Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Leonora Carrington

In honor of Princeton University’s new course: Along the Edge: Leonora Carrington, the Graphic Arts Collection acquired the limited edition portfolio, Leonora Carrington, Cinco Grabados, copy 3 of 30, purchased in part with funds provided by the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS).

The five engravings, with etching and aquatint, were printed at Tiempo Extra Editores, an artists workshop founded in 1989 by Emilio Pavan Stoupignan. Also included is a single poetry broadside signed by Carrington (1917-2011), with text beginning, “Dog, come here into this dark house.” Each paragraph or verse addresses the swan, the coyote, the Shaman & cat, and three cats.

The interdisciplinary class, taught by Jhumpa Lahiri, will focus entirely on Leonora Carrington, the British-born Mexican printmaker, surrealist painter, and novelist.

“Students will be asked to respond to Carrington’s oeuvre both critically and creatively, writing essays, responses, and imaginative texts inspired by a close reading of Carrington’s idiosyncratic fiction and by studying her prints, drawings and paintings, which are part of the Princeton Art Museum’s permanent collection. Knowledge of French and/or Spanish is recommended but not required, as we will also look at some of Carrington’s writing in the original languages of composition, and consider questions linguistic migration and experimentation.”

Note, a search on Carrington in the online catalog https://library.princeton.edu/find/all/carrington%2C%20leonora now includes the entire holdings of the Princeton University Art Museum, along with the Graphic Arts Collection and other library holdings.

The Confession and Dying Words of Samuel Frost

Samuel Frost (1765-1793), The Confession and Dying Words of Samuel Frost, Who is to be Executed This Day, October 31, 1793, for the Horrid Crime of Murder (Worcester, Mass.: Printed by Isaiah Thomas, 1793). Signed in plate, lower right: “Printed and sold at Mr. Thomas’s Printing office, in Worcester.” Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02795

“Executions were pubic events in Worcester’s early days, attracting huge crowds and creating a carnival-like atmosphere. The hanging of Samuel Frost on November 5, 1793, was said to have drawn two thousand spectators. Frost had been tried for murdering his father in April 1784 but was acquitted on the grounds of insanity. Records don’t show whether he spent any time in confinement, but on July 16, 1793, he murdered his employer, Captain Elisha Allen of Princeton [Massachusetts], during an argument in a field on Allen’s farm. Frost struck him more than fifteen times with the blade of a hoe and left his body lying on the ground. This time there was no acquittal. At the trial, he was found sane and sentenced to death.” —Rachel Faugno, Murder & Mayhem in Central Massachusetts (2016).

sheet 52.5 x 43.7 cm.

 

“The first cemetery in Princeton [above] was the old burying ground on Meeting-House Hill across the road from the first church building, near 58 Mountain Road. In those early days the burying-ground (God’s Acre) was invariably an adjunct to God’s house. …Here is the grave Capt. Elisha Allen “foully murdered by Samuel Frost” in July, 1793, ten years after Frost had killed his own father. Formerly acquitted on the plea of insanity, the murderer this time paid the penalty for his crime, being hanged in Worcester on October 31, 1793.” —http://www.princetonmahistory.org/did-you-know-2/first-cemetery/

 

The Eagle of Vienna



On May 23, 1846, a crowd gathered in the Prater, a large public park in Vienna’s 2nd district. They watched as an enormous hot air balloon, known as The Eagle of Vienna, was launched carrying the director of Lehmann’s Aviation, Christian Lehmann, his daughter Carolina, and the Austrian explorer/naturalist Johann Natterer (1787-1843).

Variant prints are held in the collection of the Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. [see below]

Andreas Geiger (1765-1856), Lehmann’s Luftfahrt mit seinem Riesen Ballon ‘der Adler von Wien’ in Gesellschaft seiner Tochter Carolina und des Herrn Dr. Natterer im Prater am 23. Mai 1846,” [Lehmann’s aviation with its giant balloon ‘the eagle of Vienna’ in the company of his daughter Carolina and Dr. Natterer in the Prater on May 23, 1846]. Etching. A special pictures supplement to the Theaterzeitung (Vienna Theater Newspaper). Harold Fowler McCormick Collection of Aeronautica, Princeton University Library

 

George Washington as a Freemason

One of the many artists to reinterpret Gilbert Stuart’s 1796 portrait of George Washington [above] was Peter Frederick Rothermel (1817-1895) who painted a variant oil on canvas in the 1800s. Engraver Alexander Hay Ritchie (1822-1895) turned Rothermel’s portrait into a rich mezzotint [top right], published in 1852 by R.A. Bachia and Company in New York City and elsewhere. Rather than a gesturing right hand, Washington rests his hand on a generic book.

Book and print seller John Dainty had a shop at 15 S. 6th Street in Philadelphia where he sold decorative oval engravings and portraits of well-known Americans. Dainty published a variation on Ritchie’s mezzotint entitled Washington as a Mason, dressing him in a masonic collar, jewel, and apron. His right hand now holds a book titled Ancient Masonic Constitutions, and his left hand holds a gavel upon a pedestal. The print is not dated but ca. 1860.

A.H. Ritchie after Peter F. Rothermel after Gilbert Stuart, Washington as a Mason, ca.1860. Mezzotint with engraving. George Washington Collection box 3, Graphic Arts

Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Paul Revere were also Masons. Washington entered the Fraternity of Freemasons in 1752 at the age of twenty:

“On Saturday evening, November the fourth, 1752, in the little village of Fredericksburg, in England’s ancient and loyal Colony and Dominion of Virginia, at a regular stated meeting of “the Lodge at Fredericksburg,” held in its Lodge-room, in the second story of the Market-House, Major George Washington was made an Entered Apprentice Mason.” — Proceedings of the right worshipful Grand lodge of the most Ancient and honorable fraternity of free and accepted masons of Pennsylvania: and masonic jurisdiction thereunto belonging, at its celebration of the sesqui-centennial anniversary of the initiation of Brother George Washington into the fraternity of freemasons (Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1902).

See more about Washington’s activities with the Masons: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/freemasonry/

A Red Letter Day

Isaac Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856), The Air Balloon or the Ascension of Drury, April 1821. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection

When actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833) broke a contract with the Drury Lane Theatre and sailed to America in October 1820, actor/manager Robert Elliston (1774-1831) had to come up with an equally charismatic performer or the theater would go bankrupt.

He signed a contract with an unknown nineteen-year-old soprano named Mary Ann Wilson (1802-1867) who made her debut at the Drury Lane on January 18, 1821, as Mandane in Thomas Augustine Arne’s Artaxerxes. She was an immediate sensation and remained there until July 5, singing for about 65 nights. The Morning Post declared that “the unparalleled and highly merited success of the incomparable fair warbler of Drury, has already obtained for her the distinguishing appellation of ‘The Wilson’.”


In advertising her upcoming performance Elliston used red lettering for the first time at a major theater. The Times‘s reviewer wrote “Miss Wilson, who has made her debut at Drury Lane, has not shamed the prologue which announced her. We were sadly afraid, we confess, that Mr. Elliston’s red letters would amount to little or nothing, but we have been agreeably disappointed. The lady is a powerful singer. . .”

No less than King George IV (peeking out on the right) came to see her perform on February 6, 1821 along with his royal brothers, the Dukes of York and Clarence. By April, the theater’s success was so great that Isaac Robert Cruikshank drew this print showing the Drury Lane being lifted out of dependency and the weight of debt by the aria “The Soldier Tir’d of War’s Alarms,” which was Wilson’s climactic song in the third act.

In the print, Elliston is seen waving his hat from the basket and Kean, labeled “the deserter,” performs Richard III far away in America, exclaiming, ‘Twas but a Dream [‘I did but dream’, Richard III, v. iii].

 

Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778), The Soldier Tired of War’s Alarms, Sung in Artaxerxes, Composed by Dr. Arne (New York: J.A. & W. Geib at their Piano Forte Warehouse and Wholesale & Retail Music Store, between 1818-1821).

A General Display of the Arts and Sciences

162 figures have been counted in this monumental engraving composed by Charles LeClerc I and dedicated to Louis XIV. The print has been revised and reused many times, this impression for the 1788 New Royal Encyclopædia. It found its way to Princeton in the Harold Fowler McCormick Collection of Aeronautica assembled by Harold Fowler McCormick, Class of 1896, and given to the library by Alexander Stillman.  See more: Maurice H. Smith, “Travel by Air before 1900,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 27 (1966), pp. 143-147 [ full text],

Charles Grignion (1721-1810) after Sébastien LeClerc (1637-1714), A General Display of the Arts and Sciences, no date. Engraved frontispiece to volume one of William Henry Hall (died 1807), The New Royal Encyclopædia; or, Complete Modern Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, on an improved plan. Containing a new, universal, accurate, and copious display of the whole theory and practice of the liberal and mechanical arts, and all the respective sciences, ... In three volumes…. assisted by other learned and ingenious gentlemen (London: printed for C. Cooke, [1788]).

This was a revision of Le Clerc’s earlier engraving:

Sébastien Leclerc I (1637–1714), L’Académie des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts, 1698. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1962 (62.598.300). http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/387878

After the original pen and ink study:

Sébastien Leclerc I (1637-1714), The Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts, pen and black and grey ink, with grey wash, over red chalk, on two joined pieces of paper, with many smaller pieces inlaid and overlaid, ca. 1698. British Museum

Netherlandish Perspective Views

 

The Graphic Arts Collection is the fortunate new owner of eight 18th-century optical views from The Netherlands, meant to be viewed with a zograscope. These are early hand colored etchings on heavy wove paper without any title printed either above or below the view. Thanks to our donor Bruce Willsie, Class of 1986. Several have a hand-written note taped to the back and others can be identified online. Any additional information would be appreciated.

Can you figure out the reason for the second story hut?

These are not “hold to light” prints, there are no holes or treatment to light up the windows or stars when placed in front of a light. It is possible they were meant to be but never finished, just as the titles have not been printed.

Vue du coté du Port pres la Tour Abbaije à Middelbourg

 


Gezicht van de Oude Waalse-Kerk (Face of the Old Walloon Church), Amsterdam, ca. 1783.

Base-ball

Base-Ball
The Ball once struck off,
Away flies the Boy
To the next destin’d Post,
And then Home with Joy.

Moral
Thus Seamen, for Lucre
Fly over the Main,
But, with Pleasure transported
Return back again.


Now online is a digital copy of Sinclair Hamilton’s: A little pretty pocket-book: intended for the instruction of amusement of little Master Tommy, and pretty Miss Polly. With two letters from Jack the Giant-Killer: as also a ball and pincushion: the use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good boy, and Polly a good girl: To which is added, A little song-book, being a new attempt to teach children the use of the English alphabet, by way of diversion . . . First Worcester edition (Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts: By Isaiah Thomas, and sold wholsesale and retail at his bookstore, MDCCLXXXVII [1787]). 11 cm, 64 woodcuts. Digital: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/jm214s73x. Graphic Arts Collection Hamilton 115s; also in Cotsen Eng 18 8136

Compare Princeton’s copy to the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2003juv05880/?sp=51

This is a reprint of Newbery’s edition originally published in London in 1744; first published in the United States by Hugh Gaine in 1762 as A Little Pretty Book. According to Hamilton, the mention of baseball on p. 43 might be the first. It predates other possible baseball “firsts.”

“The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States was in a 1792 Pittsfield, Massachusetts by law banning the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town meeting house. Another early reference reports that “base ball” was regularly played on Saturdays on the outskirts of New York City (in what is now Greenwich Village) in 1823. …The booming port city of New York had more than 120,000 residents in 1823, according to the census, and its warren of cobblestone lanes had pushed as far north as present-day Canal Street. The Retreat mentioned in the article was a two-acre rural estate that in 1822 became the site of a tavern run by a man named William Jones.– https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-pittsfield-baseball-bylaw-of-1791-what-it-means-940a3ccf08db

It also pre-dates the mention of the first game at The Retreat in New York City. “… articles appeared April 25, 1823; they indicate that some form of the game was even then being called ”base ball” and was played in Manhattan. … The game was played on the west side of Broadway between what is today Eighth Street and Washington Place in Greenwich Village, long before anyone dreamed of putting on a pinstripe uniform.– https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/08/nyregion/baseball-s-disputed-origin-is-traced-back-back-back.html

 

New York Daily Times December 19, 1854: 3.

More on the Gotham Club: http://protoball.org/Gothams_Club_of_New_York

Love in a Village

Charles Grignion (1721-1810) after Francis Wheatley (1747-1801), Love in a Village,1791. Etching and engraving. Proof before lettering. Graphic Arts Collection, recently discovered.

John Bell (1745-1831) commissioned a number of designs for his series Bell’s British Theatre to be engraved as frontispieces. The final print for Love in a Village has the title of the play, quotation and reference: ‘Will you accept of them for youself them / Act 1. Scene [obscured]; above the roundel, partly obscured ‘British Theatre’; below the image ‘Wheatly delin. / Grignion scu. / London Printed for I. Bell British Library Strand Jany. 6th. 1791.’.

“Concurrently with work for Boydell, [Francis] Wheatley was also engaged by John Bell, the publisher, to execute a number of vignettes for the charming little series of “Bell’s Theatre,” and five of these vignettes are by him . . . and the dates extend from 1791-1792. . . . sold for £20, and two small portraits of actresses for 33 guineas.”—William Roberts, F. Wheatley, R.A. His Life and Works (1910)

Love in a Village was a comic opera in three acts composed and arranged by Thomas Arne (1710-1778) with a libretto by Isaac Bickerstaffe (1733-1812), based on Charles Johnson’s 1729 play The Village Opera. It premiered at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden in London on December 8, 1762. The opera was revived numerous times, both during Arne’s lifetime and after, with multiple published versions and visualizations.

“In 1792 Bell’s English Theatre, an amalgam of parts of the Shakespeare and the British Theatre, was published in 14 volumes. After his first bankrupcy in 1793 much of his stock was acquired by James Barker who published the “acting” Shakespeare and sixty plays from the British Theatre in the following year. In 1795-96 Bell was involved in a law suit with George Cawthorn who was eventually awarded all future profits of the British Theatre and was allowed to use “The British Library” on his title pages; c. 1804, Cawthorn was succeeded by John Cawthorn (qq.v.). Bell was bankrupt again in 1797, but his fortunes revived and by his death at the age of 86 he owned a house in Fulham, carriages and horses, as well as a collection of works of art.”

 

Johann Zoffany (1733–1810), A Scene from “Love in a Village” by Isaac Bickerstaffe. Act 1, Scene 2, with Edward Shuter as Justice Woodcock, John Beard as Hawthorn, and John Dunstall as Hodge, 1767. Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art

 

American Revolutionaries by Esnauts et Rapilly

What do these men have in common, besides the same hat?

They are part of a series of portraits of American revolutionary officers, published in Paris during the 1770s by partners Jacques Esnault (1739-1812, also written Esnauts) and Michel Rapilly (1740-1797?), whose shop was located at no. 259 rue Saint Jacques. Each portrait uses the same cartouche with a shield, cannon, and banner, some laterally reversed. Most of the prints held in the Graphic Arts Collection are before the complete caption, signature, or number at the top.

 

The portraits in the Graphic Arts Collection (both catalogued and recently found) include:

Israel Putnam (1718-1790), an American army general officer, popularly known as Old Put, who fought with distinction at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War.

Charles Lee (1732-1782), a general of the Continental Army during the American War of Independence. He also served earlier in the British Army during the Seven Years War.

Horatio Lloyd Gates (1727-1806), a retired British soldier who served as an American general during the Revolutionary War.

George Washington (1732-1799), an American general and the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.

John Hancock (1737-1793) an American merchant and president of the Second Continental Congress.

John Sullivan (1740-1795), an Irish-American General in the Revolutionary War, a delegate in the Continental Congress, Governor of New Hampshire and a United States federal judge.

George Brydges Rodney (1718-1792), 1st Baron Rodney, KB, a British naval officer. He is best known for his commands in the American War of Independence

Robert Rogers (1731-1795), an American colonial frontiersman. Rogers served in the British army during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.

Esek Hopkins (1718-1802), the only Commander in Chief of the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War.

Benedict Arnold (1741-1801), an American military officer who served as a general during the American Revolutionary War, fighting for the American Continental Army before defecting to the British in 1780.

Several prints are complete with the signature of the printmaker “Dupin,” although it is not certain whether this refers to Jean Victor Dupin (born 1718) or Nicolas Dupin (died after 1789) also referred to as Dupin II.

It would not be Pierre Dupin “the Elder” (ca.1690-ca.1751), father of Jean-Victor, as several online sources list. Nicolas is the better attribution but cannot be confirmed.

 

This is the only print in our collection with text engraved in the cartouche.