Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Engelmann’s lithographic designs for the Bible

Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839), 50 dessins représentant les principaux traits de la Bible (Mulhouse & Paris: de la Lithographie de G. Engelmann, ca. 1824). Graphic Arts Collection.    GAX 2019- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired the first and only edition of this rare set of biblical illustrations by one the pioneers of French lithography, Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839), with 50 plates depicting scenes from the Old and New Testament. The lithographs were, according to the tile page, initially offered in five collections of ten; the 1824 issue of the Journal général de la littérature de France suggests that they “peuvent server à orner toutes les éditions in-8. De l’ancien et du nouveau Testament,” although it is not clear if they were ever put to this use.

These prints are some of Engelmann’s earlier works. Having trained both in Switzerland at both La Rochelle and Bordeaux, he began to study lithography in Munich in 1814, returning the following year to his home city of Mulhouse, where he founded La Société Lithotypique de Mulhouse, followed by a workshop in Paris the following year. Among his contributions to lithographic technique was the development in 1819 of lithographic wash, followed by his pioneering work in chromolithography as details in his 1837 Album chromo-lithographique, ou recueil d’essais du nouveau procédé d’impression lithographique en couleurs, inventé par Engelmann père et fils à Mulhouse.

[10 places to visit today in Mulhouse, including the Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes de Mulhouse: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-top-10-things-to-do-and-see-in-mulhouse/]

See also Engelmann company scrapbooks digitized at Princeton: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/3484zk471

Practical Illustration of the Fugitive Slave Law

E.C. [Sometimes attributed to Edward Williams Clay], Practical Illustration of the Fugitive Slave Law, [1851]. Lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was designed to make it easier for owners of enslaved men and women to recapture those persons who escaped to the North. It affirmed that “fugitive slaves” were the owner’s property and could be redeemed anywhere in the free states. This satirical print, produced in Boston around 1850-51, illustrates the antagonism between Northern abolitionists on the left and supporters of the Fugitive Slave Act, including Daniel Webster (1782-1852) on the right.

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) holds a formerly enslaved woman in one arm and points a pistol toward a burly “slave catcher” on the back of Webster. The slave catcher represents the federal marshals or commissioners authorized by the act to apprehend and return escaped persons to their so-called owners.

Fugitive Slave Act 1850: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp

Section 6: And be it further enacted, That when a person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States, has heretofore or shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States, the person or persons to whom such service or labor may be due, or his, her, or their agent or attorney, duly authorized, by power of attorney, in writing, acknowledged and certified under the seal of some legal officer or court of the State or Territory in which the same may be executed, may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person, either by procuring a warrant from some one of the courts, judges, or commissioners aforesaid, of the proper circuit, district, or county, for the apprehension of such fugitive from service or labor, or by seizing and arresting such fugitive, where the same can be done without process, and by taking, or causing such person to be taken, forthwith before such court, judge, or commissioner, whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner; and upon satisfactory proof being made, by deposition or affidavit, in writing, to be taken and certified by such court, judge, or commissioner, or by other satisfactory testimony, duly taken and certified by some court, magistrate, justice of the peace, or other legal officer authorized to administer an oath and take depositions under the laws of the State or Territory from which such person owing service or labor may have escaped, with a certificate of such magistracy or other authority, as aforesaid, with the seal of the proper court or officer thereto attached, which seal shall be sufficient to establish the competency of the proof, and with proof, also by affidavit, of the identity of the person whose service or labor is claimed to be due as aforesaid, that the person so arrested does in fact owe service or labor to the person or persons claiming him or her, in the State or Territory from which such fugitive may have escaped as aforesaid, and that said person escaped, to make out and deliver to such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, a certificate setting forth the substantial facts as to the service or labor due from such fugitive to the claimant, and of his or her escape from the State or Territory in which he or she was arrested, with authority to such claimant, or his or her agent or attorney, to use such reasonable force and restraint as may be necessary, under the circumstances of the case, to take and remove such fugitive person back to the State or Territory whence he or she may have escaped as aforesaid. In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence; and the certificates in this and the first [fourth] section mentioned, shall be conclusive of the right of the person or persons in whose favor granted, to remove such fugitive to the State or Territory from which he escaped, and shall prevent all molestation of such person or persons by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever.

The Power of Music

Alphonse Léon Noël (1807–1884) after William Sidney Mount (1807–1868), The Power of Music, 1848. Lithograph and watercolor on wove paper, framed. Graphic Arts GAX 2019- in process

Although difficult to photograph through the plexiglass, it is important to note the arrival of this rare American lithograph to the Graphic Arts collection. Special thanks to Steve Knowlton, Librarian for History and African American Studies, for spotting it.

“William Sidney Mount, an American artist born at the beginning of the 19th century, painted this intimate scene of musicality and reflection. His lifetime saw first the emancipation of slaves in his native state of New York and then the universal abolition of slavery during the Civil War. The artist was born in Setauket, a Long Island community located within reasonable commuting distance of the growing metropolis of New York City. While living in the city as a young man, he received formal artistic training at the still-new but already prestigious National Academy of Design. When he returned to Long Island, he maintained close contact with the art world of the city, including its rapidly growing class of patrons and critics.

By the time this compelling image was created, Mount was renowned as one of the pre-eminent painters of genre or everyday life. A man of many talents, he was just as passionately devoted to the art of music as he was to painting. Many of his works quite naturally feature the leisure-time activities of music-making and dancing.

The Power of Music was commissioned by Charles M. Leupp, a prominent businessman and art patron from New York. Finished in 1847, it was displayed the same year at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design. The canvas immediately garnered favorable critical notice and was soon reproduced as a lithograph by the French firm of Goupil, Vibert and Co. In response to the dynamics of an emerging international art market, the print was marketed both in the United States and in Europe.”–Part of “The Image of the Black in Western Art Archive,” at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

To continue reading: http://www.imageoftheblack.com/

William Sidney Mount (1807-1868), The Power of Music, 1847. Oil on canvas. (c) Cleveland Museum of Art

See also Frederick C. Moffatt, “Barnburning and Hunkerism: William Sidney Mount’s “Power of Music,” Winterthur Portfolio 29, no. 1 (1994): 19-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1181449.

Gargantua


Max Unold (1885-1964), Gargantua (Bonn: Graphik-Verlag, 1910). [1] leaf, 3 pages, 20 woodcuts in portfolio. Copy 47 of 50. Inspired by François Rabelais’s novel. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired one of the earliest works of Max Unold (1885-1964). This project led to his first major gallery show in 1912 with the infamous Munich Secession but soon after, Unold aligned himself with the “New Objectivity” group along with Alexander Kanoldt, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Carlo Mense, Franz Radziwill, Georg Schrimpf and others.

In 1913, he was instrumental in the founding of the “Münchener Neue Secession” (also called “Neue Gruppe”) and later, served as the group’s president until they were forced to disband in 1936 at the rise of the German National Socialists. Throughout this period, Unold continued to illustrate and publish fine press editions.

For more on the early movements, see Alicia Faxon, “German Expressionist Prints, A Persistent Tradition,” The Print Collector’s Newsletter 14, no. 1 (March-April 1983): 3-4.

 

See also:
Max Unold (1885-1964), Ghetto. Sieben Erzählungen. Zwölf Steinzeichnungen von Max Unold. Translated by Alexander Eliasbert (München: G.Müller, 1921). Copy 236 of 330. Rare Books Oversize 2299.322

Voltaire (1694-1778), Candid: oder, Der Optimismus: eine Erzählung von Voltaire; mit 12 Holzschnitten und Initialen von Max Unold; [übertragen von Ernst Hardt] (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1913). Copy 11 of 800. Rare Books 3298.323.7

Heinrich Lautensack (1881-1919), Altbayrische Bilderbogen: Prosadichtungen Heinrich Lautensack; mit zehn Original-Holzschnitten und zehn Zeichnungen von Max Unold (Berlin: F. Gurlitt-Verlag, 1920). Firestone 3467.84.312

François Rabelais (approximately 1490-1553?), Les oeuures de m. Francois Rabelais Docteur en Medecine, contenans la vie, faicts & dicts heroiques de Gargantua, & de son filz Panurge: auec la Prognostication Pantagrueline ([Paris? : s.n.], 1553). Rare Books EX 3281.1553 [Books 2, 3 and 4 and the Pantagrueline prognostication have special title-pages, included in paging.]

Louis XVI Threatened by the Mob on Their Visit to the Tuileries

John Sartain (1808-1897) after Denis Auguste Marie Raffet (1804-1860), Louis XVI Threatened by the Mob on Their Visit to the Tuileries. June 20, 1792, ca. 1850. Steel engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

This steel engraving was created by the Philadelphia artist John Sartain, after a work by the French painter Denis Auguste Marie Raffet. It is one of several prints published after Raffet’s design and often confused with others. While Sartain is celebrated for bringing the art of the mezzotint to the United States, this particular print is not (as it has often been listed) a mezzotint.

Mezzotints begin with a printing plate completely covered with marks so that it prints black. Then, the artist smooths out of the marks to reveal highlights and pure whites. In Sartain’s Louis XVI, we see that he is adding blacks on top of very fine, steel engraved lines. Instead of the smooth layers of tone in a mezzotint, we see almost crude lines heavily etched into the steel so they will print as black as possible.

 

Here is an example of a mezzotint plate and print: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2017/04/22/mezzotint-copper-plate-for-orpheus-and-eurydice/

Read more on the execution of Louis XVI: https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/january-2018-execution-louis-xvi

Vogel Totentanz


Sarah Horowitz, Vogel Totentanz. Etchings and design by Sarah Horowitz (Washington: Wiesedruck, 2018). Copy 15 of 40. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

 

The artist writes, “Vogel Totentanz is a bird dance of death alphabet book inspired by Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death woodcut alphabet. After the Black Plague ravaged Europe in the late 14th century, death as inevitable regardless of status or age became a pervasive motif in art and literature.”

“My present-day Totentanz is a reflection of that idea in context of our environmental crisis. Birds are indicator species for overall environmental health and human well-being. The etchings were drawn from specimens at the Cashmere Museum, the Wenatchee Valley College collection, and the Burke Museum in Washington State along with other found remains. Diotima types were used throughout.”

 

“The text was letterpress printed on Zerkall Book paper by Arthur Larson of Horton Tank Graphics. Claudia Cohen boxed and bound the book. The edition numbers forty, including five deluxe copies. The regular edition is bound in a bird-footprint-etching printed blue paper and housed in a slipcase. The deluxe is bound in full leather, enclosed in a box and includes an additional suite of the etchings.”

Der Totentanz by Hans Ganz and Hans Holbein: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23775

William M. Ivins, “Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death”: https://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3254072.pdf.bannered.pdf

Which is larger: Double Elephant or Grand Eagle?

Size is relative. John James Audubon (1785-1851) liked to include insects and other small animals to put the size of his birds in context, such as this White Heron and red lizard.

 

It is often written that Audubon used the largest paper available for his Birds of America but in fact, the “double elephant” was only one of several Imperial size papers made at that time.

Below this plate from Birds is compared to a plate from the Description de l’Égypte and suddenly, it’s not quite so big.

 

It is a tragedy that libraries only measure and record the binding size, with no regard to the paper size (except for a note that the edges have been trimmed). Prints and drawings curators, on the other hand, measure the plate mark, the sheet, and the support (meaning a binding, a mat, or a frame). While many collections around the world regard both Birds and Description as “Double Elephant,” in fact the atlas of Description is closer to the “Grand Eagle” size.

Here are two of the many charts delineating paper sizes:


https://paper-size.com/c/imperial-sizes.html

 

By the way: While both Birds and Description were created in the early 19th century, both were acquired by Princeton in the early 20th century:

Description de l’Égypte, ou, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l’empereur Napoléon le Grand (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1809-22). 8 v. in 9: 41 cm; and atlas of 14 v. (73-110 cm.). Rare Books Oversize EX 1821.358e. The Princeton copy is “… the deluxe printing. Penciled in the margins of several of the astronomical line drawings is the name, comte de Pourtalès. …[I}n 1865 [this copy] was sold. Together with other works on Egypt and the ancient Near East, the set was presented to Princeton University in 1921 by the sons of Ralph E. Prime, Jr., of the Class of 1888, after the latter’s death. He had inherited it from a great-uncle, William Cowper Prime (1824-1905), of the Class of 1843. It was evidently he who acquired [this copy] at the Pourtalès sale or soon afterwards.”– Charles C. Gillispie, Monuments of Egypt (1987), p. 42.

John James Audubon (1785-1851), The Birds of America: from original drawings by John James Audubon ... (London: Pub. by the author, 1827-38). 4 v. CCCCXXXV col. pl. 100 cm. Rare Books Oversize EX 8880.134.11e. The Princeton copy “was presented … in 1927 by Alexander van Rensselaer (Princeton, class of 1871), a charter trustee of the University. It had formerly belonged to Stephen van Rensselaer (Princeton, class of 1808) of Albany, New York, one of the original subscribers to the work. The latter’s name appears as no. 32 in Audubon’s list of subscribers.” — Howard C. Rice, An Aububon Anthology, page 16.

 

Trumpeter Swan

This Swan feeds principally by partially immersing the body and extending the neck under water, in the manner of fresh-water Ducks and some species of Geese, when the feet are often seen working in the air, as if to aid in preserving the balance. Often however it resorts to the land, and then picks at the herbage, not sidewise, as Geese do, but more in the manner of Ducks and poultry. Its food consists of roots of different vegetables, leaves, seeds, various aquatic insects, land snails, small reptiles and quadrupeds. The flesh of a cygnet is pretty good eating, but that of an old bird is dry and tough.

—https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/trumpeter-swan

Virginia Zabriskie, 1927-2019

In 1954, Virginia Zabriskie paid one dollar to assume the lease of the gallery space on the second floor of 835 Madison Avenue.

My favorite story about the art dealer Virginia Zabriskie (1927-2019) involves her continuing concern and support for her aging colleague, the American art dealer Charles Daniel (1878-1971), who ran the Daniel Gallery in New York City from 1913 to 1932.

During the 1950s and 1960s few members of the art world even knew that Daniel was still alive, let alone cared how he survived. The exceptions were Zabriskie and the painter Rachael Soyer (1899-1987), who was given his first one-man show at the Daniel Gallery in the 1920s. Working together, Zabriskie and Soyer came up with a plan to quietly provide the impoverished Daniel with a small income.

Every so often, Soyer would invite Daniel to visit him in his Second Avenue apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After coffee and cigarettes, Soyer would casually hand Daniel a few drawings, “just in case he might know someone who would be interested.”

Daniel would immediately go up to see Zabriskie, who handled Soyer at her Madison Avenue gallery, just ten blocks north of where the Daniel Gallery once displayed his work. She would pretend to barter with Daniel, eventually settling on $25 or $30 for each sheet. Both the artist and the dealer understood the arrangement, kindly allowing Daniel this ritual and much needed financial support.

Charles Daniel died in 1971 at the age of 92 years old. Virginia Zabriskie recently passed away two months short of her 92nd year. Perhaps it was their love of art and sincere patronage of the New York art world that kept them both alive so long.

See also: https://www.nysun.com/arts/handmaiden-of-the-arts/10389/

Italy: a Poem


The Graphic Arts Collection holds 25 engravers’ proofs for: Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), Italy: a Poem (London: Cadell, Jennings and Chaplin, Moxon, 1830). Graphic Arts Collection 2006-0971N; Rare Books PR5234 .I7 1830; RHT 19th-398.

The steel engravings are equal in size (plate mark: 259 x 141 mm; paper: 295 x 185 mm) and description to the set of proofs in the British Museum, some finished with engraved captions, some without. The scenes were designed by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) and Thomas Stothard (1755–1834); and engraved by Edward Goodall (1795–1870), Robert William Wallis (1794–1878), W. R. Smith (active 1826–1852), Henry LeKeux (1787–1868), William Bernard Cooke (1778–1855), and John Pye (1782–1874). Book pages were printed by Thomas Davison.

 

 


“Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) first achieved fame with the publication in 1792 of “The Pleasures of Memory.” After Italian travels, during which he met Shelley and Byron in Pisa, Rogers produced a first version of “Italy” in 1822 and issued a sequel in 1826, both of which sold poorly.

He destroyed the unsold copies, revised the poems, and published them at his own expense in the present edition of 1830 embellished this time by illustrations.

These were the work of two artists with very different propensities–Stothard (1755-1834), who did demure figure scenes, and Turner (1775-1851), who provided landscape vignettes.”

 

 

IF thou shouldst ever come by choice or chance
To Modena, where still religiously
Among her ancient trophies is preserved
Bologna’s bucket (in its chain it hangs
Within that reverend tower, the Guirlandina),
Stop at a palace near the Reggio gate,
Dwelt in of old by one of the Orsini.
Its noble gardens, terrace above terrace,
And rich in fountains, statues, cypresses,
Will long detain thee; through their archèd walks,
Dim at noonday, discovering many a glimpse
Of knights and dames, such as in old romance,
And lovers, such as in heroic song,
Perhaps the two, for groves were their delight,
That in the springtime, as alone they sat,
Venturing together on a tale of love,
Read only part that day.—A summer sun
Sets ere one half is seen; but ere thou go,
Enter the house—prythee, forget it not—
And look awhile upon a picture there.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044011790979;view=thumb;seq=11

Race, Gender, and Anatomy

Most early anatomies focused their attention on the white male body, with female dissection included only to illustrate the stages of childbirth. Non-white cadavers might have been less expensive but were not considered proper models for published medical atlases.

When the practice of hands‐on anatomical dissection became popular in United States medical education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, demand for cadavers exceeded the supply. Slave bodies and thefts by grave robbers met this demand. Members of the public were aware that graves were being robbed and countered with various protective measures. …Slave owners sold the bodies of their deceased chattel to medical schools for anatomic dissection. Stories of the “night doctors” buying and stealing bodies became part of African American folklore traditions. The physical and documentary evidence demonstrates the disproportionate use of the bodies of the poor, the Black, and the marginalized in furthering the medical education of white elites.

–Halperin EC. “The Poor, the Black, and the Marginalized as the Source of Cadavers in United States Anatomical Education,” Clin Anat. 2007; 20:489–495.

 

One significant except was Joseph Maclise’s Surgical Anatomy, first published in 1851 with 35 partially colored lithographic plates, followed by a revised and enlarged second edition in 1856, containing 52 plates. The lithographs were printed by M. & N. Hanhart lithographers, founded by Michael Hanhart, and the volume published by John Churchill, a medical bookseller in Soho.

Two plates [above] feature an adult African Englishman, “Two heads of men, showing dissection of muscles and blood-vessels of the subclavian region of the chest” and “Dissection of the trunk of a seated black man, showing major blood-vessels.” Although female models are illustrated, their faces are always obscured.

 

The Irish artist, Joseph Maclise (ca.1815-1880) was a younger brother of the painter Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), with whom he sometimes shared a house in Bloomsbury and Chelsea when they were both in London. Joseph was both a professional surgeon and artist, illustrating a number of medical texts.

 


Joseph Maclise (ca.1815-1880), Surgical Anatomy (London: Churchill, 1856). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process