The charismatic stage actor John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) had his portrait made by various photography studios during the 1860s. Thanks to Donald Farren, Class of 1958, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired two of these carte-de-visite portraits. The earlier view was taken around 1863 by the photographer Charles Deforest Fredricks (1823-1894), whose elegant studio on lower Broadway, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, was a destination for celebrities and politicians. Booth’s portraits were widely distributed, such as the one seen here distributed by E. Fehrenback in London.

After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on 15 April 1865, there was a succession of altered photographs transforming the handsome actor into a villain. Using double exposures, knives, guns, fellow conspirators, and other devious attributes were added to Booth’s portraits. Our CDV, titled on the verso “J. Wilkes Booth, The Assassin,” was published by the New York firm of Macoy & Herwig. A devil has been added on the right, whispering into Booth’s ear.

James E. McClees (1821-1887), McClees’ Gallery of Photographic Portraits of the Senators, Representatives & Delegates of the Thirty-Fifth Congress (Washington: McClees & Beck, 1859). 311 salt prints in black morocco binding with ornate gilt decoration. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

“In presenting this volume to the public,” wrote photographer James McClees in his introduction, “the publisher begs leave to remark that it is the largest collection of perfectly authentic Photographic portraits ever published; containing three hundred and eleven likenesses one-fifth of the size of life, each being a reflex of the features of the subject, and in no instance a copy from a painting or an engraving, and finished in the best manner for Photograph negatives taken by the publisher himself or his able assistant, Mr. Julian Vannerson, an Artist of acknowledged ability and artistic taste.” A long sentence for a lengthy project.

Graphic Arts Collection recently acquire this superb volume of three hundred and eleven salted paper portraits of the thirty-fifth Congress of the United States, that is, members dating from March 4, 1857 to March 4, 1859 during the first two years of James Buchanan’s presidency. Included are the Senators, Representatives, and Delegates, with their autographs reproduced under their portrait in facsimile, “procured from private letters and registers not written for publication.” This volume was meant to be the first of a series, although no subsequent volumes were every completed.

As a frontispiece, McClees created a photograph of the capitol taken from an original drawing by T.U. Walter, architect of the U.S. Capitol extension. Our volume also includes one additional salt print laid into the front cover of Charles Brooks Hoard (1805-1886), congressman from New York, along with a presentation inscription: “A testimonial of Friendship / Presented by / C.B. Hoard / March 1861.” This is a second portrait, in addition to the one bound into the volume.

McClees’ ambitious project had an extraordinary scope and the end result was beautifully realized. As he claims, it is the first and largest such collection of photographic portraits created in the United States. The images include the key figures in politics leading up to the Civil War, both Union and Confederate, nicely indexed at the front. Notable are the portraits of Andrew Johnson, Jefferson Davis, Sam Houston, Stephen Douglas, and Schuyler Colfax, although the list could go on and on.

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Princeton’s Western Americana Collection also holds the McClees series of portraits made of the Native American Indian delegation: http://pudl.princeton.edu/collection.php?c=pudl0017&f1=kw&v1=mcclees. McClees first opened a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia in 1845 and in 1851-52 he made daguerreotypes of Indian delegations visiting his studio in Philadelphia. When he perfected paper photography, the McClees studio produced another series of the Indian delegation on paper.

In the summer of 1857, McClees opened a second gallery at 308 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. and hired two additional photographers, Julian Vannerson and Samuel Cohner, to undertake the congressional photography project. They did their best to photograph every congressman, although some failed to show up as scheduled. Eighteen leaves are published with only the signature on the page.

Only five copies of is rare volume are currently listed at institutions: the George Eastman House, the University of Illinois, Indiana Historical Society, Library of Congress, and the New Hampshire Historical Society.

Unidentified photographer, Sergeant David Davidson, ca. 1862. Hand painted tintype. Graphic Arts Collection 2014 in process. Gift of Russell Marks, Class of 1954.

Thanks to the generous donation of Russell Marks, Class of 1954, the Graphic Arts Collection has a new full-plate hand-painted tintype from the 1860s. The photograph shows Union Army Sergeant David Davidson, great grandfather of Mr. Marks, and a member of Maryland’s 7th Regiment during the American Civil War.

7th Regiment Infantry was organized at Baltimore, Md., August and September 1862 and moved to the Antietam September 18, 1862. According to the U.S. National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Sergeant Davidson (born 1838) was admitted in 1907 at the age of 69. (microfilm M388 roll 3).

Marks and his wife Tricia (formerly editor of the Princeton University Library Chronicle) lived in Latin America for fifteen years. His business career included managing a sugar and paper complex in Peru as well as the presidency of Phelps Dodge International Corporation and of the Americas Society.  The couple is now happily living in Princeton once again.

Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1866), Henry James, ca.1905. Gelatin silver print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014- in process

When Henry James (1843-1916) returned to New York City in 1905 after living in Europe for twenty years, Century Magazine sent a photographer to document the occasion. The artist they sent was twenty-three year old Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1866).

Although Century never ran a story or published the portrait, James was so pleased with the result that “their chance acquaintance would eventually produce twenty-four frontispieces that were not only a desirable but a salient feature of the New York Edition.” –Charles Higgins, “Coburn’s Frontispieces to James’s New York Edition” in American Literature (1982)

According to Higgins, “James was photographed in the same month by Alice Boughton who captured the author in a classic Daumier pose. Early in May, James also sat for Katherine Elizabeth McClellan, the Smith College photographer.” Although he had many options, he was charmed by Coburn and the following year, invited him to England where the author was photographed once again.

If the signature on this mount is read as 1905, the print would be from the first New York City photo-shoot and not the more often attributed sitting in 1906. The inscription may be directed to Florence Ethel Mills Young, who was on a book tour with The War of the Sexes, released in 1905.

Procter Hall, Graduate College, Princeton University, ca.1913. Glass lantern slide. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. A. Perry Morgan. Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process

2013 is the centenary of Princeton University’s Graduate College. An exhibition at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library highlights the College’s history: http://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2013/09/building-the-house-of-knowledge-the-graduate-college-centennial/

Back in Graphic Arts, Elizabeth and Perry Morgan, Class of 1946, generously donated a large, glass lantern slide of the Seven Liberal Arts window in Procter Hall, the College dining hall. Designed by William and Annie Lee Willet of Philadelphia, the stained glass window rises forty feet in height. The center row of images depicts the Seven Liberal Arts. The first four, the quadrivium, are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The other three, the trivium, being grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

At the bottom is an inscription: Nec vocemini magistri quia magister vester unus est christus,” or “And be ye not called master, for one is your master, even Christ.”

William Willet (1869-1921) and Anne Lee Willet (1867-1943) collaborated on mural and stained glass designs from their studio in Pittsburgh and then, Philadelphia. The Willets incorporated in 1909, only a few years before their work at Procter Hall. At William’s death, Anne Lee took over the business, which still continues today.