Category Archives: Medium

mediums

A Daguerreotype Portrait of Lucretia Mott

After Samuel Broadbent, Lucretia Mott, circa 1849. Quarter plate daguerreotype. Purchased thanks to funds from the Manuscript Collection and the Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

An abolitionist, Quaker, and fierce advocate for women’s rights, Lucretia (Lucy) Coffin Mott (1793-1880) believed that women and men should be treated equally and spent her adult life fighting for these causes. In 1833 she was among the women who established the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and served as a delegate to the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Although she was a powerful speaker, Mott was surprised to find she was not allowed to participate. Together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others, they organized the First Woman’s Rights Convention in 1848. Her address Discourse on Woman was delivered at the assembly buildings in Philadelphia on December 17, 1849 and published by T.B. Peterson in 1850 (Miriam Y. Holden Collection HQ1423 .M9). These are only a few of her many accomplishments, which continued until her death in 1880.

Notice the glare on the left side of this portrait. This might indicate that the daguerreotype now at Princeton is a copy daguerreotype, the shine a result of the reflective copperplate being rephotographed. If this is true, it tells us a great deal about the celebrity and admiration for Mott at the time, as well as the collecting habits that warranted additional portraits. See a few of her many portraits below.

We teach the daguerreotype as a ‘one-of-a-kind’ but there may have been an active business for daguerreotype reproductions. While the earlier daguerreotype with this image has not been located yet, we will list the portrait as ‘after Samuel Broadbent.’ The case has not been opened at Princeton (it just arrived) but the dealer notes “The hallmark, a hexamerous figure 40 was usually seen in the mid-to-late 1840s; also use of wax on the reverse copper side of the plate, as seen here, was generally ended by the advent of the 1850s. The edges of the original double elliptical mat that was used to frame the portrait can be seen on the naked plate.”

Samuel Broadbent (1810-1880), Lucretia Mott, ca. 1855. Quarter plate daguerreotype. Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Even without this mark, Samuel Broadbent Jr. (1810-1880/01) is a good guess given his other portraits and similar painted backdrops. A different daguerreotype portrait of Mott was made by Broadbent around 1855 [above] and a CDV published by Broadbent and Phillips (Henry C. Phillips) around 1865. Sarah Weatherwax has given us a record of his studios:

Working primarily as a portrait photographer for almost four decades, Broadbent entered into a number of different partnerships, including with female daguerreotypist Sally [Sarah] Garrett Hewes, Henry C. Phillips, William Curtis Taylor, and fellow painter Frederick A. Wenderoth. He worked in a variety of photographic mediums and produced images utilizing a number of different processes. His daguerreotypes frequently employed a painted landscape background or centered the sitter within a window frame adorned with large leafy vines along one side. In addition to daguerreotypes, the Broadbent studio also produced ambrotypes and tintypes and successfully made the transition to paper photography. After Samuel Broadbent’s death in 1880, two of his sons continued his photography business until 1905. A Broadbent photography studio remained in Philadelphia until 1920.”–Sarah J. Weatherwax, Curator of Prints and Photographs, The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2013.

William Henry Furness (1802-1896), Lucretia Mott, 1858. Oil on canvas. Swarthmore College Friends Historical Library

Reproduction of a daguerreotype portrait of Lucretia and James Mott sitting together, original photograph by William Langenheim, 1842. Location of original unknown.

Marcus Aurelius Root, Lucretia Coffin Mott, 1851. Half-plate daguerreotype. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

 

Philip Freneau, Princeton Class of 1771


Unidentified artist after an engraving by Frederick W. Halpin (1805-1890), Philip Freneau, no date. Pastel on paper. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02617. Halpin’s engraving below.


“Philip Morin Freneau (1752-1832) … entered the Class of 1771 to prepare for the ministry. …As his roommate and close friend James Madison recognized early, Freneau’s wit and verbal skills would make him a powerful wielder of the pen and a formidable adversary on the battlefields of print. Freneau soon became the unrivaled “poet of the Revolution” and is still widely regarded as the “Father of American Literature.”

Although Freneau had produced several accomplished private poems before college, it was the intense experience of pre-Revolutionary-War Princeton that turned the poet’s interest to public writing. Political concerns led Madison, Freneau, and their friends Hugh Henry Brackenridge and William Bradford, Jr., to revive the defunct Plain Dealing Club as the American Whig Society. Their verbal skirmishes with the conservative Cliosophic Society provided ample opportunities for sharpening Freneau’s skills in prose and poetic satire. Charged with literary and political enthusiasm, Freneau and Brackenridge collaborated on a rollicking, picaresque narrative, Father Bombo’s Pilgrimage to Mecca in Arabia [below] , which presents comic glimpses of life in eighteenth-century America. This piece, recently acquired by Princeton and published by the University Library (1975), may well be the first work of prose fiction written in America.”–Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, 1978. https://www.princetonianamuseum.org/artifact/b3a7858e-3a87-4fe0-b9ca-1fe1de52029a
https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/3397428

C.E. Brock’s illustrations for Austen’s Persuasion

C.E. Brock (1870-1938), “Politely Drew Back and Stopped to Give Them Way” watercolor, signed & dated. Provenance: Chris Beetles. Exhibited at The British Art of Illustrations 1870-2010.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two watercolors by C.E. (Charles Edmund) Brock (1870-1938), illustrations to Jane Austen’s Persuasion, her last novel, originally published in 1816. A complete history/bibliography of Charles and brother Henry Brock’s illustrations for the Austen novels has been written by Cinthia Garcia Soria, “Austen Illustrators Henry and Charles Brock,” and can be read here: http://www.mollands.net/etexts/other/brocks.html

This is a brief exert:

…However, by 1898 a new printing technique that allowed inclusion of illustrations in colour had emerged—lithography, and Dent asked both Charles and Henry to create a new set of illustrations for the six Jane Austen novels.

The brothers agreed to share the task in equal parts: five volumes each, six illustrations per volume, one as frontispiece. Charles was in charge of Sense and Sensibility (volumes 1 and 2), Emma (volumes 7 and 8) and Persuasion (volume 10), while Henry was responsible for Pride and Prejudice (volumes 3 and 4), Mansfield Park (volumes 5 and 6) and Northanger Abbey (volume 9).

Thus the new 10-volume set of Jane Austen’s novels by J.M. Dent with illustrations by C.E. and H.M. Brock appeared in 1898 with great success. These “pen and ink drawings tinted in watercolour” gave a more exact and detailed period representation than ever before. It is classified by Gilson as E 90 and as he clearly notes, each volume included a frontispiece and five inserted plates, all in colour. They are bound in a now green-greyish gilt cloth and the covers presents a girl in Regency attire.

…The American reproduction of the 1898 illustrations took eight years to appear. In 1906, they were issued in New York by Frank S. Holby, also in ten volumes—since the publisher used the same text setting by Dent—but with an introduction by William Lyon instead of R. Brimley Johnson. This edition is also known as “The Old Manor House Edition” and Gilson catalogues it as E 106.

 

C.E. Brock (1870-1938), “Lady Dalrymple & Miss Carteret Escorted by Mr Elliot & Colonel Wallis” watercolor, signed & dated. Inscribed with publication details below mount. Provenance: Chris Beetles. Exhibited at The British Art of Illustrations 1870-2010.


 

 

Bibliography

Carroll, Laura and John Wiltshire (2006). “Jane Austen Illustrated” in Johnson, Claudia and Laura Tuite (eds.), A Companion to Jane Austen (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 56). Wiley-Blackwell, Singapore.

Gilson, David (1997). A Bibliography of Jane Austen. New Introduction and Corrections by the author. Delaware : Oak Knoll Press.

Gilson, David (2005). “Later publishing history, with illustrations” at Todd, Janet (ed.). Jane Austen in Context. New York : Cambridge University Press.

Kelly, C.M (1975). The Brocks: A Family of Cambridge Artists and Illustrators. London & Edinburgh: Charles Skilton Ltd.

Parker, Keiko (1989). “Illustrating Jane Austen” in Persuasions, no. 11. December, 1989. USA. JASNA. Available on-line at: http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number11/parker.htm

Rogerson, Ian. Entry for the “Brock family” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Southam, Brian (2006). “Texts and Editions” in Johnson, Claudia and Laura Tuite (eds.), A Companion to Jane Austen (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 56). Wiley-Blackwell, Singapore.

 

 

Hedi Bak’s Song of Songs


Hedi Bak (born Germany, active United States and Africa, 1927-2010), The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s (Chicago: [Printed and Published by Studio 22 Inc.], 1969. 30 woodcuts. Issued in portfolio. “Thirty original woodcuts by Hedi Bak. 100 copies … numbered and signed 1 to 100 …”. One of 10 artist proof copies on Kumoi paper, a soft Japanese paper which takes fine impressions. (The edition of 100 copies was printed on Rives BFK.) The quotation is from the Holy Scriptures, as used with the permission of the Jewish Publication Society of America. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

With little else to document of life and work of Hedi Bak, here are a few paragraphs from the Bak Art Legacy Project, a virtual museum to present the works of Bronislaw and Hedi Bak.

“Hedi Bak was a prolific printmaker, painter and educator. While working as a conservator at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, she was tasked with printing the first edition of prints from the newly rediscovered illustration blocks of the Luther Bible. Bruno and Hedi’s lives intersected World War II, immigrant life of artists in America – the south and the midwest and in Hedi’s case even Africa.”

“The origins of the project began in 1984, shortly after Hedi Bak suffered a massive stroke and lost her ability to walk. It was only a few years since Bronislaw died unexpectedly from a heart attack, and she was in danger of losing her home and studios right off the campus of Georgia Southern in Statesboro Georgia. With hundreds of works of art in danger, a committee was formed led by many faculty members, friends and neighbors. Clemens Bak, the son of the artists was elected secretary and represented the family. An agreement was struck with the College, to move the work into temporary storage on campus. The Library at Georgia Southern offered to keep Bronislaw’s papers and also ended up with a considerable collection of prints and several paintings. The rest was moved to Atlanta, where Hedi and her sons and their families settled.”

“In the 1960’s [Bak] managed Studio 22 and produced a volume of prints; both her own and in collaboration with Bronislaw. Later, when Bronislaw’s health gave out, the couple moved to Europe where she was employed, doing preservation work at the Gutenburg Museum in Mainz, Germany. In 1972 they returned to America and established studios in Statesboro, Georgia. Hedi continued to teach until 1980. In 1982 the year after her husband died, Hedi suffered a serious stroke while undergoing surgery. Told that she would never walk again, she struggled to regain her life. The next year her youngest son, Pieter died in a car crash.”

“In 1990, Hedi married another very talented artist, Charles Counts, a renowned potter, painter and poet from Tennessee. Charles had been teaching and living in Nigeria for many years. He took his wife back to Maiduguri in Northern Nigeria where he encouraged her to take up writing as well as her art, resulting in two delightful books, many stories and prints from her time in Africa. She spent many of her happiest years of her life with Charles, until he died unexpectedly in 2000.”

 

 


This is a biographical video about Bak’s husband Bronislaw.

A biography of her childhood: Hedi Bak, Mazel ([Place of publication not identified] : Rosedog Press, 2005).

Found in The Seed 4, Issue 4 (08-15-1969):

Trinidad and Tobago

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired an album of 96 albumen and gelatin silver photographs of Trinidad and Tobago from the last years of the 19th century. Images include government buildings, botanic gardens, groups of officials and staff, parades, a memorials addressed to Queen Victoria, and much more. There is a cocoa harvest and a fair highlighting the year’s produce. In addition, are several pen and ink drawings.

The black half morocco binding is stamped “Trinidad” on upper cover, and ‘H.E.H.J.’ on lower cover, which refers to the owner Sir Hubert Edward Henry Jerningham, KCMG, DL (1842-1914), Governor of Trinidad and Tobago between 1897 and 1900.

By 1830, Trinidad and Tobago was the world’s third highest producer of cocoa, after Venezuela and Ecuador, producing 20% of the world’s cocoa. This was before Ghana began its large-scale cultivation of cacao. The cocoa industry eventually dominated the local economy between 1866 and 1920 during which time the world demand for cocoa products increased, and cocoa prices remained stable at an appreciable level.

Subsequent to 1921, when local cocoa production peaked at 75 million lbs (34,000 tons), a combination of events led to the gradual decrease in production. World cocoa prices declined due to a glut on the market resulting from over-production, particularly in West Africa, then came the onset of the Great Depression of the 1920’s, the appearance of Witches’ Broom disease (WB) in Trinidad and Tobago in 1928, the increase in world sugar prices, and the development of the local oil industry, which competed for agricultural labour. –Frances L. Bekele, “The History of Cocoa Production in Trinidad and Tobago,” The Cocoa Research Unit, The University of The West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, September 20, 2003.

British rule
1797 – A British naval expedition captures Trinidad from Spain.
1802 – Spain cedes Trinidad to Britain under the Treaty of Amiens.
1814 – France cedes Tobago to Britain.
1834 – Slavery abolished; indentured workers brought in from India to work on sugar plantations.
1889 – Trinidad and Tobago administratively combined as a single British colony.
1945 – Universal suffrage instituted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Preservation of Richard MacGwire rather than Richard Crosbie

William Ward (1766–1826), after John James Barralet (about 1747-1815), The Preservation of Sir Richard MacGwire who fell into the sea (by the descent of a Balloon) off the coast of Ireland on the 12th May 1785. Mezzotint. Published in London June 4, 1787 by Thomas Milton and by Barralet in Dublin. Harold Fowler McCormick Collection.

 

This scene should have depicted the rescue of Richard Crosbie, who spent most of 1784 building a machine that could fly from Dublin to London. “…After two failed attempts, Crosbie finally achieved his aim of being the first person to ascend in a balloon in Ireland on 19 January 1785. Newspapers recorded crowds of at least 20,000 in Ranelagh (the Freeman’s Journal made the exaggerated claim that there ‘could not be less than 150,000 spectators’).”

Crosbie’s next attempt was in May 1785 but he was too heavy for the balloon so Richard MacGwire (often incorrectly listed as McGuire), a young Trinity student, volunteered to replace him. The balloon flew out to sea followed by a number of “balloon-chasers,” in small boats. MacGwire finally called the trip to an end by puncturing the balloon, which came down north-east of Howth. Barralet’s design shows MacGwire’s dramatic rescue by sailors while a second boat with Lord Henry Fitzgerald, brother of Lord Edward; Mr Oliver; and Mr Thornton look on. Read more: https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/a-most-ingenious-mechanicirelands-first-airman/

Note the balloon seen at the far back right.

Not all fine art prints are found in the Graphic Arts Collection, or for that matter in art museums. The McCormick Collection of Aeronautical Illustrations, 1783-1898 (GC014) consists of approximately 300 prints and drawings dealing with the first attempts at ballooning and air transportation collected by McCormick (Class of 1895). The material was given to the library by Alexander Stillman. See: Maurice H. Smith, “Travel by Air before 1900,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 27 (1966), pp. 143-147 [ full text].

A colored copy of this mezzotint can be found in the National Air and Space Museum Collection in Washington D.C.

Born in Dublin around 1747, John James Barralet moved to London where he was best known as a painting and drawing instructor. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, he exhibited with the Society of Artists before returning to Dublin. Barralet’s book illustrations for Grose’s Antiquities of Ireland, Milton’s Views and other volumes kept him employed, a practice he continued in Philadelphia from 1795. He also learned engraving and is said to have introduced a ruling machine for engravers to America.

A Long Minuet

Born to the Manor (Mildenhall, Suffolk), young Henry William Bunbury left St Catharine’s College, Cambridge in 1769 to travel and experience life. From an early age, he showed a talent for drawing and by 1776, Bunbury was exhibiting his work at the Royal Academy. Although he never had much success as a serious painter, his satirical work was enjoyed throughout London. A day job with the army was the inspiration for Bunbury’s humorous books Hints to Bad Horsemen (1781) and An Academy for Grown Horsemen (Princeton has editions 1787, 1788, 1791, 1792, 1796, 1808, 1809, 1825).

 

Also around that time, Bunbury drew a series of dancers attempting a minuet, which were pasted together to form a five-foot satirical panorama. The original drawing, now at the Yale Center for British Art, was engraved and published by William Dickinson under the title A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath.


William Dickinson (1746-1823) after Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath, June 25, 1787. Stipple engraving on four attached plates, approximately 5 feet long. Published by Dickinson, London. Inscribed upper center: “Bos, Fur, Sus atque Sacerdos.”; lower center: “A Long Minuet As Danced At Bath. Longa Tysonum Minuit , Quid velit & possit rerum concordia discors. Horace.” Graphic Arts Collection GAX Oversize Rowlandson 1787.2f

 

Thanks to the British Museum we know who many of the dancers represent, beginning at the left:

The 1st Mrs Lewis Teissier; much like Anthony Aubert for whom it was done; Miss Vine; The Lord Mair; The Lady Maress; Lord North; Lady Guilford; Monsr Pereg… Bauquier of Paris… 1st Comm… chez Monsr Peuchant [?]; Miss North; Monsieur Pengtcent [?] private envoy to the P. of W. from the King of France; Lady North; Monsieur Grant a Banker at Paris; Miss Dyke; qry [query?] Stephen Teissier; Mrs Laste [?]; qry [query?] Mr. Matthew Purling. my son J Lewis says this however was intended for the Revd. Henry Bate. of turbulent political memory; [unidentified]; [unidentified]; Mrs. Bunbury. Mr. B_s Wife; Tyson – Master of Ceremoni[es].

So loved was Bunbury and his humorous work that when he sat for a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), he was asked to pose holding “The Long Minuet.” And if that were not enough, Lawrence’s pastel, now at the National Portrait Gallery, London, was engraved by Thomas Ryder (1746-1810) and distributed by multiple print sellers.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Henry William Bunbury, ca. 1788. Pastel. National Portrait Gallery, UK 4696

Thomas Ryder (1746-1810) after Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Henry William Bunbury Drawing His ‘Long Minuet’, April 24, 1789. Stipple engraving with hand coloring. Published by S. Watts, London. National Portrait Gallery, London, D15022

 

 

 

Female Equitation

Mrs. Stirling Clarke, The Ladies’ Equestrian Guide, or, The Habit & the Horse: a treatise on female equitation, with illustrations lithographed by Messrs. Day & Son, from photographs by Herbert Watkins (London: Day & Son, [1857]). 9 plates, tinted lithographics by Day & Son after photographs by Herbert Watkins (1828-1916). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage 2021- in process.

Nannie Lambert Power O’Donoghue (1843-1940) and A. Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920), Riding for Ladies, with Hints on the Stable (London: William Clowes & Sons for W. Thacker & Co., Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, & Co., and Bombay, Thacker & Co., 1887). Woodburytype frontispiece. Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage 2021- in process

 

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired two works by female authors concerning horsemanship for upper class women in the 19th century. It is unfortunate that the earliest by a Mrs. Clarke cannot be identified with her own name but only by her husband’s. Written in 1857, Clarke’s book comes a full twenty year before that of Nannie Power O’Donoghue’s work. It is a thorough discussion of horsemanship including notes on stabling, training, shoeing, and doctoring, by and for women.

Mrs. Stirling is a mystery beyond her marriage, she even leaves her name off the title page, preface, or introduction. Her preface begins by assuring any man reading the book that he need not worry. She has no desire to “trench upon ground hitherto trodden by the more privileged sex” nor does she offer “any suggestion for their enlightenment.” So, if you are of the male sex, shut your computer and stop reading.

Stirling continues, “I write exclusively for the guidance of my own sex, well knowing the vast importance to the fair novice of a manual which brings her acquainted with that equal pride of prince and peasant—the horse—and with the fascinating and elegant science which teaches how to guide and govern him, and how to guide and govern herself with respect to this noble creature.” Riding well needs training, as Stirling quotes, “True knowledge comes from study, not by chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

 

 

Riding was in the mid-nineteenth century a regular activity among women, as she comments: “Some years ago, riding was by no means general amongst the fair sex; then ladies on horseback were the exception and not, as now, the rule, but “grace à notre charmante Reine,”

“Whose high zeal for healthy duties
Set on horseback half our beauties,”

there is now scarcely a young lady of rank, fashion, or respectability, but includes riding in the list of her accomplishments; and who, whether attaining her end or not, is not ambitious of being considered by her friends and relatives, “a splendid horsewoman.’ Yet how few can really claim this envied appellation! Habit may do much, and, coupled with science, a great deal more; but good riding, with very few exceptions, is neither a habit nor an instinct. Dancing we all know to be an instinctive motion, a natural expression of joy ; but mark the dancing of the rustic milkmaid, and that of the educated and accomplished lady; the one is an untutored, clumsy bound, the other the very poetry of motion ; and the latter should riding be.”

 

The second acquisition by a woman for women is Nannie Lambert Power O’Donoghue‘s Riding for Ladies [top] with illustrations by A. Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920). Perhaps it was her athleticism that allowed Power O’Donoghue, also known as Ann Stewart Lyster Lambert, to live to be 97 years old. While she wrote many books, she was best known for Ladies on Horseback, followed a few years later by Riding for Ladies (1887).

Originally published in a series of articles in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and Lady’s Pictorial, Riding for Ladies brought her writing together in a book so popular it is recorded as selling “more than 94,000 copies.” Unlike Stirling, her name is proudly announced on the title page and the book is filled with her many achievements and personal stories.

 

 

 

Meekly Obstinate Pious VS The Fejee Islanders, January 1858

Unidentified artist, Rev’d Meekly Obstinate Pious vs. the Fegee Islanders. January 1858 [England, mid-19th century]. Fourteen watercolors in oblong album. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a pictorial narrative set on the island of Fiji and dated January 1858. It tells the story of a British missionary known as Rev. Meekly Obstinate Pious and his wife, who sail to Fiji in order to convert the indigenous people to Christianity. Through a series of events, they build a church and make friends with their neighbors but ultimately are killed and eaten. When British sailors arrive in search of Rev. and Mrs. Pious there is a battle and everything on the island is destroyed.

The story is told through fourteen watercolors and brief captions. It is unclear if the sequential narrative was meant to be reproduced and published, nothing similar can be traced. Some images are disturbingly racist and only a selection are reproduced here.

The presentation of savage cannibals in the South Seas was routinely found in English books, newspapers, and theatricals, such as in the 1831 Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden performance Neuha’s Cave, or, The South Sea mutineers, partly based on Lord Byron’s poem “The Island, or, Christian and his comrades” (1823).

 



Actual missionaries might have served as the basis for this parody. From 1838 to 1856, James Calvert (1813-1892) and his wife Mary Fowler Calvert (1814-1882), along with John Hunt (1812-1848) lived in Fiji, promoting Christianity. Calvert quickly learned the native language and over time, published religious books in Fijian as well as Fijian dictionaries for English speakers. Hunt published a Memoir of the Rev. William Cross, Wesleyan missionary to the Friendly and Feejee islands (1846) and after Hunt’s death in 1848, the missionary Thomas Williams wrote a memoir of Hunt’s life and work, also know under the Fijian title: Tukutuku kei Misa Oniti (1848).

 

Walter Lawry’s 1850 book Friendly and Feejee Islands: a missionary visit to various stations in the South Seas, in the year 1847 emphasized the practice of cannibalism and painted an unflattering portrait of a primitive society. Here is a section:

Their cannibal propensity is well known. They do not attempt to disguise it. The eating of human flesh is not confined to cases of sacrifice for religious purposes, but is practised by them from habit and taste. There can be no question that, although it may have originated as a sacred rite, it is continued in the Feejee group for the mere pleasure of eating human flesh as food. Their fondness for it appears from the custom they have of sending portions of it to their friends at a distance, as an acceptable present; and the gift is eaten, even if decomposition has begun before it is received. So highly do they esteem this food, that the greatest praise they can bestow on a delicacy is to say, “ It is as tender as a dead man.”

 

 


50 years after: {39:2} Expectans expectavi. Dominum, et intendit mihi = I have waited expectantly for the Lord, and he was attentive to me.

The National Picture Gallery in the Rotunda of the Capitol

The National Picture Gallery in the Rotunda of the Capitol: a collection of paintings illustrating the discovery of America and the early history of the United States / Executed expressly by order of Congress, by the most celebrated American artists (Washington : [s.n.], c1860). [4] leaves, [10] leaves of plates : ill., ports. ; 24 x 30 cm. Special Collections – Graphic Arts Collection. Oversize 2006-0279Q.

 

In 1859. eight large scale paintings filled the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. To document them, engravings were made by Robert Metzeroth after the works by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), John Vanderlyn (1775-1852), William Henry Powell (1823-1879), John Gadsby Chapman (1808-1889), John Trumbull (1756-1843), Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889), and Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). In this volume, Metzeroth’s engravings are accompanied by outlines with explanatory letterpress captions. **The names do not always correctly match the engraving.

If you go to the rotunda today, you will see eight historical paintings: four revolutionary period scenes were commissioned by Congress from John Trumbull in 1817 and placed in the Rotunda between 1819 and 1824: Declaration of Independence; Surrender of General Burgoyne; Surrender of Lord Cornwallis; and General George Washington Resigning his Commission.

Four scenes of early exploration were added between 1840 and 1855: Landing of Columbus by John Vanderlyn; Discovery of the Mississippi by William Powell; Baptism of Pocahontas by John Chapman; and Embarkation of the Pilgrims by Robert Weir.

 

Because this volume of engravings is so rare and so fragile, the book has been digitized and is available online for viewing and downloading: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/4736119

More information about the Capitol can be found here: https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/buildings-grounds/capitol-building/rotunda

“How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage” By Lauren Leatherby, Arielle Ray, Anjali Singhvi, Christiaan Triebert, Derek Watkins and Haley Willis. New York Times January 12, 2021:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/12/us/capitol-mob-timeline.html