Auguste Pavie, Deux légendes Cambodgiennes. Réachkol. Rot-Thi-Sen. Exemplaire unique [in honor of] Charles Thomson, Gouverneur de la Cochinchine 1884 ([Saigon, 1884]). Illustrations executed by a single, unidentified artist in pencil, black ink, and grey wash. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

A unique and remarkable item, uniting printed text and striking original illustrations for two Cambodian folktales, produced in honor of Charles Antoine François Thomson (1845-1898), French governor of Cochinchina between 1882 and 1885, who established more direct French administrative control over the protectorate of Cambodia. The text of the two legends is taken from Excursion dans le Cambodge et le royaume de Siam (Saigon, Imprimerie du gouvernement, 1884) by the French explorer and diplomat Auguste Pavie (1847-1925), who spent sixteen years exploring the Indochinese peninsula and who later served as the first governor-general of the French colony of Laos.

Whereas the Excursion features only six illustrations to the legends, our Deux légendes includes 58 charmingly drafted original images, including a title to each legend in Cambodian, apparently executed by a local artist especially for this volume. They show great creativity in depicting the extraordinary course of each tale. The first legend tells of prince Réachkol who had two wives, Néang-Roum-say-sack and Néang Mika. When Réachkol abandoned Mika and their baby, Mika sent her talking crocodile, Atonn, to attack his boat. Having tried in vain to appease Atonn with chickens and ducks, Réachkol was saved by Say-sack’s magic, which turned Atonn into a mountain (known as Crocodile Mountain). A great battle ensued between Réachkol’s wives, with Say-sack emerging victorious and decapitating and disembowelling her rival. The tale ends with the victorious couple establishing a temple.

The second legend tells of a poor woodsman who abandoned his twelve daughters in the forest only for them to be captured by the queen of the Yaks, Santhoméa, who planned to eat them. Saved by a white rat, the twelve sisters were taken in by the king of Angkor, but Santhoméa won his favour and had the pregnant sisters blinded and consigned to a cavern. Here they ate all their newborns except for one boy called Rot-thi-sen. Intending to kill him, Santhoméa sent Rot-thi-sen to her daughter, but the young pair married and Rot-thi-sen escaped with the blinded sisters’ eyes. Having evaded his wife, creating a lake in the process, Rot-thi-sen killed Santhoméa and restored the blinded sisters’ sight.

Here are a few selected plates.

Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654-1739), Elementa musica, of, Niew licht tot het welverstaan van de musiec en de bas-continuo [= Elements of music, or, New light to the understanding of the music and the basso continuo] (s’Gravenhage: Laurens Berkoske, 1739). Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in processThis unusual volume by Quirinus van Blankenburg lays out his principles of music theory both in text and diagrams, including several working volvelles. The dealer’s description is quoted here in full:

‘Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654-1739), son of an organist, followed in his father’s footsteps when he was sixteen, first in Rotterdam, Gorinchem, and then the Waalse Kerk in Den Haag; in 1699 he was appointed organist at the Nieuwe Kerk in Den Haag. Van Blankenburg matriculated at the University of Leiden and became a well-known teacher of music. His earliest work for harpsichord, a Preludium full of ornaments and sudden changes in tempo, is found in the London Babell MS (British Library Add. MS 39569) from 1702.

None of his earlier works have survived, though it seems likely that he would have started to write music early in his life. From the works that we know now he comes across as an experienced composer.’ ‘Van Blankenburg published three works toward the end of his life, though it is possible that he wrote them earlier ….The majority of van Blankenburg’s keyboard works are short, the most elaborate being the Fuga obligata, published in his treatise Elementa musica, 1739, which covers basso continuo and other subjects, including details about enlarging the ambitusof harpsichords. Interestingly, a fugue with the same theme had been published by G. F. Handel in 1735, and, although the autograph of this fugue dates from around 1720, van Blankenburg accused Handel of plagiarism! He seems to be the first in the Netherlands to mention overlegato, which he calls “tenue”, and his fingerings are based on those found in François Couperin’s L’art de toucher le clavecin(1716)’ (Ton Koopman, ‘The Netherlands and Northern Germany’, in TheCambridge companion to the harpsichord, ed. Mark Kroll, 2019, pp. 71-92, pp. 77-8).

The contemporary annotations in this copy, which deserve further study, are frequently of the character one might expect an author to make in preparing his work for a further edition. Certainly the changes to punctuation and sentence structure would be unusual in even the most assiduous reader. However, a clarificatory marginal note on p. 99, referring to the plate opposite p. 119 (‘De Wet der Nature’), reads ‘van’t Orakel der Natuur, Q: V: B: [i.e. Quirinus Van Blankenburg]’, which perhaps suggests that the annotator was not the author. It must also be remembered that Van Blankenburg died in the year of publication. Whatever the case, the annotator was certainly someone of considerable musical learning.Hirsch I 73; RISM, Écritsp. 15

Reports to the art lovers who do not seem ignorant

A curious collection of proof etchings of coins and medals from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries from the Papal mint of Bologna, with a few coins depicting ‘temporal’ rulers such as Giovannni II Bentivoglio of Bologna, Giovanni Sforza (first husband of Lucrezia Borgia), and Charles V, the great enemy of the Papacy.

The manuscript notes that accompany a few of the plates, referring to books or noting prices, might suggest that the etchings were produced to document a private collection. It is also possible that these were proof etchings for a publication on the subject, although no numismatic reference book with such illustrations has been found.

“The mint of the Emperor Henry VI was established at Bologna in 1194, and nearly all of the coins struck there bear the motto BONONIA DOCET, or BONONIA MATER STUDIORUM. The baiocchi of Bologna were called bolognini; the gold bolognino was equivalent to a gold sequin. The lira, also a Bolognese coin, was worth 20 bolognini. These coins were struck in the name of the commune; it is only from the time when Bologna was recovered by the Holy See, under Clement VI, that Bolognese coins may be regarded as papal.”–http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10334a.htm

Thanks to the generous gift of Kristina Miller, our colleague for many years in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of The Siamese Cat written and illustrated by the British artist Leon Underwood.

Leon Underwood studied at the Royal College and the Slade School of Art, before founding the Brook Green School of Art in Hammersmith, London, where he trained such artists as Henry Moore in wood carving, and Gertrude Hermes and Blair Hughes Stanton in wood engraving.

By 1925 Underwood moved to New York City where he brought his School of Art to Greenwich Village and became active in the local wood engraving network. He supported his art with commercial jobs illustrating books and magazines while exhibiting his prints alongside John Taylor Arms, Charles Sheeler, and Wanda Gag among others. It was at this time that he wrote and illustrated The Siamese Cat for Brentanos.

Thanks to Elmer Adler, the Graphic Arts Collection also holds two self portraits by Underwood, shown here. [left] Leon Underwood (1890-1975), Self-portrait, 1922. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.00928.

.

Leon Underwood (1890-1975), The Siamese Cat (New York: Brentanos, 1928). Woodcut illustrations by the author. Gift of Kristina Miller. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

A thought and an action or an object are synonymous to most cats.
Leon Underwood (1890-1975), Self-portrait in a landscape, ca. 1921. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.00927.

In 1931 Underwood and Joseph Bard, a Hungarian poet and an expatriot in Britain, co-founded The Island, a journal of art and literature, today only available at the Huntington Library and Emory University Library. He continued to travel, visiting West Africa in 1945 and returning with a large collection of African art, some of which he later sold to the British Museum.

See also the webpage below:

The Portraits of Leon Underwood by Simon Martin