Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

The First Princeton Tiger

Woodblock for tiger used in The Princeton Tiger, ca. 1881. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of W.R. Deemes, Class of 1891.

An alumnus in another column asks when the Princeton cheer came to be known as the “Princeton Tiger.” It was but natural that when first adopted by the College the cheer should lie known as the “rocket.” It is descriptive of the explosion of a rocket and was everywhere called by that name lief ore its adoption here; and it is even now occasionally spoken of in the College as the “rocket.” But while the “Princeton Tiger” has largely supplanted “rocket” as the name of Princeton’s cheer, the public are responsible for this rather than the students themselves. The now name has come into use only during the last few years. The inter-collegiate contests, in which Princeton has so largely figured, gradually engaged the interest and attention of the public until the rocket cheer had become so repeatedly associated with Princeton, that when the press called it Princeton’s Tiger. The “Princeton Tiger” it became. It is interesting to note in this connection that the fourth word of the cheer not only gave to the Princeton cheer its name, but suggested the Tiger as the emblem of the college. And when the undergraduates some four years ago started an illustrated magazine and christened it “The Tiger,” and that magazine represented Athletic Princeton as a Bengal Tiger, the “orange and black” lord of the jungle became Princeton’s emblem forever. And this has reacted not a little on Princeton’s devotion to her cheer.
Daily Princetonian, Volume 10, Number 61, December 11, 1885

Digitally inverted

The Poet of the Future

This sheet of drawings by John McLenan (1827-1865) turns up in a scrapbook at the New York Public Library, with no explanation. Over the years, the central portrait has been assumed to be Walt Whitman (1819-1892).

McLenan’s final published prints were discovered recently in our set of the Harper’s New Monthly Magazine CXXI, no. 20 (June 1860), p.141-42. The central drawing is titled “The Poet of the Future.” Below is our death mask of Whitman so that you can decide for yourself whether or not the sketch is meant to be Whitman.

The Future President; Organ of Veneration; Gushing Poetess; The Great Artist [self-portrait of John McLenan].
Well-balanced Head; Benevolence; The Great Captain; The Poet of the Future; [Embryo] Financier.

“Gifted by nature this subject–with a head that’s swollen with Literary talent–is allow to go to grass…”

Death mask of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), 1892. Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks.

American Freemason Magazine

From November 1855 to April 1857, Robert Morris published a semi-monthly newspaper called the American Freemason out of Louisville, Kentucky. When he ran into financial difficulties his printer, Joseph Fletcher Brennan, took over the publication, switching to a monthly format with an emphasis on literature and poetry.

Working from Kentucky, Brennan commissioned his Masonic Brother Nathaniel Orr in New York City to redesign the periodical with a strong header and large wood engraving at the front of each issue. Various small cuts went inside as the stories required. Orr’s next door neighbor A.S. Barnes & Co., Wholesale Booksellers and Publishers, at 51 John Street was asked to help distribute.

Unfortunately, Brennan also had trouble funding the magazine. Writing to Orr from Louisville, October 15, 1857, Brennan explained that he still couldn’t pay the artist for his wood engravings. John Chapman is also doing a few designs for the magazine without receiving payment. “I will have also to arrange with him to wait until I can send him a check to pay both of you. I will be able to do this in the course of a month at farthest. . . . [Asking if Orr will continue his work] I think this would be the best way and I will pay you for it… Do so, if you please, and I will be grateful to you.“

Two weeks later Brennan wrote again, promising to pay Orr in a few weeks.  Chapman’s name does not appear in the magazine, refusing to work without pay while Orr, a devoted Freemason, continued to supply the publication with images. In the end, Brennan was unable to secure financial backing and the magazine only last for two years (although the title is revived again later by others).

The American Freemason’s New Monthly Magazine ([New York: J.F. Brennan, 1859- ). Recap HS351 .A512

 

New York’s historic Masonic Hall is located in the heart of the Chelsea, home to the headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York, along with the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Library and Museum. To get tour information or request a tour, e-mail TourGuides@nymasons.org. Free public tours of the Grand Lodge Building and Masonic Hall are conducted Monday through Saturday between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 2:15 p.m.

Prince George, Duke of Albemarle

Robert Sheppard (active 1730-1740) after David Loggan (1635-1700?), The Most Illustrious and Noble Prince George, Duke of Albemarle, 1735. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.01636

The Graphic Arts Collection holds this three-quarter length portrait of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, (1608–1670) dressed as an English soldier. Monck was the leading figure in effecting the Restoration of the Monarchy to King Charles II in 1660.

This is a plate from Mechell’s edition of Paul de Rapin-Thoyras, The History of England. 1735 ((Ex) Oversize 1426.749.11f). Sheppard did most of the portraits in History of England, as well as a portait of Edward Kidder (frontispiece of his Receipts, 1740), and three plates in a series of six Battles of Alexander, after Le Brun.

 

See also Thomas Gumble (died 1676), La vie du general Monk duc d’Albemarle, &c., le restaurateur de Sa Majesté britannique, Charles Second / traduit de l’anglois de Thomas Gumble …(Londres: Chez Robert Scot, 1672). Rare Books Off-Site Storage 1444.649.42.11

A Speech made to the Lord General Monck, at Clotheworkers hall in London the 13. of March, 1659 [60] … ([London, 1660]). Broadside, in two columns. Rare Books: South East (RB) RHT Oversize 17th-756

The Fountain of Love


Now hanging in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) painted The Fountain of Love around 1785 [top]. In the 20th century, the British artist Fred Millar reproduced this and other Rococo masterpieces as color engravings for easy home decoration. The Graphic Arts Collection holds this slightly faded copy of Millar’s Fountain of Love.

Below is a Photoshopped image that better represents Millar’s print. The soft romanticism of Fragonard has been simplified, emphasizing the female form and the drama of the scene.

Fred Millar (active 1900-1923), after a painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), Fountain of Love = Fontaine d’amour, 1907. Color engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.01460

 

 

The Spanish Civil War

The Graphic Arts Collection holds several billboard-size propaganda posters from the Spanish Civil War, 1936 to 1939. Here is one honoring Madrid’s elite 5th Regiment and one from the Delegacion de Propaganda y Prensa del C.E.P. Valencia.

 

 

Juan Borrás Casanova (1909-1987), Los trabajadores españoles luchan por la libertad y la cultura de todos los pueblos. ¡Solidarizaros con ellos! = Spanish Workers Fight for the Freedom and Culture of All Peoples. Work with them! (Valencia: Delegación de Propaganda y Prensa del C.E.P. de Valencia, printed by Ortega, 1936). Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

 

[below] 5o Regimiento. Los Cazadores de Lanques Fascistas: Coll, Carrasco, Cornejo, Grao, Molina. Honor y Gloria a Los Hijos del Pueblo (Madrid: printed by Graficas Reunidas, U.H.P., ca. 1937). Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process.

The Fifth Regiment (Spanish: Quinto Regimiento, full name Quinto Regimiento de Milicias Populares), was an elite corps loyal to the Spanish Republic at the onset of the Spanish Civil War. Made up of volunteers, the Fifth Regiment was active in the first critical phase of the war and became one of the most renowned units loyal to the Republic.—Eduardo Comín Colomer, El 5º Regimiento de Milicias Populares. Madrid 1973.

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Virtue, Liberty, and Independence

The Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

 

The Merciful Man Regardeth the Life of His Beast

“In 1866, Colonel M. Richards Mucklé, a Philadelphia businessman, was disheartened by the violence he witnessed against animals. Horses pulling over-laden carts and streetcars were often beaten unmercifully or worked to death. . . . Mucklé decided to follow in the footsteps of Henry Bergh, the father of the humane movement in the United States, and take action.

. . . After more than a year of campaigning, the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was organized on June 21, 1867 and officially chartered on April 4, 1868. The Pennsylvania SPCA (PSPCA) was officially the first humane society in the state and only the second in the country after Henry Bergh’s American SPCA (note: The PSPCA is not associated with the ASPCA).” University of Pennsylvania Library, PSPCA archive.

Philadelphia lithographer Peter S. Duval (1804/05-1886) was commissioned to design the organization’s membership certificates. A large edition was printed in 1868 with spaces for names, dates, and signatures, so that the certificate could be used for many years without revision. P.S. Duval, Son, & Company ended in 1869, when Peter retired and his son Stephen partnered with Thomas Hunter.

This is the life membership certificate for Joseph Terry McCadden (1859-1938) signed in 1892, while McCadden was business manager for Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, working with his brother-in-law J. A. Bailey (1847-1906). The many animals under the care of the circus made it a target for the PSPCA and other animals preservation groups. This membership would have been good for public relations.

 

Joseph T. McCaddon’s membership certificate with the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Lithograph with one tone stone. Philadelphia: P.S. Duval, Son & Co., 1892. Graphic Arts Collection

Lithographed by P. S. Duval, Son & Co.

Dante and Virgil Attend an Exhibition

Antonio Manganaro (1842-1921), L’Esposizione Marittima Visitata da Dante e Virgilio. [The Maritime Exhibition visited by Dante and Virgil] Allegoria di A. Manganaro ([Naples: 1871]). 32 hand colored lithographs including the pictorial title-page. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017 in process. Acquired with special thanks to Patricia A. Gaspari-Bridges.

Since Dante’s Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) first appeared in 1320, visual artists have been rethinking Dante’s trip into hell with Virgil as his guide. Eugène Delacroix chose the subject for his first major painting, The Barque of Dante, also known as Dante and Virgil in Hell, which introduced the artist at the Salon of 1822. A few years later, William Blake drew visions of the Divine Comedy in London while G.G. Macchiavelli did the same in Bologna. William-Adolphe Bouguereau painted Dante and Virgil in Hell in 1850; Edgar Degas finished Dante and Virgil at the Entrance to Hell in 1858; and Gustave Doré financed his own Inferno in 1861, finishing the trilogy in 1868.

In the wake of Doré’s popularity, the Italian caricaturist Antonio Manganaro (1842-1921) translated Dante’s epic to his own era, imagining what would happen if Dante and Virgil attended the opening of The International Maritime Exhibition held in Naples in 1871. Manganaro’s rare lithographic volume, recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection, includes plenty of ghosts, fish, and wine. Here are a few images.


 


 

Abraham Lincoln for sale

On July 25, 1866, the artist William Marshall wrote to the Atlantic Monthly with information about his new, highly anticipated print.

I send you with this a proof of my engraved portrait of President Lincoln, Upon which I have been engaged so long, engraved as you are aware after my own painting. As a work of art, I submit it to yourselves and to the public on its merits. That it is a truthful portrait or Mr. Lincoln, as he appeared in his calm and thoughtful moments, I have the assurance of many who were Ultimately connected with him during hid whole official career, as well as the testimony of others who enjoyed his acquaintance for many years. On this point I would ask your attention to the opinions of Mr. Sumner, Mr. Stanton, Mr. Trumbull, and Mr. Colfajx, contained in the letters which I enclose.

The execution of this portrait has been a pleasant labor to me during the many months I have been engaged upon it; and in executing it, 1 have endeavored not merely to gratify a professional ambition in producing a work of art, but 1 have sought, so far as could be done in one picture, to represent Mr. Lincoln as he was, and as he will be known in the pages of history and biography.”

Similar announcement/advertisements were published in magazines and newspapers throughout the United States. Sold by subscription, the engraving was offered on various papers, with no limit to the number of plain proofs that would be pulled.

In some places, Marshall and his publishers purchased two full pages to include endorsements from Lincoln family members and colleagues. The advertisement below boasts letters from Robert T. Lincoln, William H. Herndon, John Greenleaf Whittier, Charles Sumner, Edwin M. Stanton, Hannibal Hamlin, Salmon P. Chase, George Bancroft, Lyman Trumbull, and Schuyler Colfax, all praising Marshall’s work.


William Edgar Marshall (1837-1906), Abraham Lincoln, 1866. Engraving. Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905. Graphic Arts collection GA 2008.00294

Signed and dated in plate, l.c.: ‘Painted & Engraved by Wm. E. Marshall // Entered According to Act of Congress in the Year 1866 by Wm. E. Marshall in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

Alcott to Billings: Oh, Please change em!

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a proof of a wood engraving after a drawing by Hammatt Billings (1818-1874), which Billings intended as the frontispiece to the Second Part of Little Women. As the collector Sinclair Hamilton notes, Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) disliked it intensely, as is made evident by her letter to Elizabeth B. Greene:

“Oh, Betsy! Such trials as I have had with that Billings no mortal creter [sic] knows! He went & drew Amy a fat girl with a pug of hair, sitting among weedy shrubbery with a lighthouse under her nose, & a mile or two off a scrubby little boy on his stomach in the grass looking cross, towzly, & about 14 years old! It was a blow, for that picture was to be the gem of the lot. I bundled it right back & blew Niles [of Roberts Brothers] up to such an extent that I thought he’d never come down again. But he did, oh bless you, yes, as brisk & bland as ever, & set Billings to work again. You will shout when you see the new one for the man followed my directions & made (or tried to) Laurie ‘a mixture of Apollo, Byron, Tito & Will Green.’ Such a baa Lamb! Hair parted in the middle, big eyes, sweet nose, lovely mustache & cunning hands; straight out of a bandbox & no more like the real Teddy than Ben Franklin. I wailed but let go for the girls are clamoring & the book can’t be delayed. Amy is pretty & the scenery good but—my Teddy, oh my Teddy!”

At the top of the proof is a penciled note from the publishers: “If Miss A. will return this Friday A.M. Mr. Niles will be obliged.” Under this, in ink, in Miss Alcott’s handwriting is written “Oh, please change em!” and, on the sides of the engraving, also in her handwriting, are the words: “Amy too old & no curls. Amy is 17, slender & picturesque. Teddy much too young and no mustache. He is 21 in the story & very handsome.”

At the bottom of the engraving Miss Alcott has written “Lazy Laurence.”
Hamilton’s second attempt is the one found as the frontispiece to “Part Second” of Little Women.


Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Part second (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 206(2)

 

Thanks to Ananya A. Malhotra, Class of 2020, for her help in locating this on her last day in RBSC.

See also: https://books.google.com/books?id=3cyHQqYWsr0C&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=little+women+illustrations+billings+steel+engraving&source=bl&ots=P-VX8AKh_Z&sig=ACfU3U0cthpQsnXvHoJhZpcfOnlljm4_nA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqmfOgzM7mAhUOpFkKHYroDBYQ6AEwC3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=little%20women&f=false