The first time an American artist depicted an American city in a series of engravings came in 1800 when William Russell Birch (1755–1844) created The City Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania North America. A second edition of the series was published in 1804, a third in 1809, and a fourth in 1827-28.

Birch’s prints document the growth of Philadelphia, in particular, but also mark the development of art and artists in the United States. We were no longer waiting for European printmakers to either design or print our images.

Birch did it all. He drew, engraved, and published his own work (assisted by his wife and son, Thomas Birch 1779-1851). Princeton owns twenty of the twenty-eight plates in this series. Today, a number of restrikes and reproductions have been issued, usually called Birch’s Views of Philadelphia.

George Washington died at Mount Vernon, Virginia, on December 14, 1799. A national funeral procession and service was held in Philadelphia on December 26, 1799. Birch issued this print early in 1800.

James Gillray (1757-1815), Dreadful Hot Weather, 1808. Etching with hand color. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895

This is one of seven plates by James Gillray, published together on February 10, 1808. The set includes Delicious Weather, Dreadful-Hot-Weather, Fine Bracing Weather, Raw Weather, Sad Sloppy Weather, Windy Weather and Very Slippy-Weather. The last is also the best known of the group, taking place outside the St. James printshop of his benefactor and dealer Hannah Humphrey.

The Graphic Arts Collection has a small number of original posters by W. Graham Robertson (1866-1948). “A companion of Wilde, collector of Whistler, friend of Burne-Jones, and acolyte of Ellen Terry, Robertson also sustained a career as a painter, illustrator, costume designer, and writer. . . . Part of a wealthy shipbuilding family, he was born Graham Walford Robertson in 1866, but went by W. Graham Robertson because he did not want to share initials with the Great Western Railway. His grandmother was befriended by Coleridge, and his mother refused to meet Dickens because she disliked his waistcoat. In his memoir, Time Was, Robertson displays wit and paradox in the vein of Wilde.”

“…When he wasn’t in school or hanging around actresses’ dressing rooms, Robertson was in the studios of leading Victorian artists. He was too late to meet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who died in 1882, but he responded to his art ‘as a spark to tinder, setting light to my imagination.'”

“…Robertson discovered Blake at 17 when he came across a biography of the artist in a bookshop. In the 19th century, Blake was not highly esteemed except among Pre-Raphaelites like Rossetti and Burne-Jones, who saw him as a precursor. Robertson was able to buy his first Blake for £12, ‘despite severe qualms of conscience at the vast outlay.’ By his 20th birthday he owned 40 drawings.”

“Within a few years, Robertson was spending most of his days at a rural cottage in Surrey purchased from the Irish poet William Allingham. …The place was antiquated when he got it in 1888, and he steadfastly avoided modernizing it. The house lacked electricity, central heating and hot water. He lived by candlelight, fires and tubs filled by jug. After one of Gielgud’s visits, Robertson said, ‘Perhaps you realized that you left London in 1942 and arrived some time in the 1890’s.’”–Avis Berman, “Not Just Another Pale Victorian Aesthete,” The New York Times, September 23, 2001

Robertson also worked on a number of illustrated books, for children and adults. Here’s French Songs of Old Canada (London: W. Heinemann, 1904). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) NK8667.R62 F73 1904q

See also: W. Graham Robertson (1866-1948), Time was: the Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1931). (F) ND497.R54A3

Claes Jansz. Visscher (1586 or 1587-1652), London. 1616 (publisher unknown, no date). size: 52 x 231 cm. fold. to 52 x 35 cm. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0010E

It is unclear when this reproductive print held at Princeton University Library was printed. A copy of the earliest engraved view of London was made in 1616 by C. J. Visscher and published by Ludovicus Hondius. Only one print was made from the original plates, which were afterwards destroyed. This print is preserved in the King’s Library of the British Museum.

Other editions were published later, all of them lacking the descriptive letterpress at the bottom of the view and being undated. Besides the original edition in the British Museum, there are two copies in the Crace collection, one of them etched by J. Pullam in 1848.

A facsimile of the original edition has been published by the London Topographical Society. For a discussion of the view and its engraver see London Topographical Society. London Topographical Record 6 (1909): 39-64.

Carl Ernst Christoph Hess (1755-1828) after a painting by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Rubens et sa Premiere Femme = Rubens and his First Wife, January 1, 1796. Engraving with stipple. GC018 German Prints Collection, Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905.

Inscribed in plate: “To the His Most Serene Highness Charles Theodore, Elector Palatin, Reigning Duke of Bavaria. This Plate Engraved by his Gracious Permission // from the Original Picture in the Electoral Gallery of Dusseldorf, is Dedicated by His Most Devoted & Obedient Humble Servant // Rupert.”

The print is engraved after Rubens’s self-portrait with his first wife in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1609-10. In 1609, around the age of 32, Rubens married Isabella Brant, daughter of the humanist and lawyer Jan Brant. They exemplify new love, posed contentedly in a bucolic setting. Isabella died in 1626 and after traveling for several years, Rubens married again, this time to Helena Fourment.

Thomas Rowlandson (ca. 1756-1827) after an aquatint by Paul Sandby (1731-1809) after a watercolor by David Allan (1744-1796), Carnival at Rome. London: R. Ackermann’s Repository of Arts; No. 101 Strand, August 2,1802. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014.00778. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895

In 1780, Paul Sandby printed and published an aquatint of David Allan’s watercolor The Opening of the Carnival at Rome, the Obelisk near the Porta del Popolo.

(c) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.10962

This was one of four elaborate watercolor drawings Allan produced of the 1780 carnival in Rome, which were engraved, aquatinted, and self-published by Sandby. There is no record of why London publisher Rudolph Ackermann engaged Thomas Rowlandson to aquatint another version of Sandby’s print or if he was going to market the full series in color.

The print in the Graphic Arts Collection might be the only copy of Rowlandson’s hand colored aquatint, which is not listed in Grego, British Museum, Yale Center for British Art, or other institutional collections. If you can prove us wrong, please write.

Titles in the Sandby/Allan series include The Carnival at Rome: The Opening of the Carnival at Rome; The Romans Polite to Strangers; The Horse Race at Home During the Carnival; and The Victor Conducted in Triumph. The full set of 4 plates, with an introduction plate, was published in 1780.

James Bretherton (active 1770-1781) after a design by Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), A City Hunt, February 8, 1781. Triptych in drypoint and etching. Total: 60.5 x 169.5 cm. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.01395

This very rare triptych caricatures the British upper class institution of the fox hunt by sending the riders into London to get a drink. From the surrounding rooftops chimney sweeps cheer the passing hysteria as several carriages get caught going in the wrong direction. Animals tumble under the galloping horses.

Bunbury is also satirizing the popular equestrian paintings of George Stubbs (1724-1806), which filled the men’s clubs of the period. Dedication below image on first sheet: To His Royal Highness George Prince of Wales.

A stone road marker “[5] Miles from Shoreditch Church” has been knocked down in the rider’s hurry to reach a pub off to the left, signaled with the banner “John Bull, Dealer in all sorts of spirits.”

Can you find the unicorn in this remarkable six foot print by the Puerto Rican artist Lorenzo Homar? The woodcut has been pulled by special request for visiting alumni this week.

Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004), Unicornio en la Isla = Unicorn on the Island, 1965-66. 94 x 184.2 cm (37 x 72 1/2 in.). Woodcut on Japan paper. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00217

The poem is by the Puerto Rican writer Tomás Blanco (1896-1975) entitled “Unicornio en la Isla.”
Isla de la palmera y la guajana
con cinto de bullentes arrecifes
y corola de soles.
Isla de amor y mar enamorado.
Bajo el viento:
los caballos azules con sus sueltas melenas;
y, con desnuda piel de ascuas doradas,
el torso de las dunas.
Isla de los coquís y los careyes
con afrodisio cinturón de espuma
y diadema de estrellas.
Isla de amor marino y mar embelesado.
Bajo los plenilunios:
Húmedas brisas, mágicas ensenadas, secretos matorrales…
Y el unicornio en la manigua alzado,
listo para la fuga, alerta y tenso.

Our entire collection of prints, drawings, and carved blocks by Lorenzo Homar is digitized and available online at: http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0033

Spoiler alert, the answer is below:

See also Lorenzo Homar, Plenas: 12 grabados de Lorenzo Homar y Rafael Tufiño; introducción por Tomás Blanco; diseño de Irene Delano (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial Caribe, 1955). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize NE585.H66 A4 1955q