Category Archives: photographs

photographs

Image Sequels


In 1857, Edward Moxon published a selection of poems by Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) with wood engravings cut after drawings by William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais. Although not chosen by Tennyson, these images became inseparably linked to his words.

Several drawings by Hunt and Rossetti were photographed by “a neighbor,” and while the drawings were destroying–presumably in the cutting of the woodblocks–these photographs survived. Photogravures were editioned from the photographs and published in 1901 side-by-side with the wood engravings, even though the publisher warned that the images were imperfect. It is one of the few times the photogravures look worse than other reproductions.

“The publishers wish to state that the only Photographs of the Original Drawings obtainable were those taken by an amateur—a neighbor of the Artist—and are presented with all their consequent defects. It is thought however, that, imperfect as they are, they will still have a value to the Artist and the Connoisseur, to whom principally the book is intended to appeal.”

Dissatisfied with previous attempts to re-present prints by Rossetti, Holbein, Beardsley, and others, Frederick Evans (1853-1943) made platinotype enlargements from the best prints available and privately published a series of facsimile volumes. Princeton University Library has a few:

Alfred Tennyson, Poems (London: E. Moxon, 1857). Illustrations: frontispiece (medallion portrait of Tennyson) stipple engraving by H. Robinson after T. Woolner, and 54 wood engravings in text after T. Creswick, J.C. Horsley, W.H. Hunt, D. Maclise, J.E. Millais, W. Mulready, D.G. Rossetti, and C. Stanfield, engraved by the brothers Dalziel, W.T. Green, W.J. Linton, C.T. Thompson, J. Thompson and T. Williams. Rare Books 3955.1857

Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson (1809-1892), Some poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson; with illustrations by W. Holman Hunt, J.E. Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti printed from the original wood blocks cut for the 1866 ed. with photogravures from some of the original drawings now first reproduced; with a preface by Joseph Pennell … & an introduction by W. Holman Hunt (London: Freemantle, 1901). Rare Books 3955.383

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha (London, D. Nutt, 1896). Extra-illustrated with 99 platinotypes by Frederick Evans, after the 1866 Dalziel Brothers’ woodcuts from Arthur Boyd Houghton’s illustrations. Graphic Arts Collection 2011-0004N

The Dance of Death, by Hans Holbein; enlarged facsimiles in platinotype by Frederick H. Evans of fifty wood engravings from Douce (1833) Lippmann (1886) and a Basel edition (1796) ([London] Priv. Print., 1913). One of an ed. of 15 copies. Graphic Arts Collection Oversize 2006-0225Q

Grotesques, by Aubrey Beardsley: enlarged facsimiles in platinotype by Frederick H. Evans (from the original drawings in his collection) ([N.p.] Priv. print., 19130. J. Harlin O’Connell Collection Oversize NE642.B362 G91q

Woodcuts from drawings for Tennyson’s Poems by D.G. Rossetti: platinotype enlargements from the original edition of 1857 / by Frederick H. Evans ([London?]: Privately printed, 1919). Rare Books 2011-0183Q

 

 

Library Dreams (after Magritte’s Time Transfixed)

Lothar Osterburg, Library Dreams (after Magritte’s Time Transfixed), 2011. Photogravure with scraping and aquatint with Gampi chine colle on Somerset White. No. 6/8. Graphic Arts Collection GAX2018- in process

Lothar Osterburg’s “Library Dreams” series began during a residency at the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy in 2011. While there, he collaborated with the composer/thereminist Elizabeth Brown on a video, entitled “A Bookmobile for Dreamers.” Ten years after launching his soap library series, Osterburg has come full circle. All his libraries are recreations of imagined places, and in this new series, the books themselves become building materials, while the books’ content spills out to inspire new worlds.

“Conjuring up monumental phenomena by minimal means,” writes Grace Glueck, “Lothar Osterburg presents picturesque events like a zeppelin over Timbuktu, a glider over the Gowanus Canal, a beached cargo ship at Montauk on Long Island, and an approach to a celestial body by a landing craft. But they are all contrived in his studio, using mundane materials like twigs, toothpicks, peanut butter and wee electrical parts, and photographed through a magnifying glass or a macro lens.”–New York Times, September 19, 2003.

The Graphic Arts Collection has acquired Osterburg’s beautiful photogravure “Library Dreams (after Magritte’s Tim Transfixed)”. This is one of several works recently acquired in anticipation of a 2019 exhibition to be entitled “Turning Light Into Darkness,” focusing on the history and development of copperplate photogravure from 1850 to the present.

A member of the faculty at Bard College, Osterburg is known as one of the foremost photogravure artists in the country. The recipient of an Academy Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has also been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts grants for printmaking, a grant from the AEV Foundation, and residencies at MacDowell Colony and the Liguria Studies Center of the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. An exhibition of his new work will be held next fall at the Lesley Heller Gallery in New York City.

René Magritte (1898–1967), Time Transfixed, 1938. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. 1970.426

New Compositions in Human Beauty

 

Nakagawa Shūzō, 人体美の新構成 [Jintaibi no shin kōsei = New Compositions in Human Beauty] (東京 : 太陽社, [1932]). 12 unbound folded sheets with 12 photographs tipped onto the page opposite text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

Almost nothing is written, English or Japanese, about this book or the photographer/designer Nakagawa Shūzō, except for entry no. 53 in The Japanese Photobook 1912-1990 ([Göttingen: Steidl, 2017]). Marquand Oversize TR105 .J365 2017q.

If you can tell us more, please write.


La Comédie française 1680-1880

Arsène Houssaye (1815-1896), La Comédie française 1680-1880 ([Paris: L. Baschet, 1880]). 38 portraits, engraved and photogravure. One of 400 copies. ReCAP Oversize 32261.479.3f


Henri Rousselon (1822-1902) joined the Parisian art publishers Goupil & Cie. in 1860 as director of the photographic division, operating from their print “factory” in Asnieres. At first, the company specialized in albumen silver prints, then Woodburytypes, and finally, Rousselon perfected his own unique technique of photogravure, presented to the Société française de photographie in 1872. Within a year, his Goupil-gravures gained international acclaim as the most luxurious of all photomechanical prints, superbly printed in deep, rich blacks with remarkable detail.


The Goupil Company marked the 200th anniversary of the Comédie française with a luxurious volume of full-length portraits, some actors posing in character (deceased members represented from paintings and prints), along with a text written by the theater’s former director Arsène Houssaye (1814-1896).

Included are Molière, Samson, Geffroy, Regnier, Aug. Brohan, Bressant, Talbot, Got, Delaunay, Maubant, Max. Brohan, Marie Favart, Jouassain, Coquelin, Edile Riquier Febvre, Provost-Ponsin, Dinah Félix, Thiron, Reichenberg, Croizette, Mounet-Sully, Laroche, S. Bernhardt, Barré, Barette, Broizat, Worms, Coquelin cadet, Sarnary, Baron, Mlle Clairon, Préville, Mlle David, Mlle Mars, and two company portraits from 1841 and 1863.

To create the photogravures for this compilation, Rousselon used the negatives by five contemporary photographers, the majority of which are by Count Stanislaw Julian Ostrorog (1830-1890) who went by the moniker Walery (also used by his son). A naturalized British citizen, Walery ran a successful portrait business in Paris until 1878, when he returned to work in London. Although his primary studio was on Regents Street as this project was underway, he undoubtedly traveled as demand for his work required.

Only a few portraits in the volume are by the gregarious Étienne Carjat (1828-1906), who learned to use a camera in 1855 and used it to captured hundreds of award-winning portraits of the leading actors, writers, and artists of Paris (all of whom he called his friends). Carjat shot with various size cameras, including large format glass negatives, which were then used to print both Woodburytypes and photogravures, sometimes many years after the initial capture.

Carjat’s friend Paul Nadar (1856-1939) is also represented with a few portraits, as are Ferdinand Mulnier (1817-1891) and the little-known Charles Klary (born 1837).

 

The Civil Rights movement in America

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Here is a small selection from a group of approximately 120 press and wire photographs dating from the early 1960s through 1980, recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection with the help of Steven Knowlton, Librarian for History and African American Studies. These heavily used prints all relate to the Civil Rights movement in the United States, documenting protests, marches, sit-ins, and police confrontations in Atlanta, Alabama, Chicago, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C.

Typed captions provide details of the event, often with names, dates, and other specifics to place the picture in its historical context. Many prints have a clipping from the newspaper where the photograph appeared taped to the back.

These photographs and all our collections are available to researchers, without appointment, Monday to Friday 9-5. Just register here: https://rbsc.princeton.edu/research-account-access

“Selma, Ala., Mar. 12 — The ‘Wall’ is down — Jubilant demonstrators held aloft a rope barricade after it was cut down in Selma, Ala. today [by] public safety director Wilson Baker. The demonstrators had sung [unclear] referring to the barricade as the Berlin wall and Baker unexpectedly walked over and severed it. He said “nothing has changed” and still refused to allow the non-stop demonstrators to march. …1965.”

Read more about 1965 events in Selma: https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/us/1965-selma-to-montgomery-march-fast-facts/index.html

“St. Augustine, Fla., June 19 — Up goes the confederate flag at Monsons — Manager James Brock and his daughter Robyn, 13, raise a confederate flag today in front of the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Fla. The motel has been a target for several weeks of Negro integrationist. Yesterday they jumped into the pool at the motel… 1964.”

The Monsons responded by pouring acid in the pool: https://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321380585/remembering-a-civil-rights-swim-in-it-was-a-milestone

Cambridge Boys Celebrate When Women Are Refused Degrees

Thomas Stearn (1825-1905), [Cambridge University protest], May 21, 1897. Albumen silver print photoshopped to remove some yellow for easier viewing. Graphic Arts Collection GA2018- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired three unmounted albumen silver prints taken on May 21, 1897. That was the day when the Cambridge University Senate voted on whether to grant female students the right to receive a full degree. Large numbers of undergraduates, alumni, and staff protested. Degrees to women were rejected and it wasn’t until 1947 that Cambridge reversed this decision.

The above photograph features an effigy of a new, emancipated woman on a bicycle, hung from a window of a bookshop (Macmillan & Bowes at 1 Trinity Street, today the Cambridge University Press bookshop). The second print shows an female figure hung from Caius College across Trinity Street. A large banner parodying Shakespeare reads, “Get you to Girton Beatrice, Get you to Newnham, Here’s No Place for You Maids, Much Ado About Nothing.” [Girton and Newnham were the two female colleges] The final photograph shows the large crowd of jubilant men gathered on the Senate House steps.

Each print has a blind stamp in lower left corner for the photographer Thomas Stearn, who established a studio at 72 Bridge Street in 1886. His wife, sons, niece, and other family members worked in the firm, which finally closed in 1970. If you look closely, a photographer with his camera is visible on the roof of the north aisle of the University Church, accompanied by assistants and a group of women.
Thomas Stearn (1825-1905), [Cambridge University protest], May 21, 1897. Albumen silver print photoshopped to remove some yellow for easier viewing. Graphic Arts Collection GA2018- in process.

The following account is taken from Teacher Training at Cambridge: The Initiatives of Oscar Browning and Elizabeth Hughes (Routledge, 2004)

[There was] good reason to believe that high education for women . . . was gaining acceptance. Nationally, by 1894 women were receiving degrees from the Scottish universities, Wales, Durham, London and many other universities.

In 1896, Oxford University refused degrees for women at a university vote, but, in Cambridge, 1,234 past students of Hewnham and Girton [Colleges] petitioned the university Senate to have their degrees awarded just like the men, rather than being offered a Tripos ‘certificate’. A highly public campaign by supporters and opponents took place . . . .

The vote to admit women to degree titles was arranged for Friday, 21 May 1897. The Times took the trouble to point out that special trains of the Great Northern Line would leave King’s Cross for Cambridge in time for [graduate students] to register their ‘non-placet’ votes. There was rabble-rousing going on among the undergraduates (who could not vote) for there were near-riots in the streets of Cambridge.

Male undergraduates in one-horse hackney carriages met the [graduates] at Cambridge station and rushed them at break-neck speed along Regent Street, through the marketplace to the Senate House. There they had to press through excited throngs, under the gaze of undergraduates leaning out of Caius College dangling effigies of women students. . . . When at last the result was announced, the women had suffered a crushing defeat. The final vote was 1,707 against women receiving degrees, and only 661 in favour.”

Thomas Stearn (1825-1905), [Cambridge University protest], May 21, 1897. Albumen silver print photoshopped to remove some yellow. Graphic Arts Collection GA2018- in process

50 years after this protest, Cambridge finally accepted women as full members of the University. At Princeton University, it wasn’t until April of 1969 that the Board of Trustees voted to enroll women and the first mixed gender class entered the following fall. In the book world, the Rowfant Club and the Club of Odd Volumes remain closed to women.

The Long Never

When The Long Never arrived yesterday, there was a brief moment of uncertainty as to whether we had received a book without the promised story by Jonathan Safran Foer. A jump to the colophon provided the note, “Foer’s text was printed in the debossed image areas using a lithograph printing press. All plate images were scanned and separated using tritone separation. Plates were printed using tritone lithograph printing on Phoenix Motion Xantur 115 g/sm paper, trimmed and hand-tipped into the debossed image areas.”–Colophon.

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Long Never; story by Jonathan Safran Foer; designed by Takaaki Matsumoto ([New York: Matsumoto Editions, 2014, New York: Matsumoto Editions]). Copy 215 of 360. Graphic Arts Collection.

We are fortunate to have acquired number 215 from the first edition of 365 copies, which we understand is now sold out. Along with Foer’s story, the special edition book presents sixty-five prints by the Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Press copy for the book says, “The sequence of images in this book conjures a natural history of the planet, perhaps even one untouched by humans. The black-and-white photographs are hand-tipped onto the pages of the book, which is wrapped in silk cloth. Celebrated author Jonathan Safran Foer has written an original story for this book. Foer’s text sits on the page underneath each artwork, so the reader must lift up each photograph in order to read the story.”

 

The Kittens Are Gone to St. Pauls

Between 1888 and 1896, the Boston-based publisher Joseph Knight (1829-1907) partnered with Ernest Edwards (1837-1903), president of the New York Photogravure Company, to publish a series of small gift books illustrated with photogravures. Most were produced in editions of 500 with similar printed paper covers and horizontal formats, selling for around $2.00.

Chicago photographer Mary Ann (Mrs. N. Gray) Bartlett (1846-1913) made three books with Knight, the first in 1892 entitled Old Friends with New Faces. “The most original and genuinely pictorial product of photography we have seen for a long time,” wrote Edward Wilson. “It is a handsomely arranged series of photogravures of children grouped to illustrate Old Friends, the stories of Mother Goose. The New Faces are evidently good friends of the admirable artist, who so deftly caught them here and there in the garden and by the stairs, and so on, for she has made lovely pictures of them.”

“. . . This is no “hand-camera” or “snap-shot” work, but that of a thoughtful, artistic photographer, able to tackle pictures of a good size, and to make them well. . . . The pictures must be on whole-size plates, and they are, every one, technically excellent.”– Wilson’s Photographic Magazine 30, no. 434 (February 1893).

Born Mary Ann McCune, Bartlett married the chemist N. Gray Bartlett (1840-1917) and together they had four children: Greyson, Bertha Madelon, Allyn, and John. It’s Madelon [seen above] who poses for the frontispiece of “Old Friends” dressed up as Mother Goose with a camera and the verse:
A Curtsy
From many a year of sweet repose,
From work of earlier days,
With youth renewed, I’m roused again
By photographic craze.
With shutter, camera and stop,
And trappings not a few,
I’ve ventured forth, my skill to test,
On faces bright and new.
1892 Mother Goose 1719

Both husband and wife became active in the Chicago photography scene, but it was Mrs. Bartlett who rose to prominence among the amateur practitioners. Posing her children and neighbors in the backyard of their stately red brick home at 44 Ray Street, Bartlett took first prize for platinotypes at the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1888 exhibit. By 1890, she is named Director of the Camera Club of Chicago and illustrating stories in St. Nicolas, Outings, Scribner’s, and other national magazines.

In 1893, when the World’s Columbian Exposition came to Chicago, Bartlett was appointed chairman of the committee of the woman’s department of photography for the world’s congress auxiliary. She prepared a second book with Knight, Mother Goose of ’93, to be exhibited and sold in the Woman’s building, the Children’s building and the State of Illinois building.

 

She produced only one more book with Knight and the writer Marian L. Wyatt, called A Girl I Know. The entire narrative centers around her daughter Madelon, now a teenager.

Joseph Knight’s photogravure-illustrated books include:

Bits of Nature: Ten Studies in Photo-Gravure ([Troy, N.Y.: Nims & Knight, 1888]. Marquand Library in process

William Cullen Bryant, An Autumn Pastoral, the Death of the Flowers. With 15 illustrations by the Photogravure Co. after original drawings by C.E. Philips (Boston: Nims & Knight, 1888).

Thomas Gray, Gray’s Elegy and Its Author. Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard with an Introduction and Illustrations from Original Photographs by Dr. J. L. Williams (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1890). 16 photogravures

S. R. Stoddard, Camp Life (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1890). 12 Photogravures.

W.G. Mitchell, Afternoon Tea: Photogravures from Original Photographs ([Boston: Joseph Knight Company, publishers, 1891]). 8 photogravures. Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19Q 74839

Mary A. Bartlett, Old Friends with New Faces. Photographic illustrations by Mrs. N. Gray Bartlett ([Boston, Mass: Joseph Knight Company, 1892]). 10 photogravures. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

Henry Irving, The Drama; Addresses by Henry Irving (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1892).

Bits of Nature: Ten Photogravures of American Scenery. no. 2 (Boston: Joseph Knight, 1893).

Mary A. Bartlett, Mother Goose of ’93 ([Boston, Mass: Published by Joseph Knight Company, c1893]). 10 photogravures. A souvenir of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19Q 30529

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, Song of the Brook (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1893).

William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis; and, A Forest Hymn (Boston: Joseph Knight Co., 1893). 13 photogravures.

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (Boston: J. Knight Company, 1894). 24 photogravures

Mary A. Bartlett and Marian L. Wyatt, A Girl I Know ([Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1894]). Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19 74822

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress, in two volumes (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1895).

Seneca Ray Stoddard, Camp Life: Twelve Photogravures. No. 2 (Boston: Joseph Knight Co., 1895). 12 photogravures

Thomson Willing, Corp Dames of High Degree: being portraits after English masters, with decorations and biographical notes (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1896).

See more about Edwards: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/01/11/picture-periodical-without-letterpress/

Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868-1895)

Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868-1895), The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, Southwestern Colorado: their pottery and implements ([Chicago: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1893]). Western Americana F778.N8q

Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868-1895), Ruiner af klippboningar i Mesa Verde’s cañons / af G. Nordenskiöld; med talrika illustrationer efter originalfotografier af författaren ([Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1893]). Western Americana 2014-0242Q

In his preface, translated by D. Lloyd Morgan and dated August 14, 1893, Swedish geologist Gustaf Nordenskiöld wrote:

The summer and autumn of 1891 I passed in Colorado, engaged upon investigations of the remarkable cliff-dwellings scattered in the canons of an extensive plateau, the Mesa Verde, in the south-west of the State. The present work is the result of those researches. It contains a description of the ruins, an account of the excavations carried out there and of the objects discovered.

In order to trace as far as possible the development of the cliff-dweller culture, I append a survey of the ruins in the South-western States akin to the cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde, a description of the Moki Indians, the descendants of the ancient Pueblo tribes, and an account, based on the relations of the first Spanish explorers, of the manners and customs of the agricultural town-building Indians in the middle of the sixteenth century. A special part of the work is devoted to a description by Prof. G. Retzius of the crania found during the excavations.

In order to give my descriptions of the ruins and of the objects found in them as great objectivity as possible, I have almost exclusively employed in the illustrations direct methods of reproduction. The ruins have been reproduced from my photographs, partly in autotype by Messrs. Angerer & Goschl of Vienna, partly in photogravure at the Librairies-imprimeries Reunies in Paris. The pottery, implements, etc. are heliotyped from photographs of the originals by Mr. Chr. Westphal of Stockholm. 14 August, 1893. G. Nordenskiold.

The photogravures were printed from Nordenskiöld’s own photographs at Librairies-imprimeries réunies. managed by Albert Quantin. The actual printer was probably the heliogravurist Paul Dujardin (1843-1913), who worked for Quantin and other publishers from his shop at 28, rue Vavin.

With thanks to our Lecturer in Visual Arts Fia Backström, here is the translation of the inscription in our volume:
To Gustaf’s teacher,

The assistant at the Royal national archive
Honorary A – Hammarskiöld
with many warm regards
from
Gustaf’s father

A Nordenskiöld.

‘Go wanderers on the road of life.
Your path ahead with quick steps
and measure your goal not your reasons
don’t measure your famn!’

Photogravures after Félicien Rops

From his bookshop at Passage Choiseul, 23-33, Alphonse Lemerre (1838-1912) sold this portfolio of ten provocative prints for the 1874 short story collection Les Diaboliques by Jules Amédées Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808-1889). The prints are described on the title-page, and by bibliographer Erastène Ramiro, as etchings but except for the frontispiece (a portrait of the author engraved by Raul Rajon (1843-1888)), they are all photogravures with additional etching after drawings by the Belgian artist Felicien Rops (1833-1898).

The copper plates were printed by Alfred Salmon (1825-ca. 1894), who was at this time in partnership with Adolphe Ardail (1835-1911), trading as Salmon & Ardail.

A second edition of Les Diaboliques was published in 1882 and these plates may have been for a third edition but no bound copy of the text with Rops’s plates is recorded. It is possible the project was never completed and so, the plates were issued separately. The nine Rops plates are Sphinx; Le Rideau Cramoisi; Le plus bel amour de Don Juan; Le dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist; A un diner d’athées; Le bonheur dans le crime; Le vengeance d’une femme; Postface; and Postface.

Félicien Rops (1833-1898), Dix eaux-fortes pour illustrer les diaboliques de J. Barbey D’Aurevilly; dessinèes et gravées par Félicien Rops ([Paris: A. Lemmerre, 1886]). One portfolio of ten etchings. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process


See also: Erastène Ramiro, Catalogue descriptif et analytique de l’œuvre gravé de Félicien Rops, précédé d’une notice biographique et critique par Erastène Ramiro; orné d’un frontispice et de gravures d’après des compositions inédites de Félicien Rops et de fleurons et culs-de-lampe d’après F. Rops, Jean La Palette et Louis Legrand (Paris: Librairie Conquet, 1887).