Category Archives: painting and watercolors

paintings

Life at Benfolly

“All the adults were writing books…”

“Life at Benfolly” by Janice Biala documents the summer of 1937 when Biala and her partner Ford Madox Ford spent two months at Benfolly, Allen Tate’s farm on the Cumberland River outside Clarksville, Tennessee. Biala also brought her sister-in-law, known as Wally, who had agreed to serve as secretary. All the grown-ups were busy writing books, when the young Robert Lowell turned up unexpectedly.

“The Tates liked Robert but feared that he might become a nuisance. When he asked if he could stay at Benfolly, Allen said, ‘Robert, you’d have to live in a tent in the yard. We have no room for you.’ Taking that as an invitation to pitch a tent in the yard, Lowell returned form Nashville a few days later with an olive-green Sears, Roebuck umbrella tent. Sitting in his tent he tried to craft classical unromantic poems according to Tate’s definition of a good poem and read Marvell aloud to himself for the scansion. He also ran numerous errands for Caroline, who declared him the ‘handiest boy’ she ever saw.”
–Robert Buffington, “The Tates, Ford, and the House of Fiction,” The Sewanee Review
Vol. 116, No. 1 (Winter 2008), pp. 73-92. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27549937?seq=9#metadata_info_tab_contents


1.Caroline Gordon (1895-1981)
2.Allen Tate (1899-1979)
3.Janice Biala (1903-2000)
4.Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939)
5.West Portico of Benfolly, three miles from Clarksville, Tennessee.
6.Caroline Gordon holding Vili
7.Tenant farmer, Mr. Norman
8.Nancy Tate (Wood) (1925-2007) 7 years old
9.Rachel “Wally” Wolodofsky Tworkov (1917-1991)
10.Ida (last name unknown) hired to cook
11.Clarksville, Tennessee
12.John T. Cunningham bridge
13.Ida
14.Nancy Tate
15.Nancy’s visitor
16.Robert Lowell (1917-1977) 20 years old
17.Nancy in Cumberland River
18.Nancy teaching tenant children
19.Little Bit
20.Vili

 

In 1939, Dean Christian Gauss approached the Carnegie Foundation to help Princeton University focus on the cultivation of writers and other artists. The Foundation promptly responded with a generous five-year grant of $75,000 to pay the salaries of “practioners in the arts”. . . . That same year, Professor Thorp nominated poet and critic Allen Tate as the first Resident Fellow in Creative Writing, and Tate began teaching the following September. He was to “act as general adviser to undergraduates interested in writing and will be in general charge of the new plan designed to further the work of entering freshman in creative writing.” The following year, the Creative Arts Committee appointed Tate for a second year and allowed him to invite poet and critic Richard P. Blackmur to assist him.

In 1942, the Committee appointed George Stewart, Princeton class of 1917, as Resident Fellow and, over the course of the nearly 20 years that followed, brought a succession of poets, writers, and critics to teach in the program under the Committee Chairman Professor Arthur Szathmary and the Program Director R.P. Blackmur. Among these were John Berryman, Joseph N. Frank, Delmore Schwartz, William Meredith, Robert Fitzgerald, Sean O’Faolain, Richard Eberhart, Kingsley Amis, and Philip Roth. Today, this program has evolved into the Hodder Fellowship.– https://arts.princeton.edu/academics/creative-writing/creative-writing-history/

The Second Wave and more

The Graphic Arts Collection continues to collect folk and tribal art from South Asia as it relates to the pandemic. In Mithila artist Nisha Jha’s “Second Wave”, she focuses on wearing masks, sanitizing, and vaccination as critical to stemming the spread of the virus. The border depicts the coronavirus being injected with the vaccine and “making this world corona-virus free.” In another section, she’s painted a Covid-19 vaccination center. The work also highlights how individuals in the informal sector adjusted to preserve their livelihoods in the midst of the pandemic, e.g. vegetable sellers who turned to offering masks and sanitizer.

 

Graphic Arts has also recently expanded the focus for this collection to include themes related to women’s experiences in India. One example is “Today’s Modern Woman” by Vinita Jha. This work reimagines the goddess Durga by replacing the traditional items in her hands with contemporary ones – (clockwise) an infant, a spray bottle for cleaning, a cup of coffee, a smart phone, a child, an iron, a shopping bag, and a griddle and spatula.

 

Nisha Jha (also the creator of “The Second Wave” and daughter of Vinita Jha) questions what constitutes an auspicious marriage in her painting “The Hungry Man of Dowry.” Here she has depicted the bride as the Kāmadhenu, or Cow of Plenty, who brings a BMW, a Royal Enfield motorcycle, a computer, and other luxury goods into her new marriage.

 

Thanks to Ellen Ambrosone, South Asian Studies Librarian, for this guest post.

Drawn to be printed


Charles R. Macauley (1880-1934), A Yankee in Czar Nicolas’ Court, no date. Pen and ink on board. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.01949

The Graphic Arts Collection holds many drawings, paintings, and sketches prepared to be photographed and wood engraved for magazine illustrations. Most artists did not create finished work to be framed, but linear work that reproduced well for large runs on steam presses.

In searching recently for the original work of art, needed by a researcher who had only the half-tone reproduction, we found a number of works that had never been connected with the magazine issue where they were printed and published. Here are five such examples.

If anyone has the time to search them, it would be wonderful to connect the drawings with the printed story in Harper’s, Scribner’s, or other early 20th-century magazine. *This is not as easy as it sounds.

 

William Charles Morris (1874-1940), The End of a Perfect day in Italy, ca. 1936. Pen and ink on paper. Grpahic Arts Collection GA 2009. 00077

 

Angus MacDonall (1876-1927), Untitled [Firemen’s Parade], 1912. Pen and ink, gouache on paper. Graphic Arts Collection GA2006.02607.

 

 

 

Angus MacDonall (1876-1927), Father Time: Humph! They’re Showing No Regard for Me! 1911. Pen and ink, gouache on board. Graphic Arts Collection GA2006.02606

 

Phil Porter, Untitled [Theodore Roosevelt sharpening enormous pencil inscribed Magazine Editorship], no date. Pen and ink on paper. Graphic Arts collection GA 2006.01950

 

Visualizing the Virus

Visualizing the Virus https://visualizingthevirus.com/ was founded and is led by Dr Sria Chatterjee, an art historian and environmental humanities scholar who received her PhD from the department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton in 2019. It is made possible by a grant from DARIAH EU and support from the Institute of Experimental Design and Media, FHNW. Princeton Center for Digital Humanities is a project partner.

They have a wide network of collaborators and are particularly grateful to the Max-Planck Kunsthistorisches Institute, the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, the Department of History at Princeton University, PACE Center for Civic Engagement at Princeton for their collaborations.

The project goes beyond the media narratives around Covid-19. They write:

Visualizing the Virus is an interdisciplinary digital project through which one can visualize and understand the Coronavirus pandemic from a variety of perspectives. It aims to center the inequalities the pandemic makes visible. Gaps between the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences are hard to bridge. This means that pandemics are often studied without considering their many interconnected histories. Visualizing the Virus connects insights from different disciplines to create a collective digital space for exactly such a convergence. We are not only interested in the ways in which scientists, artists and people in their everyday lives have made the virus visible; but also in processes, historical and contemporary, that the viruses make visible – inequalities, be it of access to resources and healthcare, vaccine imperialism, xenophobia, gender inequalities, and so on.

If you would like to participate by collaborating and/or contributing to the project, they would love to hear from you. https://visualizingthevirus.com/about/. Our Graphic Arts webinar and acquisitions played a small part, with thanks to Ellen Ambrosone.

 Dulari Devi, Corona Effect in Patna, 2020. Acrylic on paper. Purchased with funds from South Asian Studies and Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Corona Ek Mahamari = Corona An Epidemic

 

 

 

Vijay Sadashiv Mashe, Corona Ek Mahamari [Corona an Epidemic], 2020. Cow dung background, poster color on traditionally treated cloth. 104 x 78 cm. Graphic Arts Collection 2021.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a dense composite painting by the contemporary Warli artist Vijay Sadashiv Mashe. The son of Sadashiv Mashe and grandson of Jivjy Soma Mashe, Vijay continues the traditions of the Warli painters, but with an international consciousness. The simplicity of the forms lends itself to the representation of our global pandemic and its consequences in India and beyond.


Read more about the Indian Warli Community projects at the V&A Museum of Childhood: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-of-childhood/warli-at-moc

Migrant Labor Goes Home, 2020

Pushpa Kumari, Migrant Labor Goes Home, 2020. Natural color on cow dung, washed handmade paper. 67 x 54 cm. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021.

This recent acquisition painted by Pushpa Kumari is part of our ongoing effort to document the work of contemporary Indian indigenous artists during the 2020-2021 pandemic.

The following description was written by Anubhav Nath of Ojas Art:

“Shiv-Parvati play an important role in Madhubani art. They are depicted as Ardhnareswar, which portrays a perfectly fused balance of divine masculine and feminine energies.

In April 2020, caught unaware, thousands of migrant labor walked thousands of miles to their homes in the region of Bihar, from where this art form originates. This work refers to a lot of images from local media in connection to the migrant labor headed back and the duress they faced.

People walking with families in never ending queues with children being dragged on suitcases; a woman collapsing and eventually dying on the railway track as her infant child continued to breast-feed and laborers being washed down with disinfectant before being allowed to enter a village.

These images are symbolic of the lockdown, and have been translated into a traditional Madhubani style very effectively and poignantly.”

China Painting

Porcelain paints case, 1880s. German. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a linen case containing 98 glass vials filled with powder pigments to be used in the painting of porcelain wares, also known as china painting. The pigment is now permanently sealed in the vials with the cork tightly fixed to the glass. Each vial is numbered with a paper label. “China or porcelain paint pigment does not dissolve in water or oil, because the pigments are made up of metallic oxides blended with fine powdered glass. The powdered glass acted as a flux so that the glaze and coloured paint would adhere together permanently upon firing.”

As Debby DuBay writes in The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles:

…Women played significant roles in the birth of the china-painting movement in America. In 1873 in Cincinnati, Karl Lagenbeck, an immigrant ceramic chemist, and his neighbor, Maria Longworth Nicols (1849-1932) experimented with over-glaze china paints. Maria, a student at the McMicken School of Design, placed some of her decorated pieces on display at a student exhibition. Several classmates, specifically one Mary Louise McLaughlin (1847-1939), was so smitten by the beauty of Nicols’ work that she requested their instructor, Ben Pitman, to purchase the necessary supplies to paint on porcelain.

With so much interest in this new art form, Pitman engaged Marie Eggers, an immigrant who had studied the art of china painting in the Dresden factory, to teach a class in 1874. This group of students entered their wares in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and were responsible for exposing millions of Americans to this new art form.

…By 1877 there had been several books published in Europe on directions for painting on china for amateurs, but it is student Mary Louise McLaughlin who published the first book in America – China Painting, A Practical Manual for the Use of Amateurs in the Decoration of Hard Porcelain. McLaughlin’s infectious enthusiasm for this art form spread throughout the United States, and she is credited with educating the general public and those who could not attend classes on the art of china painting. Her book included information on tracing on china, china painting techniques and directions for gilding, firing, etc.

In 1879 McLaughlin formed the Woman’s Pottery Club. By 1881, there were major china painting studios in Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York, including The Osgood Art School established in New York City by Adelaide Harriett Osgood (1842-1910). But it is McLaughlin who is credited with influencing the entire nation and setting the standards for porcelain clubs established throughout the United States.–Painted Porcelain: Women Played a Major Role – The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles –by Debby DuBay.https://journalofantiques.com/features/hand-painted-porcelain-women-played-a-major-role/

Anita J. Ellis, The ceramic career of M. Louise McLaughlin (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press [for] Cincinnati Art Museum, 2003). NK4023.M382 E443 2003

Mary Louise McLaughlin, China painting: a practical manual for the use of amateurs in the decoration of hard porcelain (Cincinnati: R. Clarke, 1877). ReCAP 738 M22

 

Vinita Jha’s “Unlimited Responsibilities of Women during Covid-19”

We have a new addition to our South Asian painting collection, documenting the effect of the coronavirus in that region. In 2020, the artist Vinita Jha created “Unlimited responsibilities of women during COVID-19,” along with a short story narrating the vignettes throughout her work. Vinita’s entire text will be archived with her painting but here is a short section:

This corona epidemic changed our society and social life completely. Covid-19 on the one hand wrapped the whole world in its clutches, on the other hand it also provided employment opportunities to the skilled people. Through this real story, I have tried to tell that the participation of women in the Corona-period played an important role and how did they worked very hard from day-to-night-to bring their family’s happiness back. Whether it is from rural environment or urban environment, women of both classes try their best and they become successful, too.

This is the story of a rural woman, whose name is Laliya. She is not educated but knows how to deal family, business and relationship well-being, She leaves no stone unturned to pursue higher education for her children, even though she belongs to a poor working class. Before the Corona epidemic and lock-down she would go home and clean the dishes and do the cleaning. But after the arrival of this epidemic, she lost that job/employment and became unemployed. They don’t have enough food to spend their life anymore, because they were daily wage worker in their earlier life. Laliya was in very deep sorrow. Now she started living day and night in deep concern about employment and income, and started thinking what to do now ??

Laliya also has two children Muniya (daughter) and Ugna (son). Due to government order in the pandemic, the school of their children has also started teaching online. Since Laliya has only one smartphone in her house and there are two children, both children have their own separate online classes. There is always an atmosphere of war between brother and sister about this smartphone. And sometimes it happens that if the class of both of the children were online together, then the class of both of them would miss or sometimes the class of one child would be missed.

Both Laliya and her husband Bhola are extremely worried about these things and they decided to buy one more smartphone, so that the online class of both their children could be ensured and they could study well. But this dream of Laliya started to look incomplete as they were unable to buy it due to the smartphone being so very expensive. They cannot afford to buy it.

Images and words posted with permission of the artist.
https://vimeo.com/471389158

Our sympathies to all those affected by the cyclone and heavy rains this week, on top of the continuing struggles with the huge caseloads of Covid-19 infections. Accept our sincere wishes for a better future.

Albert M. Cohn’s album of Cruikshank sketches

George Cruikshank (1792-1878 ), Album of Original Drawings, Sketches and Manuscript. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021 – in process. Provenance: Albert M. Cohn. Acquired in honor of Henry Martin, Class of 1948

 


First deposited at the Princeton University Library in 1913, the Richard W. Meirs, Class of 1888, Collection of George Cruikshank, comprises one of the finest Cruikshank collections in the United States. About 1000 volumes, many separate prints, as well as drawings, finished oil paintings, oil sketches, “panorama” prints on rollers, etched plates, broadsides, bound manuscripts, autograph letters, and Cruikshank correspondence can be found in Princeton stacks.

Meirs used the Cruikshank bibliography prepared by Albert M. Cohn in his collecting and the library did the same in organizing the collection in our vaults. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, we have continued to expand on the Meirs gift, most recently with a unique scrapbook owned by Cohn containing Cruikshank sketches, letters, and other miscellany. This acquisition is made in honor of the artist and friend of this collection in particular, Henry Martin, Class of 1948.

 

This substantial album contains original sketches and manuscripts from the Cohn’s collection and confirms that Cruikshank drew or wrote on anything, here using letters, lists, envelopes and assorted ephemera. Of particular interest is an invoice from Draper Charles Coleing, Commercial House, an invitation from the Council of the Photographic Society and on a printed letter from the British Institution for Promoting The Fine Arts in the United Kingdom.

There is a letter to English artist Andrew William Delamotte, 1775-1863, in which Cruikshank notes his prolific output: “I cannot give any idea of the number of drawings and etchings I have made – somewhere about a cart load – of rubbish with a few tolerable specimens here & there.” Among the sketches are many curious notes, such as the comment on a sketch of a fisherman coming home: “I wonder why the fish don’t bite, if they were as hungry as I am they would bite fast enough.”

 


Additional information of Cruikshank at Princeton (compiled by Steve Ferguson):

A list of Library holdings as of 1920 appears in the Princeton University Classed List, (Special Collections) vol. 6 (Princeton, 1920) pp. 3565-3583 [(ExB) 0639.7373.5], published after the major deposit of Cruikshank material by Mr. Meirs. A large portion of the collection is found at http://catalog.princeton.edu

The Cohn Cruikshank bibliography (covering illustrated books and separate prints) has been checked (recording call numbers) for the Library’s holdings. For particulars refer to: Albert M. Cohn. George Cruikshank, a catalogue raisonné of the work executed during the years 1806-1877. (London, 1924) [(GARF) NC1479.C9 C72q, copy 2)

An important article about how and why Americans collected Cruikshankiana was published in 1916 by Arthur Bartlett Maurice, Class of 1894. See A. B. Maurice, “Cruikshank in America”, in The Bookman November 1916.  Maurice was editor of The Bookman from 1899 to 1916. This article has many particulars about the Meirs collection.


See also: Howard S. Leach “Cruikshank’s Illustrations of Shakespeare in the Meirs Collection, Princeton University Library” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (13 December 1916, p 259-262). An editorial note on the same page as this article states “Alumni visiting Princeton may spend a very entertaining and profitable afternoon in looking over this collection, which is in the exhibition room of the Library.”

Also see: F.J. Mather “Rowandson and Cruikshank” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (4 March 1932); Frank Jewett Mather, “A Statistical Survey of the Meirs Cruikshank Collection” in the Princeton University Library Chronicle IV, 2-3 (February-April, 1943) pp. 50-52; E.D.H. Johnson. George Cruikshank: the Collection at Princeton (Princeton, 1973) [(Cruik) 747] which is the offprint of: E.D.H. Johnson, “The George Cruikshank Collection at Princeton” in Princeton University Library Chronicle XXXV, 1 (Autumn and Winter, 1973-74) pp. 1-33.

 

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.