Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

The Bathos

William Hogarth (1697-1764), Tailpiece, or The Bathos, 1764. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection

There was a reference question this week concerning Hogarth’s last print, The Bathos, which is filled with all manner of images denoting the end of life as we know it. This led to a close reading, following entry no.216 in Ronald Paulson’s catalogue raisonne Hogarth’s Graphic Works, 3rd revised edition.

Paulson writes “This print is the culmination of such pessimistic images . . . . [taking] his general composition, the configuration of objects, and some of the particular items, from Dürer’s engraving, Melancholia; but he also recalls Salvator Rosa’s Democritus in Meditation (which derives from Dürer’s print) with a scroll at the bottom of the etching: ‘Democritus the mocker of all things, confounded by the ending of All Things’ (Antal, p.168).”

below left: Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I, 1514. Engraving. Princeton University Art Museum, x1952-1

below right: Salvator Rosa, Democritus in Meditation, Etching. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012.136.848

“But,” Paulson adds, “Roubiliac’s Hargrave Monument (Westminster Abbey, 1757), with crumbling pyramid and Time himself breaking his scythe across his knee, must have been Hogarth’s primary inspiration.”Louis François Roubiliac, Monument to General William Hargrave, 1757. Photographic detail, Courtauld Institute of Art.

 

Hogarth includes several references to his own print The Times, including the entire sheet [seen above] catching on fire from a burning candle. Below we see a globe also on fire, as it is in the far right of The Times.


William Hogarth (1697-1764), The Times, plate 1, 1762. Engraving and etching. Graphic Arts GA113.

 

Paulson continues, “In the far distance is a sea with a sinking ship and a gallows on the shore (for hanging pirates). Above in the sky is Apollo and his horses dead, his chariot wheel broken, a limp parody of the group in Poussin’s The Kingdom of Flora.”

 

Nicolas Poussin, L’Empire de Flore, 1594. Oil on canvas. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden

 

Time’s “last will and testament reads: ‘all and every Atom thereof to [name crossed out; beneficiary changed to ] Chaos whom I appoint my sole Executor. Witness Clotho. Lachesis. Atropos’ (the three Fates, with their seals).

Behind him lies a statute of bankruptcy with a pendant seal (a pale horse and pale rider, probably Death, on it), labeled “H. Nature Bankrupt”; and an empty purse. A playbook open to its last page and Exeunt Omnes” [This is a stage direction to indicate that all the actors leave the stage].

 


Hogarth’s Graphic Works / compiled and with a commentary by Ronald Paulson. 3rd rev. ed. (London: Print Room, 1989). Graphic Arts: Reference Collection (GARF) Oversize ND497.H7 A35 1989q

See also: https://rbsc.princeton.edu/hogarth/

 

Printed in Blue

Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635), La Secchia Rapita [The Captured Bucket]. Poema Eroicomico di Alessandro Tassoni Patrizio Modenese. Colle dichiarazioni di Gaspare Salviani, Romano. S’Aggiungono la Prefazione, e le Annotazioni di Giannandrea Barotti, Ferrarese; e la Vita del Poeta Composta da Lodovico Antonio Muratori Bibliotecario del Serenissimo Signor Duca di Modena (Modena: Bartolomeo Soliani Stamp. Ducale, 1744). Provenance: book plate of Marco di Carrobio. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process.

The War of the Oaken Bucket began late in 1325, when Malatestino dell Occhio, Lord of Rimini, led the Bolognese from Florence and Romagna to the fort at Monteveglio (12 miles west of Bologna) to regain a bucket of treasure stolen by the Modenese.
— https://www.warhistoryonline.com/military-vehicle-news/aerosan-war-sleds-red_army.html

Nearly three hundred years later in 1622, Tassoni published a mock-epic poem called La Secchia Rapita, which has also been translated as The Rape of the Bucket or The Stolen Bucket. Many translations and new edition followed, including two in 1744. The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired the larger of the two, called “stimmatissima edizione” and “belle edition,” and one of the few copies with the plates printed with blue ink.


“The poem is pervaded by an exuberant, satirical, and often brilliant humor. There are passages in which the humor is sustained and cumulative, and others in which an apparent seriousness finds its climate in a sudden hilarious absurdity” (Ernest Hatch Wilkins (1880-1966), A History of Italian Literature (1974) (F) PQ4038.W5 1974 pp. 298-9).

Based on the life of Alessandro Tassoni by Muratori, this edition includes a commentary by Giovanni Andrea Barotti, and notes by the author written under the pseudonym Gaspare Salviani.

Many of the best artists of the period worked on this publication, including engravings by Giuseppe Benedetti (1707-1782); Andrea Bolzoni (1689-1760); Francesco Zucchi (1692-1764);
and Antonio Zuliani from designs by Bartolomeo Bonvicini; Domenico Maria Fratta (1696-1763); Pietro Gradici; and Francesco Villani, among others.

“Intaglio colour printing developed only gradually before 1700. Monochrome colour-printed engravings and etchings appear regularly from the fifteenth century, and some experiments with polychrome intaglio printing date from the time that chiaroscuro woodcut emerged en force in the 1520s…. The reasons for monochrome colour printing may have ranged from practical, such as to distinguish designs for goldsmiths (printed in yellow-brown) from those for silversmiths (printed in blue), to commercial, making the prints more attractive to collectors. — “Colour Printing in intaglio before c.1700,” in Printing Colour 1400-1700: History, Techniques, Functions and Receptions (2015).

 

See also:
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), The Rape of the Lock: an Heroic-Comical Poem in Five Canto’s [sic]. 2nd ed. (London: Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1714). Rare Books (Ex) 3897.374.11

Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635), La Secchia Rapita; Poema Eroicomico … con le dichiarationi del sig. Gasparo Salviani [pseud.] el primo canto dell’ oceano nell’ vltimo corretti con gli originali (Bologna: Per G. Longhi [1670]). Editor: Paulino Castelucchio. Rare Books (Ex) 3138.01.38

The Last Judgment in Twelve Plates

Detail

Detail

Detail

 

[above] Pieter de Jode I (1570–1634) after the painting by Jean Cousin the Younger (ca. 1522–1594). Iudicÿ uniuersalis paradigma Sacrae Scripturae testimonijs confirmatum = Pourtraict du Iugement Vniuersel confirmé des tesmoignaiges de l’Escripture Saincte. Engraved in 12 plates. Published in Paris by P. Drevet aux Galleries, [First issued in 1615; this impression between 1726 and 1738]. Hollstein IX.204.83. Graphic Arts Collection 2017- in process

[below] Jean Cousin the Younger, Last Judgment, ca.1585. Oil on canvas, 145 x 142 cm. Musée duLouvre, Paris

Born in Antwerp, Jode studied with Hendrick Goltzius and matriculated into the Guild of St Luke. His 12 engraved sheets (9 image and 3 text) after Cousin’s Last Judgment (Louvre), were first issued in 1615, dedicated by Guilielmus Wittenbroot to King Louis XIII of France, and approved by the canon and censor Lawrence Beyerlinck of Antwerp.

The framed set of prints recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection was printed later from the original plates, acquired by the print publisher and graveur du Roi Pierre Drevet (1663-1738). Between 1703 and 1726 Drevet’s shop was located on the rue Saint-Jacques, after which he was granted lodgings in the Palais du Louvre. Our impression is inscribed “A Paris Chez Drevet rue St. Iacques a la Nonciation Avec Privilege du Roy” in the lower center of image and dates from after 1726.

 

 

See also: Recueil des oeuvres choises de Jean Cousin, peinture, sculpture, vitraux, miniatures, gravures à l’eau-forte et sur bois, reprodutes en fac-similé par MM. Adam et St. Pilinksi, Aug. Racinet, Lemaire, Durand et Dujardin (quarante-et-une planches, dont quatre en couleurs) et publiées avec un introduction par Ambroise Firmin-Didot (Paris: Firmin Didot, Frères, fils et ct cie, 1873). Marquand Library (SA) Oversize ND553.C825 D48f

Also engraved by Pieter de Jode I: Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), Metamorphoseon, siue, Transformationum Ouidianarum libri quindecim, æeneis formis ab Antonio Tempesta Florentino incisi, et in pictorum, antiquitatisque studiosorum gratiam nunc primum exquisitissimis sumptibus a Petro de Iode Antuerpiano in lucem editi (Amsterodami, Wilhelmus Ianssonius excudit [1606?]). Rare Books (Ex) NE662.T45 O94 1606


Text in French and in Latin.

A previous owner of the set now at Princeton framed the 9 image plates reproducing The Last Judgment, leaving the 3 text plates in a separate mat. Other sets, such as the one in the Bibliothèque nationale de France [below] are framed with the text included.

 

 

Aquatints by Alexandre Alexeïeff

Léon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947), Poëmes. Eaux-fortes en coleurs par Alexeieff ([Paris]: Librairie Gallimard, [1943]). Copy 61 of 136. Graphic Arts GAX 2017- in process

 


The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired another volume with aquatints by Alexandre Alexeïeff (1901-1982).

The Russian artist emigrated to France after the Russian Revolution and went on to animate films, design sets, and beginning in 1926, illustrate books by Poe, Baudelaire, Andersen, Hoffman, Tolstoy, Pasternak and Malraux, among others.

In her thesis (Universiteit Utrecht 2012), Bregje Hofstede lists 50 books with prints by Alexeïeff (file:///C:/Users/JULIEM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/Alexander%20Alexeieff%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Illustration-1.pdf)

The chronological list below may not be complete. Titles with an asterisk have only been illustrated with a frontispiece.

 

Soupault, Philippe, Guillaume Apollinaire (Marseille: Éditions Les Cahiers du Sud, 1926).* – Giraudoux, Jean, La Pharmacienne (Paris: Éditions des Cahiers Libres, 1926). – Giraudoux, Jean, Siegfried et le Limousin (Paris: Aux Aldes, 1927). – Gogol, Nicolai, Le journal d’un fou (Paris: Schiffrin / Éditions de la Pléiade, 1927). Second edition: London, Cress Press Limited, 1929. – Hémon, Louis, Maria Chapdelaine. Récit du Canada Francais (Paris: Éditions du Polygone, 1927. – Maurois, André, Les Anglais (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1927).* – Maurois, André, Voyage au pays des Articoles (Paris: Schiffrin / Éditions de la Pléiade, 1927). – Genbach, Jean, L’Abbé de l’abbaye, poèmes supernaturalistes. (Paris: Tour d’ivoire, 1927). – Soupault, Philippe, Guillaume Apollinaire, ou Reflets de l’incendie (Marseille: Les Cahiers du Sud, 1927).* – Morand, Paul, Bouddha Vivant (Paris: Aux Aldes / Grasset, 1928). – Pouchkine, Alexandre, La dame de pique (Paris: J. E. Pouterman Éditeur, 1928). Second edition: London, the Blackmore Press, 1928. – Kessel, Joseph, Les Nuits de Sibérie (Paris: Flammarion 1928). – Perrault, Charles, Contes (Paris: Hilsum 1928).* – Green, Julien, Mont Cinère (Paris: Plon, 1928).* – Apollianaire, Guillaume, Les épingles (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928).* – Soupault, Philippe, Le roi de la vie (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928).* – Bove, Emmanuel, Une Fugue (Paris: Éditions de la belle Page, 1928).* – Green, Julien, Adrienne Mesurat (Paris: Les Exemplaires, 1929). – Perrault, C., Les Contes de Perrault. Édition du Tricentenaire. Illustrés par 33 graveurs (Paris: Éditions Au Sans Pareil, 1928). – Giraudoux, Jean, Marche vers Clermont (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928).* – Poe, Edgar Allan, Fall of the House of Usher (Paris: Éditions Orion, 1929). Second edition: Maastricht, Stols, 1930. – Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Les frères Karamazov (Paris: la Pléiade / Schiffrin, 1929). – Kessel, Joseph, Dames de Californie (Paris : NRF, 1929).* – Poe, Edgar Allan, translated by Baudelaire, Colloque entre Monos et Una (Paris: Orion, 1929). – Delteil, Joseph, On the River Amour (New York: Covici, 1929). – Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, Les recites de feu Ivan Pétrovitch Bielkine (Maastricht/Bruxelles: Stols 1930). – Fargue, L.-P., Poèmes (Paris: NRF Gallimard, 1931). – Fournier, Alain, Le Grand Meaulnes (Paris: Éditions de Cluny, 1931).* – [?] Louys, Pierre, Les Chansons de Bilitis (Paris: Cluny, 1933). – Baudelaire, Charles, Petits poèmes en Prose (Paris: Société du Livre d’Art, 1934). – Cervantès, Don Quichote, 1936. Published without text by ArtExEast, Geneva, 2011. – Andersen, Hans Christian: Images de la Lune (Paris: Maximilien Vox, 1942). – Afanas’ev, Aleksandr, Russian Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945). – Soupault, Philippe: Journal d’un Fantôme (Paris: Éditions du Point du Jour, 1946).* – Tolstoy, Leo, What Men Live by: Russian stories and Legends (York: Pantheon Books, 1943). – Soupault, Philippe, Message de l’île déserte (Den Haag: Stols, 1947).* – Blake, William, Chants d’innocence et d’expérience (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1947).* – Soupault, Philippe (transl.), Chant du Prince Igor (Rolle: Eynard, 1950). – Chekov, Anton, Une Banale Histore, suivie de: La Steppe – Goûssev – Vollôdia (Paris Imprimerie Nationale / André Sauret, 1955).* – Flaubert, Gustave, Premières Lettres à L.C. (Paris: Les Impénitents, 1957).* – Pasternak, Boris, Dr Zhivago (Paris: Gallimard, 1959). Second edition by Pantheon Books. – Hoffmann, Ernst Theodore Amadeus, Contes (Paris: Club du Livre, 1960). – Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Gambler & Notes from the Underground (New York: Heritage Press / Limited Editions Club / Sign of the Stone Book, 1967). – Malraux, André, Oeuvres (Paris: Rombaldi, 1979). – Malraux, André, La Tentation de l’Occident (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Malraux, André, La Condition Humain, (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Malraux, André, La Voie Royale (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Malraux, André, Les Noyés de l’Altenbourg (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina (Paris: Rigal, 1995 / Librairie Nicaise, 1997). – Alexeïeff, Alexandre, Album de 120 eaux-fortes et Aquatintes de A. Alexeïeff (Paris: Ateliers Rigal-Bertansetti, 1997).

Extra Extra George Cruikshank

Thanks to the help of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired an enlarged and extra-illustrated copy of Blanchard Jerrold (1826-1884), The Life of George Cruikshank (London: Chatto and Windus, 1880 (1882)). These four folio volumes are packed with 1,052 additional hand-colored etchings, engravings, portraits, map, letters, drawings, watercolors, and other significant works highlighting and elaborating on the original text.

The Life of George Cruikshank is not an uncommon book, Princeton has several. The text was prepared four years after Cruikshank’s death in 1878 as an homage to the artist. Extra-illustrated versions are also included in our collection but they do not compare to our new acquisition.

Previously, the largest volume in Princeton’s collection was comprised of two octavo books (as published) with 78 additional plates. Our new acquisition is three times the size with extra material from the whole of Cruikshank’s oeuvre, beginning with his earliest caricatures to his book illustrations (especially Dickens) to his obsession with Temperance, including such series as Monstrosities (Fashion), Oliver Twist, Hunting Stories, The Bottle, Drunkard’s Children and many others. Several prints are signed by Cruikshank in pencil and there are frequent notes concerning their rarity.


There are many plates of London views and haunts; portraits of the Royal family and leading celebrities; playbills and posters for theater productions; along with many prints by Cruikshank’s family and colleagues, such as Thomas Rowlandson, Isaac Cruikshank, James Gillray, Robert Cruikshank and others.

There are seventeen manuscripts and signed items including autograph letters by George Cruikshank, Ruskin, Jerrold, Crowquil, and others. One letter has been attributed to Guy Fawkes.

Note the added borders on the lower print.

 


Extra-illustrated books are receiving attention from a new generation of scholars. A major conference is planned for next spring at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany along with a special issue of the journal Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte on the subject.

In his study of the history, symptoms, and cure of a fatal disease caused by the unrestrained desire to possess printed works, Thomas Frognall Dibdin observes that “[a] passion for a book which has any peculiarity about it,” as a result of grangerising by means of collected prints, transcriptions, or various cutouts, “or which is remarkable for its size, beauty, and condition—is indicative of a rage for unique copies, and is unquestionably a strong prevailing symptom of the Bibliomania.”

Holywell Street

These volumes join Princeton University Library’s collection of over 1000 of Cruikshank’s caricatures and over 100 of his drawings, collected by Richard Waln Miers, Class of 1888. Thanks to our Friends, these new materials enhance an already great collection, bringing added rewards to our students and to scholars worldwide.

Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur

James Sayers (1748-1823), Illustrious Heads designed for a new History of Republicanism, in French and English, dedicated to the Opposition.1794. London: Hannah Humphrey. Lettered with both titles and “JS / Published 12th May 1794 by H.Humphrey No.18 Old Bond Street.” 9 etchings on wove paper. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

An example of a print with and without a liberty cap

On May 12, 1794, Hannah Humphry’s Old Bond Street print shop released a set of satirical prints by James Sayers (1748-1823) titled “Illustrious Heads.” The eight portraits and a cover sheet were “dedicated to the Opposition,” transforming eight prominent British politicians into French patriots, with new names and the “bonnet rouge” (liberty cap). “Mutato nomine de te Fabula Narratur,” = “Change the name and the joke’s on you [or the story is about you].”

The title sheet features a satyr sitting on a pile of books, who warns, “If the cap fit put it on,” and then adds, “The work will not be compleat till all the heads are taken off.”

Collectors took the set home and cut out the hat (making that sheet extremely rare), so that it could be put on each of the illustrious heads. Princeton’s newly acquired set is complete except for the cap, which is a facsimile.

The Sayers entry in the Dictionary of National Biography notes,

“From 1783 onwards, for several years, he drew a series of caricatures, . . . mainly upon Fox, but subsequently upon Burke and other opponents of Pitt. These caricatures . . . were so powerful and direct in their purpose that Fox is said to have declared that Sayers’s caricatures did him more harm than all the attacks made on him in parliament or the press.”

The set includes these British figures, renamed after their French counterpart:

Charles James Fox (1749-1806) = Maximilien de Robespierre (1758-1794)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) = Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841)

Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Stanhope (1753-1816) = Anacharsis Cloots (1755-1794)

James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839) = Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793)

John Courtenay (1738-1816) = Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794)

Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818) = Pierre Philippeaux (1754-1794)

William Petty, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne (1737-1805) = Bernard-François, Marquis de Chauvelin (1766-1832)

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 4th Duke of Grafton (1735-1811) = Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d’Orléans (1747-1793)

 

Le Magasin charivarique

Le Magasin charivarique. Musée comique, magasin de charges et de caricatures [The Charivaric Store. Museum of Comics, a store of cartoons and caricatures] (Paris, 1834). Full page prints by Honoré Daumier, Benjamin, Grandville, and others. From the collection of Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow; purchased from Goodspeed’s Book Shop; previously owned by William M. Ivins, Jr., former curator of the Department of Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process.

A ministerial newspaper editor

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a complete set of Le Magasin charivarique, comprised of two parts in three volumes. The first volume includes nine lithographs by Honoré Daumier (D. 219, 220, 223, 224, 225, 229, 231, 234 and 237). The second volume (issued in two parts, plates 1-19 and 20-37) containing 14 ‘chalk-plate’ prints (Bouvy 23-36).

“The only large cuts that Daumier made, aside from two or three odd ones like Le Carnaval and Le Compliment, that came out in the Charivari, are the series of ‘chalk plate’ caricatures that the Charivari published in the early 1830s, many of which subsequently appeared, printed carefully on one side only of good paper, in the Magasin Charivarique . . . In certain ways, these two series exhibit him at the height of his prowess. For sheer brutal dominant power of presentation there are few things to be found in the history of the relief print finer than a number of the early chalk plates” –William Ivins, “Daumier,” in The Colophon, part V, 1931.

 

Inside front cover.

When the vessel is full, it overflows. Monseigneurs, take care.

 

A caricature of the French magistrate Nicolas Martin du Nord (1790-1847) as a bear climbing a tree labeled conspiracy “to earn his living.”

 

 

Every Building on the Thames Strip

John Heaviside Clark, Panorama of the Thames from London to Richmond (London: Samuel Leigh, ca. 1824). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process


In 1966, American artist Ed Ruscha pieced together photographs showing both sides of the Los Angeles Sunset Strip from Beverly Hills and Laurel Canyon. The mile and a half stretch of road became a 24-foot-long leporello or concertina folded book, which he called Every Building on the Sunset Strip.

Nearly 150 years earlier in 1824, Scottish printmaker John Heaviside Clark (ca. 1770-1836) created 45 aquatinted etchings of the Thames River, showing the buildings and landscape on both sides from London to Richmond. The 15-mile stretch became a bound volume called Panorama of the Thames from London to Richmond. If it were unbound, the prints would extend 59 feet (18 meters).

 

Edward Ruscha, Every Building on the Sunset Strip ([Los Angeles]: E. Ruscha, 1966). 1 folded sheet ([53] p.). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2006-2722N

 


 

John Heaviside Clark was sometimes known as Waterloo Clark, after the drawings he made of the battlefield. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and published A Practical Essay on the Art of Colouring and Painting Landscapes (1807); A Practical Illustration of Gilpin’s Day (1824); The Amateur’s Assistant, or, A series of instructions in sketching from nature (1826); Elements of Drawing and Painting in Water Colours; (1841)(GAX) 2003-0273N; and Friedrich Wilhelm Delkeskamp (1794-1872), Panorama of the Rhine and the adjacent country from Cologne to Mayence (ca. 1830)(Ex) Oversize 2008-0020Q.


 

Being a pleasant and profitable companion for children

It was a good day. In preparing to digitize the smallest volumes in the Sinclair Hamilton collection of American books illustrated with woodcuts and wood engravings, we made a search for the few missing copies. Many were found including this 1774 edition of The History of the Holy Jesus, printed and sold by John Boyle in Marlborough Street, Boston. Note the frontispiece portrait of “a lover of their precious souls.”

 


Many of the illustrations in this 1774 edition are thought to have been cut by Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) after the metal relief plates engraved by James Turner (1722-1759), first published in 1745. The Sinclair Hamilton Collection has six editions of The History of the Holy Jesus, 1749: Hamilton 28s; 1749: Hamilton 1311(1)s; 1767: Hamilton 68(2)s; 1774: Hamilton 68(1)s; 1779: Hamilton 88s; and 1958 (1746): Hamilton 1311(2)s.

For more, see Dale Roylance’s “Of Sin and Salvation,” in Princeton University Library Chronicle Winter 1998 http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/pulc/pulc_v_59_n_2.pdf

One of the cuts completely changed by Thomas is this image of three stars, which replaced a picture of three wise men. Two might be seen as falling stars, or shooting stars. Below are a few more of his cuts.

 


The History of the Holy Jesus: containing a brief and plain account of his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven: and his coming again at the great and last Day of Judgment: being a pleasant and profitable companion for children: composed on purpose for their use / by a lover of their precious souls. The twenty-fifth edition. Boston: Printed and sold by John Boyle … , 1774. Woodcuts attributed to Isaiah Thomas. Cf. Hamilton. Inscribed “Moley Heving, her book” and “Moley Heving, her book, bought the year 1779, March the 22, price four shillings.”–in ink, on frontispiece recto. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 68(1)s

 

 

Shinzoho Saigoku kidan = Mysterious Stories of the Western Country

Kunisada Utagawa II, artist and Shunsui Tamenaga (pseudonym for Sadataka Sasaki, 1790-1844), author. 新増補西圀奇談 新増補西國奇談 = Shinzoho Saigoku kidan = Mysterious Stories of the Western Country. Complete in twenty parts bound in forty volumes. Edo: Tsutsumi Kichibei, 1856-1875. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process.


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired the first edition and a rare complete set of this beautifully illustrated example of gokan, a type of fiction of the kusa zoshi genre. According to The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature, “gōkan are popular illustrated stories and romances, prose narratives succeeding Kibyōshi, and flourishing sometime after 1807. By combining three or four sōshi into one gōkan unit, much longer stories were possible.”


We are told that “these serial novels are usually characterized by their vividly colored pictorial wrappers upon which the artists’ names were given equal prominence with the name of the author on the covers, title-pages, and colophons. Each volume of a gokan contains ten sheets/twenty pages. The images are more sophisticated than those encountered in most earlier kusa zoshi and the texts far denser.”

Shunsui Tamenaga was the pen name of Sadataka Sasaki (1790-1844), one of the major writers of the Edo period. He is perhaps best remembered for Colors of Spring, the Plum Calendar, written in 1832-33. But he is also known for his humorous story Longevity, which was translated by Yei Theodora Ozaki for The Japanese Fairy Book (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903). Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) Eng 20 28988.

Kunisada II (1823-1880), successor to Kunisada Utagawa, worked in the style of his master and illustrated nearly 200 books. Each of the stories is in two parts, each with its own color woodblock cover that matches and completes the image on the cover of the other volume.

Our new collection is in remarkably good condition, given the popularity of these volumes and the simple paper cover. Even for those who do not read Japanese, the matching print covers are spectacular.