it was then known) was established at 37a Clerkenwell Green that year. Study classes, held in the evenings, became the distinguishing feature of the Workers’ School, which was divided into faculties of science, history and political economy.

Note that William Morris was one of the comrades present at this 1890 meeting.

See also How I Became a Socialist. A series of biographical sketches (London: Twentieth Century Press, [no date]). I. H.M. Hyndman. II. E. Belfort Bax. III. William Morris. IV. Walter Crane. V. J. Hunter Watts. VI. John E. Williams. VII. Andreas Scheu. VIII. H.W. Lee. IX. James Macdonald. X. R. Blatchford. XI H. Quelch. XII. Tom Mann. Firestone RECAP HX241.H83

Sorting Through the “Miseries of Human Life”

Beginning in 1928 and continuing until his death, Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895, donated prints, books, and drawings by the artist Thomas Rowlandson to the Princeton University Library. Included was a small volume of drawings, previously unpublished and later described by Joseph Rothrock in the Princeton University Library Chronicle 36, no. 2 (winter 1975): 87-110: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/pulc/pulc_v_36_n_2.pdf.

The British Museum’s prints and drawings collection has a similar volume of Rowlandson sketches. Neither group repeats the same scenes but similar characters appear in both, such as this fierce alligator (Princeton above and British Museum below).

Of particular interest in both groups are sketches related to Rowlandson’s series after James Beresford’s Miseries of Human Life.

[above, a sketch in the British Museum for one version of the Miseries of London]

First published in 1806, the book was so popular that several dozen editions followed. While the first books only had one frontispiece plate, later editions added more. Several artists designed and published small volumes of prints after Beresford’s text, Thomas Rowlandson and John Augustus Atkinson in particular.

This has led to trouble cataloguing the prints, with many different scenes and different artists using the same titles.These two, for instance, both illustrate the Miseries of Reading and Writing (Rowlandson above and Atkinson below).

See: The Miseries of Human Life; or the Groans of Samuel Sensitive, and Timothy Testy; with a few supplementary sighs from Mrs Testy. In twelve dialogues. As overheard by James Beresford, A.M. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford (London: Printed for W. Miller, Albemarle-Street, by W. Bulmer and Co. Cleveland-Row, 1806). Graphic Arts Collection Rowlandson 1806.31.11

dscn7685-2

John Augustus Atkinson (1775-1833), Sixteen Scenes Taken from The Miseries of Human Life. By one of the wretched (London: Wm. Miller, 1807). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Rowlandson 1806.32

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), Miseries of Human Life; designed and etched by T. Rowlandson (London: R. Ackermann, 1808). A collection of plates issued singly in 1806, 1807 and 1808. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Rowlandson 1806.33

Comparing Broadsides

Only two copies of this enormous broadside can be found today in public collections around the world. One is at Princeton University [above]. Although it is not dated, I believe it was printed in the spring of 1867, two and a half years after the Morant Bay rebellion on the island of Jamaica.

The printer of the sheet was Edward Cornelius Osborne, who opened a Birmingham book and print shop in 1831. Osborne was also a strong supporter of the anti-slavery society and a member of the Jamaica Committee (pro-Gordon and anti-Eyre).

Why he printed such a large broadside, so long after the rebellion, is the subject of a paper at “Printers Unite!” this week at the Marx Memorial Library. For more information, see: http://www.marx-memorial-library.org/index.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/event/info&Itemid=216&reset=1&id=101

This is one half of the enormous Rare Book reading room at the British Library on Euston Road. It is only one of many such spaces of equally impressive size at the main branch of the Library.

This is where I found the other copy of Osborne’s Jamaica broadside, so large it had to be printed in two sheets. So large it required the desk space usually allotted to three separate readers. Our sincere thanks to the entire staff of the rare book division, who all helped in the pursuit and retrieval of this item today.

Thanks also to Linda Oliveira and AnnaLee Pauls [at the top] for their help photographing the broadside.

The March of the Guards to Finchley

William Hogarth (1679-1764), The March of the Guards to Finchley, 1750. Oil on canvas. The Foundling Hospital Museum, London.

Luke Sullivan (1705-1771) after William Hogarth (1697-1764), The March to Finchley–A Representation of the March of the Guards towards Scotland in the Year 1745, 1761. Etching and engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GC106.

The Graphic Arts Collection has an almost complete set of individual engravings by and after William Hogarth, as well as each of the bound sets of his work. We do not, however, have any of his oil paintings and so, it was fun today to see the oil on canvas [above] from which a series of engravings were made.

Hogarth offered this painting to King George II as a gift but the King foolishly refused it. “So Hogarth gave the first 2000 people to place an advance order for engravings the option of buying a lottery ticket to win the painting. When the day of the lottery came Hogarth had 167 tickets left, and he gave all of them to the Foundling Hospital. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Hospital won the painting.”–Foundling Hospital Museum.

Princeton does, by the way, also have an advance order ticket for this painting but unfortunately, not the winning ticket.

See also our exhibition website: http://rbsc.princeton.edu/hogarth/home

A Lecture on Heads

In honor of “Reading Faces,” the standing-room-only panel held a few days ago at the Princeton University Art Museum, here is an 1808 “Lecture on Heads”. The University’s scholars focused on caricatures and studies of expressions, approaching the works of art from the perspectives of art history, psychology, and neuroscience.

Speakers included Anne McCauley, David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art; Alexander Todorov, professor of psychology; Judy Fan, postdoctoral research associate in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute; and Veronica White, Curator for Academic Programs.

George Alexander Stevens, on the other hand, got the idea of a lecture by a country carpenter, who made the character-blocks that formed the subjects of illustrations. It proved an extraordinary success in the hands of the originator. He carried it about England, through the United States, and on finally to Ireland.

After a certain point (there is disagreement on the exact year) Stevens sold his act to the comedian Charles Lee Lewes, who continued to perform the “Lectures” for several years. Lewes is given credit for the performance in this book. The 25 plates in this volume were designed by George Woodward but etched and colored by Thomas Rowlandson.

Stereo-graphoscope

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a nineteenth-century stereo-graphoscope in a molded thermoplastic case. This unusual model has a small section at the bottom for three colored glass filters to be used in the graphoscope lens.

Like the zograscope of the eighteenth century, this optical viewer was most often used in a family parlor for evening entertainment. The graphoscope’s round magnifying glass allows for detail views of cabinet cards, tintypes, engravings, and other single photographic images, while the lower stereo glasses are for the viewing of stereographic cards. The whole device folds up into a small box.

Thermoplastic cases, also called Union cases, were first developed in the 1850s for housing daguerreotypes. The earliest patent was filed by Samuel Peck in Connecticut and the use of this material on the Stereo-graphoscope dates it earlier than other wood or leather models.

According to an anonymous author in the British Journal of Photography, “the action of the graphoscope . . . is one [subject] that seems to be very little understood. Everyone who has used the appliance is familiar with its effect, but very few seem to be prepared with an explanation of the relief observed in a single photograph when it is observed through a single large lens.”

He goes on to explain, “a graphoscope is a large single lens of sufficient diameter to enable both eyes to observe the photograph, and the three conditions we have referred to are: first, a condition governing the appreciation of perspective; second, a condition peculiar to the formation of a virtual image of a plane object by a single positive lens; third, a condition peculiar to the binocular observation of any diagram or picture through a large lens.

We have several times pointed out the extreme importance of true perspective in connection with the subject of stereoscopy, and also when referring to the matter of monocular relief. … the trouble with photographs is that the proper view point is very often so near the print that distinct vision from that point is impossible. One remedy for this is to stop down the eye pupil by observing the object through a pinhole. This so increases the range of distinct vision that the proper position can often be found. Another remedy is the use of a magnifying lens to increase the size of the picture, and also the viewing distance, up to a convenient dimension. This, then, is one of the functions of the graphoscope.” —The British Journal of Photography 54, no. 2448 (April 5, 1907)

Share this:

Share this:

The London Circle: Early Explorations of Photography

delivered by Sara Stevenson

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

delivered by
Sara Stevenson