Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Tag der Druckkunst

Congratulations to our colleagues in Germany for the enormous success of their first “Tag der Druckkunst“ (National Day of Printing Arts) on March 15, 2019. Scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the inclusion of artistic printing techniques in the nationwide directory of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by the German UNESCO Commission, the day included more than 250 events held nationwide.


Their website notes, “Artists, print shops, museums, galleries, art societies and many others contributed to the preservation and development of artistic printing techniques with a multitude of activities and to draw attention to the importance of printing for culture in Germany.” https://www.bbk-bundesverband.de/veranstaltungen/tag-der-druckkunst-15-maerz-2019/veranstaltungen-zum-tag-der-druckkunst/

This follows on the success of a smaller event in 2018: https://www.unesco.de/en/artistic-printing-techniques-relief-gravure-planographic-pressure-printing-and-their-mixed-forms

Germany’s national celebration is not unlike the Fête de l’estampe held each year in France on May 26 in honor of the recognition engravers received from Louis XIV: https://www.fetedelestampe.fr/

Perhaps some year the United States will follow their lead.
https://www.halle365.de/veranstaltung/tag-der-druckkunst

“O António Maria” followed by “Ponto nos II”


O António Maria, edited and directed by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (Lisbon). Complete: Vol. 1, No. 1 (June 12, 1879) to Vol. 7, No. 3 (January 21, 1885)
Ponto nos II, edited and directed by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (Lisbon). Complete: Vol. 1, No. 1 (May 7, 1885) to Vol. 7, No. 293 (February 5, 1891). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Few artists rise to such stature that an entire museum is created in their honor. Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905) is such a talent. The Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro Museum and Library in Lisbon describe him as

“a striking figure of the Portuguese culture of the second half of the 19th century. He was born in Lisbon on Rua da Fé on March 21, 1846 [and] followed the family tradition of a life dedicated to the Arts. An enterprising and multifaceted artist, he has traveled a very personal way, dedicating himself to the graphic arts, plastic arts, ceramics, drawing of objects and decoration, producing a vast work that almost always critically reflects the daily cultural, political and social of the time in that lived.…

Pinheiro was also innovative, developing humorous design and cartoon as an artistic expression. Integrating the circle of intellectuals and artists who defined the Generation of 70 [ also called the Generation of Coimbra]… to show a true portrait of the society of that time. Conscious of the power and strength of the press, he founded several periodicals, using caricature as a vehicle for the defense of his ideals.”

The Graphic Arts Collection has acquired complete runs of two of Pinheiro’s satirical magazines, openly political and focused on changing public opinion against the corruption in the Portuguese government of that period. While extremely popular O António Maria faced opposition from various agencies and in 1884, the government passed new laws, resulting in serious limitations to freedom of the press. Publication of the magazine ended in January 1885.

After several months and a change of title, Pinheiro began once again with Ponto nos II, this time joined by his son, Miguel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro. One reviewer notes: “Ponto nos II goes beyond the erosive action of political caricature. In its pages also there is space for the news, the chronicle, literary activity, the success of exploration trips in Africa, the Portuguese representation at the Paris International Fair.”

An additional note comes from the dealer:

From the middle of 1889, colonial policy, within the framework of the conflict of interests between Portugal and England, is the theme that dominates weekly the pages of Ponto nos ii. In the face of the government’s vacillations before the “English arrogance,” the weekly assumes itself as the mouthpiece of national interests and calls everyone to fight. The allusions to republicans and to the Republic also grow. Political tension and popular outrage roar on every page.

On 31 January, the Republican revolt erupts in Porto, a fact the newspaper Pontos nos ii does not hesitate to analyze in the following numbers: “Cowards!” In February of the following year, the same author will present a more sober reading of the events. It is a true republican manifesto that Ponto nos ii welcomes in its pages. The price of such high courage is not unexpected: the newspaper is suspended.

Thanks to Fernando Acosta-Rodríguez, Librarian for Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies at Princeton University Library for his help with this acquisition.

 

The First Capitol of the United States

The New York Magazine; or, Literary Repository for March 1790 (New York: T. and J. Swords, 1790). One engraving included by Cornelius Tiebout (ca.1773-1832) “Perspective View of the Federal Edifice in the City of New York, engraved for the New-York Magazine,” 1790. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

The New-York Magazine began publication in January 1790 and ran until December, 1797, making it one of the longest running eighteenth-century American magazines. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired a rare issue for March 1790 (Vol.1, No.3).

Each issue included a full page engraving and this particular issue contains a “Perspective View of the Federal Edifice in the City of New York”, also known at that time as the capitol of the United States. During the first two years of George Washington’s presidency, the United States Congress, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, met from March 4, 1789, to March 4, 1791, at Federal Hall in New York City and then, later at Congress Hall in Philadelphia.


New-York Magazine‘s varied content includes the weather report, local marriages and deaths, as well as four pages of “Congressional Affairs,” with reports from Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. Among the topics under discussion were establishing a 24 diplomatic corps, organizing a national militia and considering the request of Yale College that the duties on a lately­ imported “philosophical apparatus” be refunded to the college so as to encourage science.

The magazine listed 469 subscribers at the close of its first volume, George Washington among them and his library at Mount Vernon included at least the first five volumes. Princeton’s issue is signed by John Barron, Broad Street­­, assumed to be the subscriber.

Federal Hall in New York City today.

Tiebout was around eighteen-years-old when he began engraving for the editors Thomas and James Swords, cutting simple copper plates from drawings by Alexander Anderson and others. In 1793 he went to London, where he studied with the printmaker James Heath, returning an expert in stipple engraving. His plate in March 1790 of the New York City Federal Building details the embellishment by Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1788 and the issue opens with an article describing the building at length. It is assumed that the print was originally not bound in but simply laid into the issue and so, exceedingly rare to find it still included.

1933=one cent . . . 2019=one cent

On May 1, 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, The Catholic Worker newspaper made its debut with a first issue of twenty-five hundred copies. Dorothy Day and a few others hawked the paper in Union Square for a penny a copy to passersby.–https://www.catholicworker.org/

Still costing one penny, The Catholic Worker remains one of the best sources for black and white graphic art. Here are a few cuts from a recent issue. Browse or search for additional examples of CW art here: https://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/browse/index.html
Rita Corbin

After realizing she had no interest in advertising, she then studied under printmaker Harold Sternberg at the Art Students league, followed by an apprenticeship with German-born abstract expressionist Hans Hoffman, though her studies with him came to end when she married. But her best art education, she said, came from spending afternoons visiting the art museums and galleries, and walking the streets and riding the subways drawing the ordinary people she saw.

Rita arrived at the Catholic Worker on Chrystie Street at the age of twenty. Although she wasn’t aware of it she was following in the footsteps of Ade Bethune. the first Catholic Worker artist. As Dorothy did with Ade fifteen years previously, she immediately set Rita to work illustrating the paper, and Rita became a life-long contributor as one of the three primary Worker artists along with Ade and Fritz Eichenberg. Of the three, Rita was the only one to have lived at the Catholic Worker, and she also raised five children while being an artist. –“In Memory of Rita Corbin 1930-2011” by Kate Hennessy in The Catholic Worker January 2012

Julie Lonneman

Rita Corbin

Julie Lonneman

June Hildebrand

Brian Kavanagh

The Catholic Worker. Firestone Library Forrestal Annex 0921.247f
Subscriptions
36 East 1st Street
New York NY 10003
Phone: 212-777-9617

Ricketts’s drawings, published and unpublished


[Above] John Byrne Leicester Warren, Baron de Tabley (1835-1895), Poems dramatic and lyrical; with illustrations by C. S. Ricketts (London: E. Mathews and John Lane ; New York : Macmillan and company, 1893). ExC J. Harlin O’Connell Collection 3713.1.1893. “This edition is limited to six hundred copies.”

[Above] Charles Ricketts (1866-1931), Nimrod, 1893. Pen and ink drawing for John Byrne Leicester Warren, Baron de Tabley (1835-1895), Poems dramatic and lyrical; with illustrations by C. S. Ricketts (London: E. Mathews and John Lane ; New York: Macmillan and company, 1893). Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02078

[Below] Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Sphinx; with decorations by Charles Ricketts (London: E. Mathews and J. Lane, 1894). Rare Books 3989.5.386.11. “Limited for England to 200 copies.”

[Below] Charles Ricketts (1866-1931), The Sphinx, 1916. Pen and colored inks drawing, not included in Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Sphinx (London: E. Mathews and J. Lane, 1894). Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02079. The genesis of this drawing is not known. There was no proposed 1916 edition of the Wilde book.

Charles Ricketts has been called the quintessence of the nineties. In his life as much as his work, he embodied not merely an “aesthetic” devotion to art and beauty but also many of the fin de siècle’s finest creative energies. …In London, the writers Oscar Wilde, Michael Field, John Gray, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Sturge-Moore were all eager for Ricketts to decorate their books or design stagings for their plays.

Wilde especially was proud of Ricketts’s involvement in his own work: he once called Ricketts “the subtle and fantastic decorator” of his books. In some respects, Ricketts was Wilde’s collaborator or kindred spirit. His sympathies with Wilde were profound. His designs for Wilde’s The Sphinx mark one of the high points, if not the high point, of late-Victorian book design.”

–selection by Nicholas Frankel, Associate Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, editor of Ricketts’s The Sphinx and author of Oscar Wilde’s Decorated Books and Masking The Text: Essays on Literature and Mediation in the 1890s. http://www.1890s.ca/PDFs/ricketts_bio.pdf


Death’s Arrow

The Christian’s Looking-Glass. In four parts. I. Contemplations on the Life of Man; Shewing his Birth, Progress, and Manner of living, his Thirst after Riches, and sudden Decay from that Vain-Glory. Set forth in a plain and easy Stile, for the instruction both of old and young. II. An excellent Poem on Time; fit to be purused by those who spend their precious Time in voluptuous, sinful, and unnecessary Pleasures. III. Sacred Contentment: Or, The best Companion for an afflicted Mind. IV. Rules out of the Golden Tables of Ptolomy [sic]. Printed and sold at the printing office in Aldermary church-yard, Bow Lane, 1780. Graphic Arts Collection, on deposit from Bruce Willsie, Class of 1986.

This simplified woodcut of death with an arrow is a common symbol in western art. Here are a few more examples.

Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, ca. 1485/1490. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art

 

Willem van Swanenburg, after Maarten van Heemskerck, Allegories of the Misuse of Wordly Property, Plate 4, ca. 1609. Engraving. British Museum

 

Jan van de Velde II, Death with arrow and hourglass, 1633.

 

Thomas Bewick, Fable of the Old Man and Death, ca. 1789. Illustration to an unidentified publication. Wood engraving. British Museum

 

Unidentified artist, The Last Drop, 1778. Etching. Published by Matthew Darly.

 

Wall-painting commemorating Louis, duke of Orléans, in the family chapel at the monastery of Les Célestins, Paris, commissioned in the late fifteenth century and destroyed ca.1779. Antiquarian Gaignières drawing. Bodleian Library, MS Gough-Gaignières 1, fol. 1r.

 

After Francis Hayman, The Bad Man at the Hour of Death, ca. 1784. Hand-colored mezzotint. Published by Carington Bowles. British Museum

 

after Joshua Gleadah, Death and the Dancer, 1800s. Aquatint. Wellcome Library, London.

Les Réverbères

Early in his career, the influential French painter and critic Michel Tapié (1909-1987), editor of Francis Picabia’s 1949 catalog 491 and author of the pivotal study Un art autre (Art of Another Kind, 1952), joined forces with the artist Aline Gagnaire (1911-1997) to produce three issues of a spectacular magazine, under a collective they called “Les Réverbères.”

Printed by hand from woodblocks, the editions are believed to have been around 31 signed copies, although the magazine is so rare it is difficult to verify. The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two of the three issues produced in 1940 wartime Paris. Each issue has it’s own title, here showing Le Cheval de 4, the first issue, and Dédal-e, the second.

Front covers

Michel Tapié (1909-1987); Aline Gagnaire (1911-1997); Jean Jausion; Henri Bernard (1868-1941); Noël Arnaud; Simone Bry; and Adrienne Peyrot, Le cheval de 4 and Dédal-e (S.n. [Paris]: s.l., 1940). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process.

Back covers


According to the Historical Dictionary of Surrealism by Keith Aspley, the “Réverbères” club was founded in 1938 in the painter Jean Marembert’s workshop by Tapié, together with other neo-dadaist writers Jacques Bureau, Pierre Minne and Henri Bernard, who campaigned for the rehabilitation of Dada at impromptu evening parties in the Montparnasse district. With the same objective, they published this typically Dada journal, designed and produced on a small scale.

The pages of each issue are typographical masterpieces, combining literary texts using humor and vibrant color woodcuts. There are magnificent puns and spoonerisms, recapturing the extravagant spirit of the Dada pioneers Tristan Tzara or Marcel Duchamp.

This journal of exceptional visual and literary quality marks one of the last productions of the French artistic avant-garde before the start of the German oppression.



Fire Safety 1828


Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834), Habillement du pompier pour le préserver de l’action de la flamme. Par le Chev. Jean Aldini. Et instruments mis à l’exposition publique honorés d’une médaille en or par le Gouvernement L. et R. de Milan, le 4 Octobre 1828 (Milan de l’Imprimerie Impériale et Royale, [1828]). Hand colored engraved frontispiece. Graphic Arts Collection GAX N-001774

The Italian physicist Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834) is perhaps best-known for his experiments in galvanism and in lighthouse engineering. With this small pamphlet dated 1828, he introduced a protective suit for firemen lined with cloth soaked in alum for the body and asbestos cloth for the face and hands. The outer layer is made of copper wire gauze. A demonstration of the suit’s effectiveness is captured in this hand colored frontispiece, in which a fireman plunges his body into an open flame. In another print, not in this pamphlet, a firemen conducts a mock rescue using the clothing: https://pictures.royalsociety.org/image-rs-11242

The artist of these scenes has been attributed by one source to the French artist Victor-Philippe-Francois Lemoine-Benoit (1800s): https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0317167100003851

This short tract is, as Aldini states on p. 15, a forerunner to a larger work which he proposes to publish the following year. This intended work Essai expérimental sur l’art de traverser les flammes et de sauver des personnes et des objets préc ieux dans les maisons incendiées was published in 1830 as Art de se préserver de l’action de flamme, with five additional engravings, unfortunately only digitized in black and white: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015067197437;view=thumb;seq=1OCLC: 1734256

Giovanni dall’Armi, first lithographic printer in Rome

Alessandro Lante and Nicola Maria Nicolaj. Notificazione sulla facolta privativa di esercitare la nuova arte detta litografia [Notification on the private faculty to practice the new art called lithography]. In Roma, presso Lazarini, stampatore delle rev. Camera Apostolica 1808. Folio (405 x 290 mm) broadside. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this rare broadside published by the authorities of the Vatican State granting a one year privilege to the publisher Giovanni dall’Armi (died 1829) on the exclusive use of lithography as a printing technique on the territory of the Vatican State. This is followed by a concise description of its specification:

La nuova arte detta litografia, (…) consiste in riportare moltiplicate volte dalla pierra o composizione lapidiforme sulla carta ognie specie di segni o immagini, che su quella sieno stati fatti al rovescio con particolari materie, e preparazioni, ed indiricevuta la tinta vengono sottoposti insieme colle carte destinate a rice verli, all’azione della machine di pressione, come distesamente risulta dal Chirografo Pontificio segnato il di 14. Decembre del prossimo passato anno 1807.

This ephemeral document was printed twelve years before the first Italian manual on lithography was published in Florence: Cosimo Ridolfi (1794-1865) and Ferdinando Tartini, Memoria sulla litografia di C. Ridolfi, e F. Tartini (Firenze: Presso Gaspero Ricci, 1819).

In 1905, Giuseppe Fumagalli wrote in Lexicon typographicum Italiae:

Les origines de la lithographie à Rome qui étaient fort obscures, ont été éclaircies par les heureuses trouvailles de mon ami, le Dr. A. Bertarelli, bibliophile aussi savant qu’infatigable dans la chasse aux vieux bouquins, aux anciennes paperasses. Dans la préface du Trattato di lilografia, traduit du français et publié à Milan en 1828, il est dit que la lithographie existait à Rome dès 1807; mais il y a là une erreur grossière. L’introduction à Rome de cet art nouveau est due à Jean Dall’armi, que quelques-uns considèrent à tort comme l’introducteur de la lithographie aussi à Milan et à Venise où, probablement, il n’a jamais été ; et malgré son nom italien, les uns affirment qu’il était de Munich, les autres le croient français: il est probable qu’il était tout simplement italien. Les journaux romains de l’époque nous apprennent seulement qu’il est mort à Rome le 15 décembre 1829, et ces mêmes journaux, en donnant l’annonce de sa mort, confirment qu’il a été le premier fondateur à Rome d’une imprimerie lithographique.

Loosely translated:

The origins of lithography in Rome, which were very obscure, were cleared up by the happy discoveries of my friend, Dr. A. Bertarelli, bibliophile as learned as tireless in the hunt for old books, old paperwork. In the preface to Trattato di lilografia, translated from French and published in Milan in 1828, it is said that lithography existed in Rome as early as 1807; but there is a gross error. The introduction to Rome of this new art is due to Jean Dall’armi, whom some mistakenly consider as the introducer of lithography also in Milan and Venice, where, probably, he has never been; and despite his Italian name, some say he was from Munich, the others think he’s French: he’s probably just Italian. The Roman newspapers of the time only teach us that he died in Rome on December 15, 1829, and these same newspapers, in announcing his death, confirm that he was the first founder in Rome of lithographic printing.

John-a-Dreams


On December 8, 1896, The Daily Princetonian published a short note:

A new magazine which is creating quite a stir among the lovers of current literature is a monthly periodical called John-A-Dreams. This little and attractive magazine was started last June and has been issued monthly since then and its final success is assured by the large sale which it has attained. Its form is novel which adds much to its popularity.

It generally contains several short stories which are marvels for their freshness and simplicity as well as for the pleasing manner in which they are told. Besides this there are in each number several poems which compare favorably with the present day verse. The two departments “The Artistic Standpoint” and “By The Fireside are of especial interest. The former is a series of criticisms which show a keen grasp of the subject at hand. This magazine is edited and published by Robert Sloss of the class of ’93. The cover design, as well as all parts of the magazine, is very artistic. —Daily Princetonian 21, No. 109 (8 December 1896).

John-a-Dreams: A Magazine for the Conservative Iconoclast and the Practical Dreamer, Devoted to Mere Literature and to Classical Typography.

After graduation, Robert T. Sloss (1872-1920, Princeton Class of 1893) moved to Greenwich Village where he formed a partnership with John J. Corell (1873-1954) to found the Corell Press and the monthly magazine John-a-Dreams. Their staff artist and poet was Sloss’ classmate Booth Tarkington (1869-1946, Princeton class of 1893) and the cover image of a dreaming man was drawn by the artist John Sloan (1871-1951), still living in Philadelphia but already a well-known illustrator. At the time, Sloan had left The Philadelphia Inquirer to join the art department of The Philadelphia Press, where he only worked afternoons and evenings, leaving his mornings free to paint and take on other commissions.

While Tarkington was writing one-act plays, his college classmate Robert Sloss launched in Greenwich Village a “little” magazine called John-a-Dreams. The publication appeared only seven times between August, 1896, and May, 1897, but during its short life Tarkington, the unpaid staff artist, contributed prose, poetry, and drawings “The Kisses of Marjorie,” for instance, first appearing there.
…Most of Tarkington’s contributions to John-a-Dreams are unimportant, though they illustrate a poetic preoccupation that began at the age of thirteen and lasted till he was thirty. Throughout the Nineties he composed poems, and only after his first novel was published did he foreswear verse.
…Then he abandoned poetry completely, except when his fictional characters occasionally were moved to lyric expression. Before 1899, however, about two dozen of his poems appeared in print, many in Princeton publications, a handful in the Indianapolis Journal, and three in Sloss’ magazine.

–James Leslie Woodress, Booth Tarkington: Gentleman from Indiana (Philadelphia; New York: Lippincott, 1955).

For more information, the archive of Corell Press is held by Wichita State University: MS 89-20, where they note:

The collection consists of selected material of Sloss (Princeton Class of 1893): correspondence, printed copies of two of his articles, and newspaper clippings. Correspondence includes letters of recommendation for Sloss from Princeton faculty (1891-1893) and other letters from such notables as Edmund Gosse and Theodore Roosevelt, written to Sloss in London when he was a journalist there during World War I. …Most of the correspondence and literary works are attributed to Booth Tarkington; however, some also concern Corell’s magazine, John-a-Dreams. Correspondents include Edward W. Bryant, Robert T. Sloss, Carolyn Wells, Kenneth Brown, St. George Best, and Barton Currie. The collection also contains copies of the little magazine, John-a-Dreams, including its prospectus and inaugural issues.

—http://specialcollections.wichita.edu/collections/ms/89-20/89-20-A.HTML

Booth Tarkington, Tantor Media

John-a-Dreams (New York: Corell Press and the Press of the Classical School (Associated), 1896-1897). Vol. 1. no. 1 (July 1896)- v. 2, no. 6 (June 1897). Rare Books 0901.415 v.1-2, no.5

Everett Shinn, Robert Henri and John Sloan, ca. 1896. Photograph shows the three men in Henri’s Philadelphia studio; a few years later all three had moved to New York. Published in: Archives of American Art Journal v. 19, no. 2, p. 3; v. 35, no. 1-4, p. 99