Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Mapping Greenwich Village Saturday Night

This aerial photograph of Washington Square Park gives a view of “The Row,” the townhouses of wealthy New Yorkers living along Washington Square Park North (Waverly Place). Below are the names of the residents in 1924/25.

“…the most charming square in all New York: De Forest, Rhinelander, Delano, Stewart, De Rham, Gould, Wynkoop, Tailer, Guinness, Claflin, Booth, Darlington, Gregory, Hoyt, Schell, Shattuck, Weekes,—these, and others are still the names of the residents of Washington Square North. Father Knickerbocker, coming to smoke his pipe here, will be in good company, you perceive!”–Anna Alice Chapin, Greenwich Village. Illustrated by Alan Gilbert Cram (2005)

Map annotated by Lew Ney 1925, given to Princeton University Library.

 

 

Lew Ney (born Luther Emanuel Widen, 1886-1963), The Greenwich Village Saturday Night (New York: [Lew New, 1924-1926]. Little Magazines LM GVSN Princeton holdings: Vol.2, no.1 (Nov. 21, 1925); 2 copies- Vol.2, no.3 (April 10, 1926). Gift of Lew Ney.

 

Beginning with September 20, 1924, the Greenwich Village bohemian Lew Ney (pronounced Looney) distributed his neighborhood newsletter entitled The Greenwich Village Saturday Night, written and hand-printed in his cold water studio at 246 West 14th Street (check the map!). Each issue (except v.2, no. 2) included a large, two-page map of the area below 14th street with his commentary on New York history and current residents. Princeton was given four issues by Lew Ney himself and one of the maps is annotated by him [see above], a later copy including these notes in a cleaner version.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951), Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village, 1923. Etching.

 

1924

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1926

A few details:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cara a Cara. Visiones de lo cotidiano.


Cara a Cara: Visiones de lo cotidiano = Face to Face: Views of the Everyday (Oaxaca, Mexico: Irving Herrera/Bautistaivan, 2013). Edition of 35. Graphic Arts Collection GA2021- in process

The artists “facing off” between the DF and OAX printshops include Edgar Allan, Javier Arjona, Ivan Bautista, Raul Cadena, Gilberto Delgado, Maria Luisa Estrada, Oscar de las Flores, Irving Herrera, Vicente Jurado Manuel Solis, Baltazar Melo, Jorge Noguez, Pavel Scarubi, Sergio Vargas, Albert Vargas, and Yescka.

Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which make up the 32 federative entities of Mexico. Located in the southwest of the country, Oaxaca is celebrated for its indigenous artists working in dozens of printshops and collectives, specializing in stencil and relief printing. Their voices are as diverse as the 16 spoken languages in Oaxaca.

https://oaxacaculture.com/ The Oaxaca cultural navigator is one of several sites that help to identify these many cultural resources.

The saint of all flower growers

José de Nava (1735-1815), [Vida de Santa Rosa de Viterbo] ([Puebla de Zaragoza: s.n., 1763-1807?]). 33 engraved plates (one facsimile). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

According to the Catholic calendar, September 4 is the feast day of Saint Rose of Viterbo (1235-1252), who was canonized by Pope Innocent IV. She is the patron saint of florists and all flower growers.

Born in Viterbo (present day Italy), Rose joined the Third Order of St. Francis (T.O.S.F.) at the age of 10 but never officially joined a convent (lacking the dowry). According to the legend, “on December 5, 1250, she foretold the death of the emperor which was fulfilled 8 days later on December 13. Rose went to the city of Vitorchiano, which was possessed by a sorceress and secured the conversion of all, even of the sorceress, reportedly by standing unscathed for three hours in the flames of a burning pyre.”


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a rare volume of engravings based on Rose’s life story, drawn and printed by the Mexican artist José de Nava (1743-1807). Although there isn’t much information on Nava, Dorothy Tanck de Estrada’s article “Imágenes infantiles en los años de la insurgencia. El grabado popular, la educación y la cultura política de los niños,” from: Historia Mexicana 59, no. 1 (July/September 2009) https://www.jstor.org/stable/40285231 is a good source. This is a poor translation of a section:

“José de Nava, active since 1748, is considered “the best known and most famous of the Puebla engravers.” He was possibly born around 1728 and died in 1817 at 89 years of age. Both he and [Miguel Jerónimo] Zendejas made works of art in the same year of his death. However, some of Nava’s creations were printed until after his death. According to Manuel Romero de Terreros, [Nava] devoted his entire life to his art and produced excellent prints, most of them dealing with religious matters. He worked with such rapidity that after the viceroy Marqués de las Amarillas entered Mexico on November 10, 1755, the following December Nava had already recorded and dedicated his excellent plan of New Spain to the viceroy.”

Francisco Perez Salazar noted that “Nava had the custom of signing almost all of his engravings and of stating the date of his work on many plates, in such a way that we can know with certainty when they were made. It was extremely fruitful.”

Nava lived in a two-story house on Calle de Chito Cohetero (now Calle 6 norte 400) in the city of Puebla. He produced almost all of his engravings in that city … at the printers of the College of San Ignacio de los Jesuitas and, after the expulsion of the Comparila de Jesus, in the same printing house then called the Palafoxian Seminary and in the printing house of Pedro de la Rosa. It should be noted that the most outstanding work of Nava was a set of 33 plates of the life of Santa Rosa de Viterbo.”

 


Macy’s Sells “Birds of America”

 

In 1902 R.H. Macy’ & Co. already known simply as Macy’s, moved their flagship store to Broadway and 34th street where they hoped to become the largest department store in the world. Ten years later an art gallery was added on the 6th floor, advertising in the New York Times “Choice Paintings” for half price.

Throughout the 1920s monthly art exhibitions were mounted and advertised alongside the prestigious Madison Avenue galleries, including lithographs by Henri Matisse, woodcuts by Rockwell Kent and Wanda Gag, and Bartolozzi engravings after Hans Holbein.

Beginning on May 18, 1931, Macy’s staged an advertising campaign that would last over ten years. The store would sell all 435 hand colored, aquatinted and engraved plates from a copy of John James Audubon’s four-volume double-elephant Birds of America, which they cut apart for this event. According to the New York Herald Tribune, “The New Macy Galleries Announce a unique and spectacular purchase—The Birds of America from original drawings (1827-1838) by John James Audubon.” Although some sources report that the store broke up three copies of the Havell/Audubon volumes, it may have only seemed that way because it took so long to sell the plates.

The rarity of these enormous volumes was used to promoted the sale: “Once, every four or five years, a complete set of Audubon’s Elephant folio volumes reaches the public. We are able to present this rare collection of 435 copper plate engravings in complete form. This folio was published by Audubon in four volumes; it was engraved by Robert Havell Jr., colored by hand from Audubon’s drawings. Audubon’s son, according to one statement declared that only 175 sets of the folio were ever printed. The prints will be sold individually—they range in price from $4.96 to $224.00. Some of the most famous plates are Canvasback Duck with view of the city of Baltimore $174.00. Mallard Duck $112.00. American Hen and Young $104.00”

 

Eighteen months later, on December 17, 1933 the Tribune advertised a special Christmas sale of “all original copper-plate engravings of great brilliance and connoisseurs will appreciate this—the first ten plats are engravings by Lizars; and many of the first plates are colored by Robert Havell, Sr. There are very few like these in existence.” But so important was the physical exhibition of the plates that Macy’s asked “our customers to let us exhibit these plates for two days after sale that others may have the opportunity of seeing them. No mail or phone orders.” Now 104 plates were priced under $10; 199 plates $12.89 to $24.39; 120 plates $29.75 to $99.75; and 12 plates from $124 to $594 (the most expensive being the “Wild Turkey”).

On April 26, 1935, in commemoration of the 150th birthday of Audubon, a lecture on “Birds” was delivered by Warren F. Eaton, President of the Montclair Bird Club. This accompanied the continuing “Unique Exhibition and Sale of The Birds of America published from original drawings 1827-1838. Once in a great, great while a complete set of Audubon’s Elephant folio turns up. We deem it a rare event to be able to offer the 435 copper plate engravings in complete form on this occasion and at these low individual prices. …On sale today! $4.96 to $394.00. No mail, telephone, or telegraph orders!”

The “rare event” of the Audubon print sale was advertised again on October 2, 1938 in both the Tribune and the New York Times, followed by more announcements until finally on March 16, 1941, the Times informed its readers that only 106 Audubon prints were still for sale at Macy’s, beginning at $13.97 (usually $18.74).

A “Picture Clearance” sale was held at Macy’s on April 18, 1943, in which Audubon prints are sold at $4.97, while sporting prints by Robert Havell Jr. are going for almost $20.

Happily, no such stunt has been tried lately.

Picturing the Press that Printed the Picture

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), The Print Shop, from In the Hills o’ Brown, 1910. One of 12 color woodcuts on ivory Japanese paper. Edition: 100. Graphic Arts Collection GC024 Baumann

Gustave Baumann spent much of his childhood in Chicago but in 1909 he and other members of the Palette and Chisel Club discovered Brown County, Indiana. “[By] saving up $100.00 he could spend three months in Brown County, sketching and painting. In 1910 he produced a portfolio of small format color woodcuts entitled In the Hills of Brown and then produced some of the largest woodcuts of the time. His color woodcuts were selected for inclusion in the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition where he won the Gold Medal for Prints and an Honorable Mention for his Exhibit of Color Woodcuts. In the summer and fall of 1917, Baumann visited Wyoming, New York; Manhattan; and Provincetown, Massachusetts.” https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/140/Baumann/Gustave

Although the plan was to only stay a short time, Baumann loved Brown County, its people, the hilly scenery, and isolated location. He lived there six and a half years, often using the location as his primary subject matter. Thanks to Baumann’s friend, Elmer Adler,  the Graphic Arts Collection has an original 1910 edition of this rare portfolio, rather than the later 1914 reprinting.

Within the series of four color woodblock prints, is a depiction of the shop where Baumann did his printing, the commercial press of Alonzo Allison (1851-1926). Allison was the editor and publisher of the Brown County Democrat and this print shows him and his staff (which included his daughters) at work getting out the newspaper. Allison was a local celebrity and the subject of this profile in The Inland Printer, 56 (1916), “Alonzo Allison, Editor And Publisher Brown County Democrat by Albert G. Brenton.

In Nashville, the county-seat of Brown County, Indiana, lives a figure unique in newspaperdom of the State. The man is Alonzo Allison, editor and publisher of the Brown County Democrat, an eight-page weekly with a healthy circulation of 1,800. His claim to fame is fourfold: First, his publication is the only county-seat paper in the State still printed on a Washington hand press. Second, he is believed to be the youngest veteran of the Civil War and the oldest printer in point of service in Indiana. Third, his father was a printer before him and he has an uncle, four brothers, three sisters, four cousins, five sons and two granddaughters who are working at the case. Fourth, he is said to hold the state record for fast composition, setting 2,250 ems, eight-point, in an hour on a sheriff’s bill.

Surely a character of some distinction in printerdom! Little wonder that beaten paths are made to his door or that his quaint print-shop should be made the subject of an appropriate wood-block picture in three tones by Gustave Baumann, a noted young German artists. Baumann’s engraving entitled “Press Day,” is shown herewith. It gives the artist’s impression of the Democrat office in the midst of edition-day activities. Alonzo Allison is shown performing the functions of the mailing force, while his sons, T.H. and C.A. Allison, are operating the “muscle developer.”

Considering Mr. Allison’s claim to fame, it would seem that a reproduction of his print-shop in any other medium than that chosen by Baumann would grate on artistic sensibilities. The whole atmosphere of the subject is rare with a spirit of antiquity that indeed is refreshing in contrast to linotypes, offset presses, modern high-speed efficiency, and the like.

Probably no duplication of Allison or his print-shop could exist in another part of Indiana, and it would be disappointing to one who knows Brown County or Nashville to have a printery of any other sort there. Brown County is Indiana’s Switzerland. Only a few years ago the first railroad crossed its boundaries. As late as the past autumn, steps were taken to establish the first electric light plant within its confines.

… Allison is sixty-four years of age and has been in the printing business for fifty-seven years, having set his first type when seven years old. He has been in active newspaper work continuously since his beginning, with the exception of eighteen months spent in the Union army in the Civil War. His printing-office is the only one in Brown County, although his father at one time successfully operated a Republican paper in competition. At the age of twelve, Allison and his mother went to Nashville, Tennessee, to visit his father, who was quartermaster of the Seventeenth Indiana regiment, then in camp at Nashville. Allison, though only twelve years old, begged so hard to remain with the regiment that his father and mother consented, and the lad donned a soldier’s uniform, the legs of the trousers being cut off and the coat made to fit him.

He spent eighteen months in the army, much of the time being under heavy fire and in the thick of important battles. At the close of the war he went with his father to Columbus, Indiana, where they published the Dollar Weekly Union. In the fall of 1870 the Allisons went to Nashville, Brown County and established the Jacksonian.

In December, 1884, Alonzo Allison purchased the Brown County Democrat. For lack of means he was compelled to do all the work himself, and for several years he got the copy, set the type, made up the paper, rolled the forms and pulled the lever on a Washington hand press, which he uses in printing the Democrat to-day. Allison calls his press his “muscle developer.” Although he is near the three-score-and ten limit, Allison is still “some speed artist” at the case, sticking up 1,500 ems an hour. He holds a record of setting 2,250 ems, eight-point, in an hour on a sheriff’s bill. When he was employed in an office at Columbus at one time his employer wanted to pay him by the thousand ems. The first week Allison made $39.50. The next week the arrangement was changed.”

As an added bonus, here is a Ground Hog day card to Adler:

Taller Movimiento Gráfiko Mayahuel

Gráfica Palabra Zapatista (México: Movimiento Gráfico Mayahuel y Libertad Bajo Palabra, 2019). Book divided into 2 parts, text and plates, bound dos à dos. A second copy of each print is loose in the chipboard box 34 x 53 x 10 cm along with a handkerchief and 1 corked glass bottle. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

Prints: Libertad by Agüita Gómez del Payán; linografía — La lucha inconclusa by Amarildo Olmedo; xilografía — Zapata 100 años by Ana Lilia Viveros Cázares; grabado en pvc espumado — La tierra es quien la trabaja by Ana Rojas; linografía — ¿Por qué la lucha sigue? by Brigada Cultural Subversiva; linografía — Somos el mañana by Eduardo Palma Santiago; xilografía — Tierra, corazón e historia by Eduardo Robledo Romero; relieve en pvc espumado — A cien años by Eric Pozos Vázquez; linografía — La luz de la flama by Gabino Morales; xilografía — La autonomía by Gera Cristobal; linografía — El Atila del Sur by Iván Míchel Franco; xilografía — [untitled] by Mario Martínez; serigrafía — Sólo la muerte nos hará libres by Nahual Grafico; litografía y linografía — Cien años by Orquidea 5 Vocales; linografía y relieve en pvc espumado — Zapatero, la lucha sigue! by Zamer Zamer; linografía — Tenemos la fierza de un volcán by Zum; linograbado y stencil — Nuestra lucha es por la vida by Movimiento Gráfiko Mayahuel; linografía

Read more from the Taller Movimiento Gráfiko Mayahuel, https://www.picuki.com/tag/movimientograficomayahuel

 

 

La Création. Bound by Marie-Jose Guian-Milliaud for her personal library.

La Création. Les trois premiers livres de la Genèse suivis de la généalogie adamique. Traduction littérale des textes sémitiques par M. le docteur J.-C. Mardrus (Paris: Schmied, 1928). Designed and illustrated by François-Louis Schmied. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 


It is, perhaps, not surprising that French master binder Marie-Jose Guian-Milliaud chose this edition of Genesis, illustrated by François-Louis Schmied (1873-1941), to bind for her personal library. Her full brown calf binding with ivory-toned calf complements the artist by reproducing his plate XII of the biblical family tree on her cover [see plate below].

Schmied’s 42 beautiful color wood engravings are printed on Arches wove paper, many highlighted with gold and/or silver. The copy now at Princeton includes an additional suite of plates in black, bound at the back of the volume.

 

 

Born in Cairo, the translator Joseph Charles Mardrus (1848–1949) was also responsible for an important French translation of Les Mille et Une Nuits (Thousand and One Nights, 1899–1904) based primarily on the 1835 Egyptian edition of The Arabian Nights by Boulak. Writing for the Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Anne Duggan notes:

“Mardrus studied classics and Arabic literature in Beirut, and went on to receive a doctorate in medicine at the Sorbonne in 1895. While working as a doctor on shipping lines, which took him from the Middle East to South-East Asia, he began to translate and publish Les Mille et Une Nuits, the revenues from which allowed him to settle permanently in Paris by 1899. Within Parisian literary circles, Mardrus frequented Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, Maurice Maeterlinck, André Gide, and Marcel Schwob, and dedicated to each of them a volume of his 16-volume work. Mardrus’s translation became the object of critical debate, which opposed the partisans of Antoine Galland, who claimed the superiority of the latter’s classical style, to those who favoured Mardrus’s more sensual, unexpurgated version. Unlike Galland, Mardrus did not Frenchify the Arabian tales but retained much of their cultural specificity.”

 

 
When the California book collector Ward Ritchie gave up the study of law to become a printer, he traveled to Paris hoping for an apprenticeship with Schmied. This led to his establishment of the Ward Ritchie Press in 1932. Later, Ward wrote the following description of his personal copy of Création:

“[This book is] a daring and innovative design with the copy of the first two books set in capital letters in narrow columns with decorative bars to fill out the lines where necessary. The small illustrations in the columns are brilliant in color. Dominating full-page illustrations break the continuity of the text. The format is completely changed in Book Three with a wider measure of type and the illustrations integrated with the text.”

 

 

 

 

April is for the Birds. Please join us Friday.

April is for the Birds:
From Audubon’s Extraordinary Birds of America to the Indispensable Pocket Field Guides.
A free webinar but we ask you to register: HERE

 

Grab your binoculars and join us on Friday, April 30, 2021, at 2:00 p.m. for an hour of virtual birding, as we turn the pages of John James Audubon’s gigantic, hand painted Birds of America (1827-38). Rarely does the public have the opportunity to see this amazing four-volume work and when they do, it is usually only one plate through a sealed case. As we have done for our students, we will page through multiple volumes so you can experience the colossal scale of Audubon’s birds, painted life-size and then transferred to copper plates for the printing and painting of the published ‘double-elephant’ volumes.

Introducing us to Audubon’s remarkable work will be Rachael Z. DeLue, Christopher Binyon Sarofim ’86 Professor in American Art, Professor of Art and Archaeology and American Studies, and the current Chair of the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator, will focus on master printer Robert Havell, Jr. who took Audubon’s paintings and transformed them into 435 aquatints. We will follow the trail that brought four tons of copper printing plates across the Atlantic and left several at Princeton University Library, where they remain today.

Next we will be joined by Robert Kirk, Publisher, Princeton Nature, with Princeton University Press who will bring us up to date with the field guides used by birders, from the amateur to the professional. Kirk not only acquires a broad range of nature reference titles, but he also works on a select number of fully interactive apps and will show some of their of the most recent titles. While Audubon’s oversize originals are rarely viewed, many of these authoritative guides are indispensable resources found in the pockets of conservation professionals worldwide.

This webinar is free and open to the general public, but we ask you to register:HERE

Recordings for previous webinar in the Special Collections Highlights Series can be viewed here. To request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact pulcomm@princeton.edu at least 3 working days in advance.

Emanoel Araujo: My Collages, My Black Poets

My collages / My black poets

Emanoel Araujo (born 1940), Emanoel Araujo: 10 colagens serigrafadas e Meus poetas negros; introdução Oswaldo de Camargo (São Paulo: Museu Afro Brasil; Papel Assinado, 2020). Portfolio 570 x 400 mm; 10 screen prints. Edition: 80 copies numbered and signed by the artist. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

A brief biography of Emanoel Araujo is found at the Museu Afro Brasil, in São Paulo, which was founded by Araujo:

In the 90s he led the restructuring of Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, transforming the building into one of the greatest museums in the country, making it eligible to receive national and international exhibitions. In 2004, he was invited by the Mayor of São Paulo city to be the Secretary of Culture and founded Afro Brasil Museum, where he is currently the Curator – Director.

In 2007 he was honored by the Instituto Tomie Ohtake by the exhibition Autobiografia do Gesto, which gathered art works of his 45-year career.


Albert M. Cohn’s album of Cruikshank sketches

George Cruikshank (1792-1878 ), Album of Original Drawings, Sketches and Manuscript. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021 – in process. Provenance: Albert M. Cohn. Acquired in honor of Henry Martin, Class of 1948

 


First deposited at the Princeton University Library in 1913, the Richard W. Meirs, Class of 1888, Collection of George Cruikshank, comprises one of the finest Cruikshank collections in the United States. About 1000 volumes, many separate prints, as well as drawings, finished oil paintings, oil sketches, “panorama” prints on rollers, etched plates, broadsides, bound manuscripts, autograph letters, and Cruikshank correspondence can be found in Princeton stacks.

Meirs used the Cruikshank bibliography prepared by Albert M. Cohn in his collecting and the library did the same in organizing the collection in our vaults. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, we have continued to expand on the Meirs gift, most recently with a unique scrapbook owned by Cohn containing Cruikshank sketches, letters, and other miscellany. This acquisition is made in honor of the artist and friend of this collection in particular, Henry Martin, Class of 1948.

 

This substantial album contains original sketches and manuscripts from the Cohn’s collection and confirms that Cruikshank drew or wrote on anything, here using letters, lists, envelopes and assorted ephemera. Of particular interest is an invoice from Draper Charles Coleing, Commercial House, an invitation from the Council of the Photographic Society and on a printed letter from the British Institution for Promoting The Fine Arts in the United Kingdom.

There is a letter to English artist Andrew William Delamotte, 1775-1863, in which Cruikshank notes his prolific output: “I cannot give any idea of the number of drawings and etchings I have made – somewhere about a cart load – of rubbish with a few tolerable specimens here & there.” Among the sketches are many curious notes, such as the comment on a sketch of a fisherman coming home: “I wonder why the fish don’t bite, if they were as hungry as I am they would bite fast enough.”

 


Additional information of Cruikshank at Princeton (compiled by Steve Ferguson):

A list of Library holdings as of 1920 appears in the Princeton University Classed List, (Special Collections) vol. 6 (Princeton, 1920) pp. 3565-3583 [(ExB) 0639.7373.5], published after the major deposit of Cruikshank material by Mr. Meirs. A large portion of the collection is found at http://catalog.princeton.edu

The Cohn Cruikshank bibliography (covering illustrated books and separate prints) has been checked (recording call numbers) for the Library’s holdings. For particulars refer to: Albert M. Cohn. George Cruikshank, a catalogue raisonné of the work executed during the years 1806-1877. (London, 1924) [(GARF) NC1479.C9 C72q, copy 2)

An important article about how and why Americans collected Cruikshankiana was published in 1916 by Arthur Bartlett Maurice, Class of 1894. See A. B. Maurice, “Cruikshank in America”, in The Bookman November 1916.  Maurice was editor of The Bookman from 1899 to 1916. This article has many particulars about the Meirs collection.


See also: Howard S. Leach “Cruikshank’s Illustrations of Shakespeare in the Meirs Collection, Princeton University Library” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (13 December 1916, p 259-262). An editorial note on the same page as this article states “Alumni visiting Princeton may spend a very entertaining and profitable afternoon in looking over this collection, which is in the exhibition room of the Library.”

Also see: F.J. Mather “Rowandson and Cruikshank” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (4 March 1932); Frank Jewett Mather, “A Statistical Survey of the Meirs Cruikshank Collection” in the Princeton University Library Chronicle IV, 2-3 (February-April, 1943) pp. 50-52; E.D.H. Johnson. George Cruikshank: the Collection at Princeton (Princeton, 1973) [(Cruik) 747] which is the offprint of: E.D.H. Johnson, “The George Cruikshank Collection at Princeton” in Princeton University Library Chronicle XXXV, 1 (Autumn and Winter, 1973-74) pp. 1-33.