Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this unabashedly politically incorrect board game, in which people from around the world meet in London at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Caricatures of all races, creeds, and occupations are encountered as players make their way around this ‘game of the goose’ published by William Spooner.

For some reason, this game has 76 squares rather than the typical 63. The central winning square is the Crystal Palace itself with international visitors mingling outside the building.

**Note, square 34 representing the Americans holds a gun that can even shoot around corners. This is a reference to the Hartford inventor Samuel Colt (1814-1862), who brought 500 of his new Colt revolvers to display in the Exhibition.

No artist is identified on the board but the figures are redolent of Richard Doyle’s work, such as his comic An Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition, published the same year.

Artistic skits of the Great Exhibition of 1851: There were, doubtless, many of these— separate publications—in addition to the illustrations in Punch and other journals. I can mention two by distinguished men. 1. Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition, showing a few Extra Articles and Visitors, by Richard Doyle. These sketches were in nine panoramic plates in oblong quarto. 2. The Great Exhibition “Wot is to Be “; or, Probable Results of the Industry of All Nations, by George Augustus Sale. This was a folding panorama, eighteen feet in length, the designs, about 350 in number, being coloured, oblong octave. Not very long since I saw a copy of this, priced 385., in a London catalogue of second-hand books.” –Notes and Queries (March 16, 1889): 206.



Comic Game of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London: William Spooner, 1851). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

See also: Richard Doyle (1824-1883), An Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition: showing a few extra articles & visitors (London: Chapman and Hall, [1851]) Graphic Arts Collection Oversize NE910.G7 D7 1851q

El Show del Niño Burro

El Show Del Niño Burro: Charles Glaubitz. 5 two-color etchings, each printed from an original drawing directly on the zinc plates (Tijuana, B.C.: La Brigada Ediciones, Agosto 2014). No. 16 of 30. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired the portfolio El Show Del Niño Burro by the Tijuana-based artist Charles Glaubitz. Quoting from the wonderful dealer’s note:

The niño-burro (boy-donkey) is a California border character par excellence and has a close relationship with the American comics and illustration. Is not an appropriation of the donkey-zebras of Tijuana, but a remake of the same emblem of the city. It is not a harmless animal that pleases the tourist. It is a controversial character: childhood as a symbol of no domestication, of irreverence and, paradoxically, of candor. In addition to traveling back and forth between San Diego and Tijuana for many years, Charles Glaubitz regularly crosses borders and pushes boundaries in his work.

The Tijuana-based painter, illustrator and graphic novelist has a visual style that employs iconic, cartoonish imagery such as Lucha Libre masks and skeleton-faced Mickey Mouse figures, as well as children in spacesuits and Zonkey costumes (Zonkeys are Tijuana Donkeys painted to look like Zebras). ‘During school, I was exposed to Joseph Campbell who is this scholar and academic who talked about world mythologies and focused not on their differences but on their similarities,’ says Glaubitz, referring to his time at the California College of Arts in Oakland.

How to make a relief line block and a halftone plate (old school)


Here are our worn but still useful teaching progressives for the making of metal relief line blocks and the making of metal halftone plates. These were done many years ago, when we still brushed on acid without a fume hood. The images are fairly high resolution so you should be able to zoom in but here are also a few details.

 

Rockwell Kent design for an invitation done in two color metal relief, sent to Elmer Adler (who did not drink), 1930.

La Comédie française 1680-1880

Arsène Houssaye (1815-1896), La Comédie française 1680-1880 ([Paris: L. Baschet, 1880]). 38 portraits, engraved and photogravure. One of 400 copies. ReCAP Oversize 32261.479.3f


Henri Rousselon (1822-1902) joined the Parisian art publishers Goupil & Cie. in 1860 as director of the photographic division, operating from their print “factory” in Asnieres. At first, the company specialized in albumen silver prints, then Woodburytypes, and finally, Rousselon perfected his own unique technique of photogravure, presented to the Société française de photographie in 1872. Within a year, his Goupil-gravures gained international acclaim as the most luxurious of all photomechanical prints, superbly printed in deep, rich blacks with remarkable detail.


The Goupil Company marked the 200th anniversary of the Comédie française with a luxurious volume of full-length portraits, some actors posing in character (deceased members represented from paintings and prints), along with a text written by the theater’s former director Arsène Houssaye (1814-1896).

Included are Molière, Samson, Geffroy, Regnier, Aug. Brohan, Bressant, Talbot, Got, Delaunay, Maubant, Max. Brohan, Marie Favart, Jouassain, Coquelin, Edile Riquier Febvre, Provost-Ponsin, Dinah Félix, Thiron, Reichenberg, Croizette, Mounet-Sully, Laroche, S. Bernhardt, Barré, Barette, Broizat, Worms, Coquelin cadet, Sarnary, Baron, Mlle Clairon, Préville, Mlle David, Mlle Mars, and two company portraits from 1841 and 1863.

To create the photogravures for this compilation, Rousselon used the negatives by five contemporary photographers, the majority of which are by Count Stanislaw Julian Ostrorog (1830-1890) who went by the moniker Walery (also used by his son). A naturalized British citizen, Walery ran a successful portrait business in Paris until 1878, when he returned to work in London. Although his primary studio was on Regents Street as this project was underway, he undoubtedly traveled as demand for his work required.

Only a few portraits in the volume are by the gregarious Étienne Carjat (1828-1906), who learned to use a camera in 1855 and used it to captured hundreds of award-winning portraits of the leading actors, writers, and artists of Paris (all of whom he called his friends). Carjat shot with various size cameras, including large format glass negatives, which were then used to print both Woodburytypes and photogravures, sometimes many years after the initial capture.

Carjat’s friend Paul Nadar (1856-1939) is also represented with a few portraits, as are Ferdinand Mulnier (1817-1891) and the little-known Charles Klary (born 1837).

 

Ocherki perom i karandashem iz krugosvi︠e︡tnago plavanīi︠a︡

Aleksei Vysheslavt︠s︡ev (1831-1888), Ocherki perom i karandashem iz krugosvi︠e︡tnago plavanīi︠a︡ v 1857, 1858, 1859 i 1860 [Sketches in Pen and Pencil from a Trip Around the World in the Years 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860]. 2nd corrected edition (Saint Petersburg: M.O. Wolf, 1867). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2918- in process.

 

 

Illustrated with 24 tinted lithographs (including the title page seen at the top), this Russian travelogue takes the reader around the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Hawaii, and Tahiti. Vysheslavt︠s︡ev was a doctor sailing around the world from 1857 to 1860, writing and sketching along the way.

He traveled with a military commission inspecting the Russian territories acquired with the Russian-Chinese Treaty of Aigun. The ship returned by way of the Strait of Magellan, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro.

Vysheslavt︠s︡ev’s “Letters from the Clipper Plastun” appeared from 1858 to 1860 in the Russky Vestnik, later known as the Russian Herald, where Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky also published. By 1862, the doctor was back in Saint Petersburg and published his collected letters with lithographs printed from his sketches by from the studio of Paul Petit. This second edition was published five years later by Mauritius Osipovich Wolf (1825-1883) with the same illustrations.

 


Professor Ella Wiswell notes,

“In Montevideo the Plastun had to undergo some repairs, and the author was transferred to the corvette Novik which was also returning from Japan. The transfer saved Vysheslavtsev’s life because the Plastun was sunk by an explosion just as the two ships were approaching the home port of Kronshatdt in Russia.

Only nine members of the 79-member crew were rescued. The cause of the explosion was never determined, but it was suspected that a fire was started by a sailor resentful of ill treatment by the commanding officer. The final page in the book describes the disaster.” https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10524/390/2/JL17076.pdf

 

 

 

 

De la saltation théâtrale

François-Henri-Stanislas de L’Aulnaye (1739-1830), De la Saltation théâtrale, ou Recherches sur l’origine, les progrès et les effets de la pantomime chez les anciens [Theatrical Saltation, or Research on the origin, progress, and effects of pantomime among the ancients] (Paris: Barrois l’aîné, 1790). Graphic Arts Collection 2018- in process

 

While the text of this volume tracing the history of dance and ancient pantomime might be interesting, the main event happens at the end with nine brightly colored plates after those by the Italian antiquarian and connoisseur Francesco Ficoroni.

See also: Francesco de Ficoroni (1664-1747), Le maschere sceniche e le figure comiche d’antichi Romani, descritte brevemente da Francesco de’ Ficoroni ([Roma: nella stamperia di Antonio de’ Rossi, 1736]). Marquand Library GT1747 .F5.

 

The plates are:
1. Moriones fire Macci. Ex Museo Florentino, Nos 1 & 2. Saltator believed to be a Luperce.
2. Parody of the Loves of Jupiter and Alcmene, painted on an Etruscan Vase / Socrates sexercant to the saltation, ex Museo Gerlaex.
3. Scene of Etruscan Mimes. Ex Muso Etrusc.
4. Bouffon mime, Parasite.
5. Mime Bouffon.
6. Bouffon mime, Parasite.
7. Mask of Tragic Pantomime. Our 1 & 2.
8. (1) Triple mask of a Woman, a Viellard and a Jester / (2) Mask of Satyr / (3) Double mask of Socrates and Xantippe.
9. Saltator who holds a sort of bagpipe with three mouths.

 



 

 

Tangu et Félime

 

The writer Jean-François de La Harpe (1739-1803) lived a tumultuous life; orphaned at nine, arrested while still a student, suicide of his first wife, fired from the Mercure, performances that cause scandal, and finally confined to Luxembourg prison where he converted to Christianity. Throughout all this, he wrote plays, literary criticism, poetry, translations, and essays, resulting in nearly 3,000 entries in OCLC.

His poems Tangu et Félime were first published in 1780 by Noël-Jacques Pissot (ca. 1724-1804), with a frontispiece by Clément-Pierre Marillier (1740-1808); and additional engraving by Emmanuel De Ghendt (1738-1815); Jean Dambrun (born 1741); Louis-Michel Halbou (1730-ca. 1809); and Nicolas Ponce (1746-1831) after drawings by Marillier. An English language translation was published in 1928 under the title, Three Gifts. An Arab Love Story, reproducing the same plates



Jean-François de La Harpe (1739-1803), Tangu et Félime: poëme en IV chants. Frontispiece by Clément-Pierre Marillier (1740-1808); and engravings by Emmanuel De Ghendt (1738-1815); Jean Dambrun (born 1741); Louis-Michel Halbou (1730-ca. 1809); Nicolas Ponce (1746-1831) after Marillier. Edited by Noël-Jacques Pissot (ca. 1724-1804) (Paris: Chez Pissot, 1780). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

See: Henri Cohen. Guide de l’amateur de livres a gravures de XVIIIe siecle. Paris, 1912: Marquand Library 0410.261.

 

The Kittens Are Gone to St. Pauls

Between 1888 and 1896, the Boston-based publisher Joseph Knight (1829-1907) partnered with Ernest Edwards (1837-1903), president of the New York Photogravure Company, to publish a series of small gift books illustrated with photogravures. Most were produced in editions of 500 with similar printed paper covers and horizontal formats, selling for around $2.00.

Chicago photographer Mary Ann (Mrs. N. Gray) Bartlett (1846-1913) made three books with Knight, the first in 1892 entitled Old Friends with New Faces. “The most original and genuinely pictorial product of photography we have seen for a long time,” wrote Edward Wilson. “It is a handsomely arranged series of photogravures of children grouped to illustrate Old Friends, the stories of Mother Goose. The New Faces are evidently good friends of the admirable artist, who so deftly caught them here and there in the garden and by the stairs, and so on, for she has made lovely pictures of them.”

“. . . This is no “hand-camera” or “snap-shot” work, but that of a thoughtful, artistic photographer, able to tackle pictures of a good size, and to make them well. . . . The pictures must be on whole-size plates, and they are, every one, technically excellent.”– Wilson’s Photographic Magazine 30, no. 434 (February 1893).

Born Mary Ann McCune, Bartlett married the chemist N. Gray Bartlett (1840-1917) and together they had four children: Greyson, Bertha Madelon, Allyn, and John. It’s Madelon [seen above] who poses for the frontispiece of “Old Friends” dressed up as Mother Goose with a camera and the verse:
A Curtsy
From many a year of sweet repose,
From work of earlier days,
With youth renewed, I’m roused again
By photographic craze.
With shutter, camera and stop,
And trappings not a few,
I’ve ventured forth, my skill to test,
On faces bright and new.
1892 Mother Goose 1719

Both husband and wife became active in the Chicago photography scene, but it was Mrs. Bartlett who rose to prominence among the amateur practitioners. Posing her children and neighbors in the backyard of their stately red brick home at 44 Ray Street, Bartlett took first prize for platinotypes at the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1888 exhibit. By 1890, she is named Director of the Camera Club of Chicago and illustrating stories in St. Nicolas, Outings, Scribner’s, and other national magazines.

In 1893, when the World’s Columbian Exposition came to Chicago, Bartlett was appointed chairman of the committee of the woman’s department of photography for the world’s congress auxiliary. She prepared a second book with Knight, Mother Goose of ’93, to be exhibited and sold in the Woman’s building, the Children’s building and the State of Illinois building.

 

She produced only one more book with Knight and the writer Marian L. Wyatt, called A Girl I Know. The entire narrative centers around her daughter Madelon, now a teenager.

Joseph Knight’s photogravure-illustrated books include:

Bits of Nature: Ten Studies in Photo-Gravure ([Troy, N.Y.: Nims & Knight, 1888]. Marquand Library in process

William Cullen Bryant, An Autumn Pastoral, the Death of the Flowers. With 15 illustrations by the Photogravure Co. after original drawings by C.E. Philips (Boston: Nims & Knight, 1888).

Thomas Gray, Gray’s Elegy and Its Author. Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard with an Introduction and Illustrations from Original Photographs by Dr. J. L. Williams (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1890). 16 photogravures

S. R. Stoddard, Camp Life (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1890). 12 Photogravures.

W.G. Mitchell, Afternoon Tea: Photogravures from Original Photographs ([Boston: Joseph Knight Company, publishers, 1891]). 8 photogravures. Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19Q 74839

Mary A. Bartlett, Old Friends with New Faces. Photographic illustrations by Mrs. N. Gray Bartlett ([Boston, Mass: Joseph Knight Company, 1892]). 10 photogravures. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

Henry Irving, The Drama; Addresses by Henry Irving (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1892).

Bits of Nature: Ten Photogravures of American Scenery. no. 2 (Boston: Joseph Knight, 1893).

Mary A. Bartlett, Mother Goose of ’93 ([Boston, Mass: Published by Joseph Knight Company, c1893]). 10 photogravures. A souvenir of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19Q 30529

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, Song of the Brook (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1893).

William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis; and, A Forest Hymn (Boston: Joseph Knight Co., 1893). 13 photogravures.

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (Boston: J. Knight Company, 1894). 24 photogravures

Mary A. Bartlett and Marian L. Wyatt, A Girl I Know ([Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1894]). Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19 74822

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress, in two volumes (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1895).

Seneca Ray Stoddard, Camp Life: Twelve Photogravures. No. 2 (Boston: Joseph Knight Co., 1895). 12 photogravures

Thomson Willing, Corp Dames of High Degree: being portraits after English masters, with decorations and biographical notes (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1896).

See more about Edwards: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/01/11/picture-periodical-without-letterpress/

Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868-1895)

Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868-1895), The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, Southwestern Colorado: their pottery and implements ([Chicago: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1893]). Western Americana F778.N8q

Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868-1895), Ruiner af klippboningar i Mesa Verde’s cañons / af G. Nordenskiöld; med talrika illustrationer efter originalfotografier af författaren ([Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1893]). Western Americana 2014-0242Q

In his preface, translated by D. Lloyd Morgan and dated August 14, 1893, Swedish geologist Gustaf Nordenskiöld wrote:

The summer and autumn of 1891 I passed in Colorado, engaged upon investigations of the remarkable cliff-dwellings scattered in the canons of an extensive plateau, the Mesa Verde, in the south-west of the State. The present work is the result of those researches. It contains a description of the ruins, an account of the excavations carried out there and of the objects discovered.

In order to trace as far as possible the development of the cliff-dweller culture, I append a survey of the ruins in the South-western States akin to the cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde, a description of the Moki Indians, the descendants of the ancient Pueblo tribes, and an account, based on the relations of the first Spanish explorers, of the manners and customs of the agricultural town-building Indians in the middle of the sixteenth century. A special part of the work is devoted to a description by Prof. G. Retzius of the crania found during the excavations.

In order to give my descriptions of the ruins and of the objects found in them as great objectivity as possible, I have almost exclusively employed in the illustrations direct methods of reproduction. The ruins have been reproduced from my photographs, partly in autotype by Messrs. Angerer & Goschl of Vienna, partly in photogravure at the Librairies-imprimeries Reunies in Paris. The pottery, implements, etc. are heliotyped from photographs of the originals by Mr. Chr. Westphal of Stockholm. 14 August, 1893. G. Nordenskiold.

The photogravures were printed from Nordenskiöld’s own photographs at Librairies-imprimeries réunies. managed by Albert Quantin. The actual printer was probably the heliogravurist Paul Dujardin (1843-1913), who worked for Quantin and other publishers from his shop at 28, rue Vavin.

With thanks to our Lecturer in Visual Arts Fia Backström, here is the translation of the inscription in our volume:
To Gustaf’s teacher,

The assistant at the Royal national archive
Honorary A – Hammarskiöld
with many warm regards
from
Gustaf’s father

A Nordenskiöld.

‘Go wanderers on the road of life.
Your path ahead with quick steps
and measure your goal not your reasons
don’t measure your famn!’

Unpublished cut for “Tales of the Cordelier Metamorphosed”

George Hibbert (1757-1837), editor, Tales of the Cordelier Metamorphosed, as Narrated in a Manuscript from the Borromeo Collection: and in The Cordelier Cheval of M. Piron. With translations ([London: Printed at the Shakespeare Press by W. Bulmer and W. Nicol, 1821]). Graphic Arts Collection Cruik 1821 Robert. and Graphic Arts Collection 2018- in process.

 

The Graphic Arts Collection now holds two of the sixty-four copies printed of Tales of the Cordelier Metamorphosed, with illustrations by Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856). Our new volume seen at the top includes an unpublished Cruikshank cut, presumably rejected by George Hibbert (1757-1837) for the title page. This is Hibbert’s own copy where he kept both side by side.

These are first (and only) editions of the publication, printed for Hibbert, who was a wealthy Jamaica merchant, rare book collector, and an early member of the Roxburghe Club. The text consists of two tales, one a prose novella attributed to Michele Colombo and the other a French verse tale by Alexis Piron (1689-1773).

Hibbert writes to Roger Wilbraham:

The Italian Novel, which I believe to be now for the first time printed, existed, in Manuscript, in the Collection of the late Count Borromeo, of Padua; at the sale of which, in 1817, you made some interesting additions to your already valuable store of Italian Literature; and this manuscript, among other trifles, fell to my lot. It stands entitled, in the catalogue of that Sale, no.250. Novella di Gianni andato al Bosco a far legna, &c &c in 4to, MS, indeita, and it is there, upon what authority I know not, attributed, together with some preceding articles of the catalogue, to Michele Colombo.

It attracted my notice, from its close resemblance in the principal incidents of the story, to ‘Le Cordelier Cheval,’ or, as it is sometimes entitled, ‘Le Moine Bride,’ of Alexis Piron, a tale which I have always esteemed as not the least pleasant of that author’s facetious effusions; and suspecting that Piron, like La Fontaine before him, often gathered his subjects from some older record, I have looked in vain among the earlier novelists, for an original hint of this story. Whether the Italian be really such, or merely an imitation, or whether both the narrations be not borrowed from some preceding collection of facetiae, I will not pretend to determine.

According to Lowndes only 64 copies were printed, presumably distributed only to Hibbert’s friends. Hibbert’s copy has the bookplate of ‘Munden’, indicating the Munden estate, Hertfordshire, which he inherited in 1828. When Hibbert moved out of London in 1829, much of his book collection was sold at auction bringing a total of £23,000. This volume stayed in the family into the 20th century.

The Munden bookplate was engraved by Baron Henry John Fanshawe Badeley (1874-1951). The motto above is Respice, adspice, prospice (Look to the past, Look to the present, Look to the future). Below: Animum ipse parabo (I myself will provide courage).

 

Our first copy was a gift of Richard Waln Meirs, Class of 1888, donated to Princeton University Library in 1913. It has an armorial bookplate of Thomase Gaisford (1779-1855) and a presentation inscription to Philip Bliss (1787-1857) on front free endpaper: “Philip Bliss, British Museum, 1822. Given me by the Translator, George Hibbert, Esq. R. W., to whom Mr. Hibbert inscribes the vol. is Roger Wilbraham.”