Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Gentile’s Carbon Print of Sheridan

In the September 1877 issue of the Philadelphia Photographer, Edward L. Wilson (1838-1903) published the first carbon print in an American magazine. Wilson was not shy about discouraging his readers from attempting this complicated printing process but did want to show an example in his magazine.

The Naples-born photographer Carlo Gentile (1835-1893), best known for his portraits of Native American Indians, was one of the few photographers to purchase a patent for the carbon process and experimented with permanent prints. When his work won a first prize in February of 1877, Gentile offered to make enough copies for Wilson to paste one into each issue of his magazine. This was not completed until late August, appearing in the September issue.

Gentile’s photograph is titled “Lieutenant-General P.H. Sheridan of the United States Army and staff; Military Division of the Missouri.” Having succeeded Sherman as commander of the Division of the Missouri, Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888) led a massive campaign against the American Indians of the southern plains from 1874 to 1875. Two years later, when he posed for this photograph, Sheridan had also concluded a campaign against tribes in the northern plains.

To help explain the photograph, Wilson published a letter from Gentile along with the print. It reads in part:

“The original picture, from which the illustration is taken, is made 30 by 40 inches; was exhibited in New York in February and was awarded the first prize for composition pictures in carbon.

The portraits were, of course, all taken separate, and so that the perspective would be correct when grouped. This picture was made without any original sketch, and some of our best Chicago painters say that the group is excellent. The group is intended to represent General P. H. Sheridan and staff at some military post ‘out West.’ The General is supposed to have just arrived and he and his staff requested to sit for their photographs, and no attempt has been made to make it appear that they are doing anything else.

The background is composed of some artillery that belongs to the militia of the State of Illinois, who were the same uniform as the United States regulars, consequently come in very a propos for a group to compose the picture of the General; of course the artillery men were taken in the attitude of firing the gun, which they are doing in honor of the arrival of the distinguished visitor, and thereby giving action to the picture.

The landscape background is made up from photographs from two different views in Arizona Territory; the right-hand, showing the tents, was taken at Camp Crittenden, in the heart of the Apache country, and the mountains in the background are the Santa Rita, near the borders of Mexico.

One of the most important objects, a little in the rear of the staff of the General, is the famous horse ‘Winchester,’ too well known to need any mention.”

This volume of the Philadelphia Photographer was a gift from David H. McAlpin, class of 1920; and was previously owned by the Camera Club of New York (sold in 1955). Graphic Arts Collection (hsv) 2007 0008M

See also: Cesare R. Marino, The Remarkable Carlo Gentile: pioneer Italian photographer of the American frontier (Nevada City, Calif.: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1998). Marquand Library (SAPH): Photography TR140.G413 M374 1998

As dainty an edition of Marmion as any lady can desire.

Walter Scott (1717-1832), Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field (London: A. W. Bennett, 1866). 15 albumen silver prints by Thomas Annan (1829-1887). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

An 1865 article in the London Examiner entitled “Gift Books” noted:

“Mr Alfred W Bennett stands foremost among the London publishers as a producer of beautiful Christmas books illustrated by photography. He chooses for illustration books that are worth having and keeping, and that admit of the best and most legitimate sort of sun-painting for adornment of the text.

Printing his text and binding it with luxurious good taste, he enriches it with so liberal a supply of mounted photographs of the best quality, that the pictures alone are almost if not altogether worth the price of the book they illustrate. . . Mr Bennett’s other photographic book is a gay and luxurious edition of Scott’s Marmion, illustrated with smaller photographic views by Mr Thomas Annan, of Norham, Warkworth, Bamborough, Crichtoun, and Bothwell Castles, Holyrood Palace, Tantallon Hold, Durham Cathedral, Lindisfarne Priory, and Whitby and Dunfermline Abbeys, Linlithgow Palace, and Twizel Bridge; a photograph of Scott’s monument at Edinburgh, serving as frontispiece.

The book is richly bound in gold and scarlet, has initial letters to each canto illustrated in woodcut, and is as dainty an edition of Marmion as any lady can desire. Its images of the scenery that lay in Scott’s own mind as that of the poem suggest the right background of local colour to the fancy of the reader.”–The Examiner, No. 3017, 25 November 1865, p. 746.

We recently acquired the first edition of Sir Walter Scott’s book with photographic illustrations by Thomas Annan, including his view of Linlithgow Palace, reflected in the Loch. A notebook of Thomas Annan’s at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow shows a drawing of Linlithgow Palace dated 24th May 1862.

“The sketch at Linlithgow shows the composition proposed and the time of day to make the desired image is indicated. . . . Below the sketch is a note which indicates Annan’s concern about perspective and distance and the problem of relating foreground to middle and background, confirming his awareness of compositional rules in painting.”

This approach suggests that Annan was visiting at least some locations prior to photographing to get an impression of the aspect and light, before addressing the logistics of arriving at the desired time with his bulky photographic equipment.–Roddy Simpson, The Photography of Victorian Scotland, 2012. Firestone TR61 .S467 2012.

The quote on the cover comes from this stanza:

Well was he armed from head to heel
In mail and plate of Milan steel;
But his strong helm, of mighty cost
Was all with burnished gold embossed;
Amid the plumage of the crest
A falcon hovered on her nest
With wings outspread, and forward breast;
E’en such a falcon, on his shiel
Soared sable in an azure field:
The golden legion bore aright
Who checks at me to death is dight.
Blue was the charger’s broidered rein;
Blue ribbons decked his arching mane;
The knightly housing’s ample fold,
Was velvet blue, and trapped with gold.

Portraits of George Cruikshank

Charles Gillot (1853-1903), People of the Period. –George Cruickshank. [sic] (The Champion of Temperance.) in The Period: An Illustrated Quizzical, Satirical, & Critical Review of What Is Going On, Sept. 17, 1870. Hand colored relief etching. Graphic Arts Collection GC022

Daniel John Pound (active 1850-1860) after a photograph by John Watkins (1823-1874) and Charles Watkins (1836-1882), George Cruikshank, Esq., between 1858 and 1870. “The Drawing Room Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages Presented with the Illustrated News of the World.”
Graphic Arts collection GC022

R. Taylor & Company, A broadsheet “In memoriam” of George Cruikshank with a large central portrait of the artist. Wood engraving. London: Curtice & Co, 1878. Graphic Arts Collection GC022

Unidentified artist after a photograph by Ernest Edwards & Cyril Mangin Bult, George Cruikshank AEtat 76, ca. 1868. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GC022

Alfred Croquis (pseudonym for Daniel Maclise 1806-1870), Geo Cruikshank. Author of ‘Illustrations of Time'” (London: James Fraser, [ca. 1832]). Note: British Museum incorrectly attributes this to Alfred Crowquill (pseudonym for Alfred Henry Forrester). Etching. Graphic arts Collection GC022

Unidentified artist, The Venerable George. He painted in oils the virtues of Water from The Hornet, December 6, 1871. Lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection GC022

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), Cruikshank’s self-portrait in the frontispiece “Interior View of the House of God” published in The Scourge or Monthly Expositor of Imposture and Folly (London: W. Jones, November 1, 1811). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1811.2.

George Cruikshank can be seen at the bottom left as a young, debonair gentleman talking to M. Jones, the publisher of the magazine. Note: Cruikshank is holding one of his drawings. Graphic Arts Collection GC022

John Stewart, Landscape Photographer

John Stewart and and James Mitchell, Photographs of Trees &c. taken during the Excursions with The Andersonian Naturalists’ Society, &c., 1888–90. 3 volumes containing 136 albumen prints, each titled, numbered and dated in ink or pencil below.Graphic Arts Collection 2016- in process.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired three unassuming photography albums, each with a printed label on the front pastedown that reads: “Copies of these Photographs may be had at any time, on application to James Mitchell, Con. Photo. Committee, 240 Darnley St, Pollokshields. Silver prints, Unmounted, … 5 d. each… Mounted, … 8 d. Platinotype Prints (Permanent), Unmounted, 10 d. … Mounted, 1s.” Each volume also has a smaller label: “John Stewart, Landscape & General Photographers. Largs.” and price list in manuscript ink on back pastedown.

The albums hold a sequence of photographs dated from March 1888 to March 1890, although those by John Stewart (1814-1887) would have been taken earlier. The prints focus mainly on the specimen trees studied and admired by the Andersonian Naturalists, a Glasgow organization. The volumes are clearly intended as a form of sample or sales catalogue. The price lists offers the photographs in several formats including lantern slides and mounted or unmounted paper prints. “While primarily a study of the trees, for which the group were prepared to travel from the southwest of Scotland to the twin beeches at Rosehall in Sutherland, these little volumes also describe something of the pleasure the group took in these travels.”–dealer’s note.

John Stewart has been identified as the younger brother of John Herschel’s Scottish wife, Margaret (“Maggie”) Stewart. “Together with his brothers, he entered the printing business in London, and in 1839 he married a childhood Scottish friend, a resident of France in delicate health. This was one factor in his living mainly in Pau in southwest France, a favored area for recuperation and also a hotbed of photographic activity. It is not known when or why Stewart first took up photography, but his close relationship with Herschel could have encouraged him. Once in Pau he fell into the circle of unusually active amateurs who employed waxed paper. Stewart’s entries in the London exhibitions of the Society of Arts in 1852, the Photographic Institution in 1854, and the Photographic Society in 1855 were all views taken in the Pyrenees.“–Roger Taylor and Larry J. Schaaf, Impressed by Light (2007).“Deaths” Times (London) August 3, 1887.

The Boxes

The 7s on the owl’s collars indicates the increase in theater prices to 7 shillings for these seats, the ‘pigeon holes’ at the top of the boxes.

The only one quietly paying attention to the play is the dog.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), after a design by John Opie (1761-1807), The Boxes, 1809. Hand colored etching. Inscribed “Opie invt/ Pubd Decr 12 1809 by T. Rowlandson No 1 James St Adelphi.” Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014.00113. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

This print gives you an idea of the rioting audience members at London’s Covent Garden Theatre during the Old Price Riots of 1809 (also referred to as the OP riots). A devastating fire had leveled the theatre the previous year and rebuilding lasted through the summer. Finally, on Thursday September 14, 1809, the Morning Post confirmed that the newly built Theatre Royal would open the following Monday with the tragedy Macbeth, starring Mrs Sarah Siddons.

To subsidized the new theater, ticket prices were raised from 6 shillings to 7 for the boxes and from 3 shillings and sixpence to 4 shillings for the pit. On the opening night, riots broke out during the performance and continued all night. In fact, the riots lasted another 64 days.

Happily, the audience won the fight and the prices were reduced.

Note on the second tier the insignia “from N to O Jack you must go,” meaning: change the prices from the new to the old cost; and the owner, Jack Kemble, must go.

The print is inscribed at the bottom: “O woe is me, t’ have seen what I have seen / Seeing what I see.” Shakespear’ [Hamlet, III. ii]. 12 December 1809. Etching

The Boxes will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum next fall when we celebrate the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with a small exhibit entitled “Remember Me: Shakespeare and His Legacy.”

Carte Odographique

Louis-Charles Desnos (1725-1805), Carte odographique de toutes les routes les plus fréquentées de Paris à toutes les capitales, ports de mer et autres villes comerçantes de l’Europe &c. (Graphic measurements of all the most popular routes from Paris to all capitals, seaports and other European cities of commerce &c.) (Paris: Desnos, Ruë St. Jacques à l’enseigne du Globe, 1763). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

This hand colored chart provides a graphic depiction of the distances between Paris and “the main cities of the kingdom.” It was designed by cartographer and engraver Louis Charles Desnos (1725-1805) who both made and sold maps, globes, atlases, instruments, and books from his shop on Rue St. Jacques “at the sign of the globe.”

See also: Louis-Charles Desnos (1725-1805), Nouvel atlas de la généralité de Paris: divisé en ses 22 elections. . . (Paris: [Desnos], rue S. Jacques à l’enseigne du Globe, 1762). Marquand Library (SAX): Rare Books G1838 .D47 1762

Alexander Anderson Woodblock 1801

recto
verso, date should be 1801
cover
title page

Emblems of Mortality, Representing, in Upwards of Fifty Cuts, Death Seizing All Ranks and Degrees of People … with an Apostrophe to Each Translated from the Latin and French … to Which is Prefixed a Copious Preface, Containing an Historical Account of the Above, and Other Paintings on the Subject … 1st American ed. (Hartford: Printed by John Babcock, 1801). Sinclair Hamilton Collection (GAX) Hamilton 214

Joachim Murat executed

Attributed to Forceval (active 1814-1815), Thumy Macaromi, fameux voleur (Famous Thief), no date [ca. 1815]. Collector’s stamp of William J. Latta. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2016- in process

This French caricature depicts the public execution of Joachim Murat (1767-1815), brother-in-law of Napoleon I (1769-1821). The sign on the pole reads: Il a volé L[e] R[oyaue] de N[aples] (He stole the kingdom of Naples), referring to the fact that Napoleon named him King of Naples.

In 1812 Murat took part in Napoleon’s Russian campaign but when the campaign failed, Murat fled to Corsica, where he was arrested. Murat was put on trial for treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. The caricature changes this to execution by garroting (strangulation by a wire or cord), which was the sentence for a common thief.

In Alexander Meyrick Broadley’s Collectanea Napoleonica (Rare Books (Ex) Napoleon DA) this print is listed as Italian. Since then, the signature of a scorpion in the lower left has been attributed to the French printmaker known as Forceval (active 1814-1815). According to the British Museum “One [print] is identified in Bibliographie de la France as being published by Forceval. Nothing is known about him apart from his surviving prints, some of which were entered in the Bibliographie de la France by Martinet.”

No other copy of this rare print has these manuscript annotations on the title.

Here are a few other prints with the scorpion signature:

Forceval (active 1814-1815), L’épouvantail inutile, 1814. Etching. (c) British Museum

Forceval (active 1814-1815), Caricature des caricatures, 1814. Etching. (c) British Museum.

Forceval (active 1814-1815), L’Oiseau envolé, 1815. (c) British museum

Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic Convention

Franklin McMahon (1921-2012), Senator Barack Obama (D, Ill.) Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Boston, Massachusetts, July 26, 2004, 2004. Acrylic paint, watercolor, and pencil on paper. Provenance: collection of Margot McMahon. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process.

Nearly twelve years ago, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama presented the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention held in Boston, Massachusetts. That Tuesday night in July became the decisive moment that propelled Obama forward and let him to become President of the United State.

Artist and visual journalist Franklin McMahon was in the audience that night and captured the drama of the moment in this acrylic painting, recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection. Unlike the multitude of photographs published, this sketch places the viewer in the middle of the audience and gives us a sense of the excitement of that event.

The Graphic Arts Collection is pleased to have acquired several important paintings on paper by Franklin McMahon (1921-2012), documenting key moments in recent American history. We thank, in particular, his granddaughter Irene Burke, Class of 2016 and a member of the PUAM Student Advisory Board, for her help with these acquisitions. We also thank Jeremy Darrington, Politics Librarian, and David Magier, AUL for Collection Development, without whom these acquisitions would not have been possible.

José Rosa

In preparation for SPA 327/URB 327/LAO 327 Latino Global Cities, taught by Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones and Germán Labrador Méndez, we pulled this poster for a 1977 exhibition by the printmaker and painter José Rosa, printed “under the auspices of the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Puerto Rico.” The image is based on a wonderful book by Luis Rafael Sánchez, La guaracha del macho Camacho (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1976). Firestone Library (F) PQ7440.S235 G8

Born in 1939, Rosa studied at the Taller del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueño (Graphic Arts Workshop of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture) run by Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004) and later succeeded Homar as the workshop’s director. As this print demonstrates, he was a master of screen printing. The print was later exhibited and reproduced in the catalogue José Rosa: Exposición Homenaje: Obra Gráfica, 1963-1996: Antiguo Arsenal de la Marina Española, Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico, 29 de abril al 31 de agosto de 1998 ([San Juan, P.R.]: Programa de Artes Plástica, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1998).

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