Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Mammoth Double Sheet Pictorial Brother Jonathan now online

In the winter of 1860, an advertisement was posted in several urban newspapers: Pictorial Brother Jonathan for Christmas and New Years. The Great Holiday Sheet of Pictures for 1860. The Mammoth Brother Jonathan this year stands Unrivalled! It positively can’t be beat! Price 12 Cents per copy—Ten for One Dollar. The copy continued:

“The Pictorial Double Brother Jonathan for Christmas and New Years was first issued in the year 1840-—just twenty years ago. It was at that time such a novelty that the demand for it continued three or four months, and even then the circulation reached eighty thousand copies. Since that period it has been issued regularly each year, with the avearage [sic] sale of over one hundred thousand copies for every number. Among the Newsvenders, the Brother Jonathan is extremely popular, as they never have a copy of it leftover unsold.

The immense size of the Mammoth Double Brother Jonathan enables us to give in it a profuse amount of reading and still leave room for the great number of Elegant Large Pictures. Altogether, you will find it to be a paper unsurpassed in interest, in point of handsome embellishment and agreeable reading. We give away this elegant Pictorial Paper to every yearly and half-yearly subscriber to the Weekly Brother Jonathan. The Christmas and New Years Pictorial Brother Jonathan will be sent, post-paid, to purchasers at 12 cents per single copy, or ten copies for One Dollar; but if you [subscribe] to the weekly paper, you will get a copy of the pictorial for nothing. Be sure to mention that you want the Pictorial Brother Jonathan, to prevent any mistake. Send cash to B. H. Day, 48 Beekman-Street, New York.”

We are thrilled to announce that Princeton University Library’s rare collection of 23 mammoth issues and 2 prospectuses of the Pictorial Double Brother Jonathan have been cleaned, flattened, repaired, catalogued, digitized, and posted online for the public to read and enjoy.
Brother Jonathan [A collection of 25 mammoth double-sheet numbers in its series Pictorial Jubilee] (New York: Wilson & Company, 1845-1860). Permanent Link: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/9z903261b
Sizes vary, primarily 81 x 56 cm.
Princeton University Library holdings:
July 4, 1845
July 4, 1846
July 4, 1847
[1847?] An illustrated history of the victories and conquests … (gift of Sinclair Hamilton)
[Dec. 1847] Christmas/New Year
July 4, 1848
March 4, 1849
No. 22 [Dec. 1850] Christmas/New Year (gift of Sinclair Hamilton)
No. 23, July 4, 1851
[1852?] Prospectus or advertising sheet for Christmas and New Year
No. 25 [Dec. 1851] Christmas/New Year 1852 (gift of Sinclair Hamilton)
Vol. 13, no. 28, June 26th, 1852 [4th of July]
[Dec. 1852] Christmas/New Year
July 4, 1853
July 4, 1854
[Dec. 1854] Christmas/New Year (2 copies)
[Dec. 1855] Christmas/New Year
[Dec. 1856] Christmas/New Year
Vol. 18, no. 317, December 12, 1857 Christmas/New Year
Vol. 18, no. 344, June 19 1858, [4th of July]
Vol. 18, no. 369, Dec. 11, 1858, Christmas/New Year
Vol. 19, no. 397, June 25, 1859 [4th of July]
Prospectus or advertising sheet for Christmas and New Year
Vol. 19, no. 421, December 10, 1859, Christmas/New Year
Vol. 20, no. 474, Dec. 15, 1860, Christmas/New Year.

Over the years, these wonderful issues have been called Brother Jonathan Pictorial; Double Sheet Brother Jonathan Pictorial; Jubilee Sheet Brother Jonathan; Jubilee Number Brother Jonathan Pictorial Double; and so on, making them not only difficult to find but hard to describe.

One of the many benefits to having these mammoth newspapers online is the ability to zoom in and see details. Several of the double-page spreads hold wood engravings 3 feet tall by 4 feet wide. Artists such as Frank Leslie (1821-1880) perfected the technique of dividing a scene between many small woodblocks and then, reassembling the blocks once they are engraved. Even zooming in, it is hard to see evidence of the individual blocks.

Above is a detail from below.

The amount of space available on these large sheets allowed for the publishing of entire novels, public orations, and complete essays. Here is a tiny portion of George Van Santvoord’s essay “The Character of Robespierre and the First French Revolution.”

Thanks to the dozens of staff members who worked on this project, to Sinclair Hamilton who donated the first copies, and Steve Ferguson who brought this extremely rare collection together.
Permanent Link: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/9z903261b

Stammbaum des Königlichen Hauses Bayern

Stammbaum des Königlichen Hauses Bayern = Family Tree of the Royal House of Bavaria (München: Michael Masson, 1855). Hand colored lithograph in 12 parts (each 550 x 520 mm), mounted on linen, measuring together: 2200 x 1550 mm. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2006- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection holds several large format family trees, printed in an almost life-size tree. This one depicts the ancestry of the Bavarian Royal House, lithographed by the Wild’sche Firm in Munich.

At the bottom of the trunk is Ernst I, Herzog von Bayern-München (1373-1438) and at the very top of the tree sits Ludwig II (Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm, 1845-1886), who was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. This was after the printing of our chart and so, Ludwig doesn’t yet have a crown on his name.

See also: http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2009/03/anthony_morris_family_tree.html and
https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/09/05/zuberspoerlin-family-tree/

Five blue devils bearing torches are leading the coffin of Bonaparte towards the jaws of a green dragon vomiting flames, monkeys acting as pall-bearers.

Alexander Meyrick Broadley’s Napoleon in Caricature 1795-1821 (Graphic Arts Collection 2012-0647N) is one of the few sources to even mention this extremely rare caricature attributed to George Woodward (ca.1765-1809). Broadley writes:

“A few days later (October 27) W. Holland published Woodward’s “The Funeral Procession of Buonaparte,” a plate nearly two yards in length and containing a large number of figures. Five blue devils bearing torches are leading the coffin of Bonaparte towards the jaws of a green dragon vomiting flames, monkeys acting as pall-bearers. On the coffin-lid are a scimitar and bowl of poison. Death and a Captain of the Consular Guard officiate as chief mourners. Behind the banner of the deceased march four ghosts from the plains of Jaffa. Behind them come groups of merry mourners, headed by Holland and Switzerland; Italy and the Pope playing the cymbals. The Russian bear carries a flag with the legend, “No farder trouble.” The last group consists of a number of British sailors, showing very curiously the transition then taking place in their attire. They bear an effigy of John Bull, with his traditional pewter of stout and joint of beef, shouting the refrain of Rule, Britannia.”

The date on Woodward’s panoramic print held in the Graphic Arts collection is altered from 1803 to 1813, which could indicate a later reprinting or just a poor colorist who spilled his ink.
Note that the plates were printed at an angle on four sheets, later attached.

George Moutard Woodward (ca. 1760-1809), The Funeral Procession of Buonaparte!!, October 27, 1803 (1813). Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts collection GA 2011.01416. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

The Voyage of the Jamestown on Her Errand of Mercy

Tucked inside the 1847 volume:

Robert Bennet Forbes (1804-1889), The Voyage of the Jamestown on Her Errand of Mercy (Boston: Eastburn’s Press, 1847). Frontispiece signed: F.H. Lane, del. GAX copy is presentation copy to Honble. Josiah Quincy with inscription by author. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) ND237.L24 F67

is a rare lithograph drawn by:

Fitz Hugh (or Henry) Lane (1804-1865), Boston, March 28th 1847, Departure of the Jamestown, for Cork, Ireland, R. B. B. Forbes, Commander. Lithograph, printed by Lane & Scott’s Lith, Tremont Temple, Boston, 1847.

Details on the print and the book can be found at:
http://fitzhenrylaneonline.org/catalog/entry.php?id=475&print=true
Fitz Henry Lane Historical Archive, catalogue raisonné, and educational resource; an online project under the direction of the Cape Ann Museum.

Melissa Geisler Trafton writes, “When news of the second year of the devastating Irish potato famine reached Boston in 1846, Bostonians formed a relief committee and began to look for ways to help. Robert Bennet Forbes lobbied the U.S. Navy for use of the “Jamestown,” a sloop that was lying idle in Charlestown Navy Yard. On March 3, 1847, by United States Congressional resolution, R. B. Forbes was authorized to take command of the “Jamestown,” while Captain George Coleman McKay was authorized to command USS “Macedonian,” then at New York Navy Yard. Tons of food and $151,000 were donated and loaded onto the “Jamestown” by the Boston Labourers Society (mostly Irish), free of charge. On March 28, 1847, the “Jamestown” left Boston at 8:30 a.m. under the command of R. B. Forbes, who managed to complete the Atlantic crossing in a record-breaking seventeen days.

Upon his return, Forbes wrote a book about the voyage, Voyage of the Jamestown in Her Errand of Mercy. In 1847 Lane was running his own lithography shop in Boston with his partner John Scott. Lane had already made two lithographs of Forbes’s innovative steam-powered vessels in 1845, Auxiliary Steam Packet Ship Massachusetts (inv. 442) and Steam packet ship Mass., in a Squall, Nov. 10, 1845 (inv. 443). It was natural that, in 1847, Forbes would turn to Lane to make a lithograph for the frontispiece of his book.” –Melissa Geisler Trafton

Brighton Panorama

To her most gracious majesty the Queen, this panorama is by permission most gratefully and humbly dedicated by W.H. Mason … and W. Mason [also called Panoramic view of Brighton] (Brighton: W. H. Mason; Cambridge: W. Mason; London: Ackermann & Co., 1833). 11 cm. Hand colored aquatint. 6 sections total 15 feet, aquatinted by A. Edington, after a drawing by the architect Amon Henry Wilds (1784 or 1790-1857), in original boxwood drum with Royal coat of arms. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953.

William Henry Mason and his (?) father William Mason published this 15 foot panoramic view of Old Brighton, seen from the sea front, extending from Saunders’s Belle Vue Mansion to the Athenaeum. The drawing was made in at least six parts by the architect Amon Henry Wilds (1784 or 1790-1857), later aquatinted by A. Edington.

Numerous figures are depicted in the costume of the period, civil and military carriages, and riders on horseback. Many of the streets and buildings are identified, including The Anthaeum, Adelaide Terrace, Brunswick Terrace, Lansdowne Place, Brunswick Square, Waterloo Street, Western House, Western Street, Kings Road, Norfolk Hotel, and many others.

The panorama is dedicated to Queen Adelaide (1792-1849), who married William, Duke of Clarence, the third son of King George III. Adelaide became the Queen consort in 1830 when her husband was crowned King William IV.

See also J.R. Abbey, Life in England (Rare Books (Ex) Oversize NE90 .A12q) and R. Hyde, Gilded scenes and shining prospects (Marquand Library (SA) Oversize NE628.H92q)

Picasso and Iliazd

Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich, 1894-1975), Pirosmanachvili 1914 (Paris: Le Degré 41, 1972). Original vellum binding, with yellow dust-wrapper and preserved in publisher’s beige cloth chemise and slipcase. Presentation copy from Iliazd’s last wife to Chota Takaishvili. One of 78 copies printed on Japon ancien paper, signed in red pencil on the colophon by Iliazd and with the original etching signed by Picasso, printed by Atelier Lacourière Frélaut. Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

“It was something of a secret after World War II that one of the most rewarding people in Paris was a man who liked to be addressed simply as Iliazd,” wrote John Russell for the New York Times. “He was known—when known at all—as the architect, designer and publisher of illustrated books in which, one after another, the great surviving names of the School of Paris played a part.” Russell goes on to assert that Iliazd excelled “as poet, geographer, book designer, mountain climber, printer, publisher, fabric designer for Sonia Delaunay and Coco Chanel, pioneer dismantler of language, idiosyncratic stage performer and organizer in the early 1920’s of some of the last of the great classic artists’ balls.” All true.

Born Ilia Zdanevitch in Tiflis, Georgia, Iliazd (1894-1975) was a founding member of the Russian Futurists. Like many of his contemporaries, the artist eventually made his way to Paris where he designed and published extraordinary livres d’artistes, including several with his own prose and poetry under the imprint Le Degré 41 (41 degrees refers to the latitude of his hometown, the alcoholic content of brandy, and the Celsius measure of the point at which fever leads to delirium).

From 1940 to 1974, Iliazd produced 20 extraordinary books, including 9 with Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). None have been collected by Princeton University until now.

According to Bookvica, a rare book shop from Iliazd’s hometown of Tiflis, “Iliazd returned to his homeland in 1912 and with his brother, artist Kirill Zdanevitch, he met Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918). They became very enthusiastic about him.

Iliazd was alarmed by the difficult economic straits that the painter was in and wrote a manifesto to promote his art; it was published in a local paper Zakavkazskaya Rech’ in 1913 under the title “Khudozhnik-samorodok” (A natural-born artist). It was Iliazd’s first publication. In June 1914 the journal Vostok published his article “Niko Pirosmani,” in which he mythologized the biography of the older artist, linking him with the Silver Age and the Russian avant-garde.”

In the summer of 1971, Iliazd decided to reprint the article and to help promote it, he asked Picasso to etch the frontispiece. His friend agreed and produced a beautiful drypoint, which was printed at the Atelier Lacourière Frélaut (originally the studio of Roger Lacourière, who passed it on to his collaborator and successor Jacques Frélaut in 1957).

The edition of 78 was completed and signed by December 1972, four months before Picasso’s death. Although this was also intended to be Iliazd’s last book, technical difficulties on another project, Courtisan Grotesque (which had been finished in 1974), caused it to be printed after Pirosmanachvili.

The copy now in the Princeton University Library comes from the collection of Damian Alaniya. This collector once erased the owner’s stamp of the previous owner to whom this copy was presented by the Iliazd’s wife with signature on the front endpaper: “Eu souvenir de Ms Zdanevitch pour Chota Takaishvili avec les amitiés Ms Helene Zdanevitch. 1.7.82.”

Johanna Drucker writes, “Drawing to the end of his energies, Iliazd had evidently wished this book to perform a double closure: as the end of the cycle of large books, and as the close of the full cycle of his life’s work. There was a mirroring effect between the beginning and the end, a deliberate, marked recognition of the self-consciousness which had dictated the construction of the oeuvre as a whole.” “Iliazd and the Book as a Form of Art,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 7 (Winter 1988): 36-51.

Le faux satyrique puni

Marc Perachon (1630-1709). Le faux satyrique puni, et le merite couronné, dans une lettre d’artiste, a l’un de ses amis, contenant L’Apologie de Mr. Perachon l’Avocat, contre les fausses Satyres du pretendu Poëte sans fard, & La Juste Critique des ses Satyres, & des faux Satyriques avec La Defense de Plusieurs personnes qu’il a Satyrisées: & Le Brevet du Roy (Lyon: Chez Claude Rey, [1696]). First ed., bound in 1800s chocolate calf by Koehler. Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

C’est ainsi que les Dieux, pour Signaler leurs dons, Punissent les mechants, et couronnent les bon

Quoting the dealer’s note, “Uncommon first edition of this somewhat pious attack on the satirical poetry of François Gacon (1667-1725) [Poëte sans fard] and, by extension, on the man himself, by the Lyonnais lawyer Marc Perrachon (or Perachon, 1630-1709). Perrachon, a protestant convert and “auteur de poésies passablement misérables,” was one of the many targets of the Oratorian Gacon’s pen, but not the best known; Gacon also satirized the likes of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau and Boileau, whom he initially took as a model.

His attack on Perrachon . . . in fact landed him in gaol for a few months, but this was not enough to discourage Perrachon from publishing the present work in response, and in his own defence; the caption to the engraved title (”C’est ainsi que les Dieux, pour signaler leurs dons, Punissent les mechants, et couronnent les bons”) shows on which side Perrachon considered himself to lie.

Perrachon, writing in the third person, describes the faults in Gacon’s writing, contrasting it with the true satires of the Greeks, and attacking his “mauvaises rimes, ses hemistiches d’un mesme son, ses mauvaises cesures, ses enjambemens, ses mauvaises constructions, ses transpositions, ses fausses cadences, ses mauvaises mots, ou barbarismes, ses fausses significations des termes,” and so on, giving examples of each.”

Note the use of engraved initials.

See also below: François Gacon (1667-1725), Discours satiriques en vers (Cologne, 1696). Fictitious imprint; printed in Lyons by Boudet. Rare Books (Ex) PQ1985.G2 A7 1696

and François Gacon (1667-1725), Le journal satirique intercepté, ou, Apologie de Monsieur Arrouet de Voltaire, et de Monsieur Houdart de La Motte ([S.l. : s.n.], 1719). Rare Books (Ex) 3298.368

Osages, Peuplade Sauvage de l’Amerique Septentrionale

François Séraphin Delpech (1778-1825), after drawings by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845), Osages: peuplade sauvage de l’Amerique Septentrionale dans l’Etat de Missouri [Osages: Primitive Tribes of North America, in the State of Missouri]. 1827. From the series Recueil de Grimaces, no. 89. Lithograph with added hand color. Joint acquisition of the Graphic Arts Collection and Western Americana. GAX 2016 in process.

Between 1823 and 1828, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) and his lithographer François Séraphin Delpech (1778-1825) created a series of genre portraits or caricatures of occupations under the title Recueil de Grimaces or Les Grimaces. The Getty Research Institute holds one copy of the portfolio with eight prints and the National Library of France holds another with 93 prints in 5 volumes. It is unclear whether there was one definitive set. The prints could be purchased together or separate, colored or uncolored.

Each sheet usually presents a cluster of three to five heads. Boilly was somewhat unique in caricaturing a whole profession, not an individual, targeting groups of writers, doctors, art critics, etc. However, as the series continued, the faces became less grotesque and more descriptive.

Numbers 89, 90, and possibly 91 in the series represent members of the Osages Tribe from the Ohio River Valley in Arkansas and Missouri, who traveled to France in 1827. No. 89, recently acquired jointly by the Graphic Arts Collection and the Western Americana Collection, depicts Kishagashugah or Little Chief (age 28), Minckchatahooh or Little Soldier (age 22), and Grétomih (age 18 and cousin to Kishagashugah’s wife). No.90, available at the Beinecke Library, presents Mohongo (Sacred Sun, ca. 1789–1836), Washingsabba (Black Bird, 1795–1829?), and Big Soldier (1773?–1844).

See also Marie-Claude Feltes-Strigler, Les indiens Osages: Enfants-des-eaux-du-milieu (Paris: O.D. éditions-Indiens de tous pays, [2016]) Firestone Library (F) E99.O8 F45 2016

Louis F. Burns, A history of the Osage people (Tuscaloosa; London: University of Alabama Press, 2004). Firestone Library (F) E99.O7 B85 2004

Illustrated Soviet Sheet Music

The Graphic Arts Collection along with Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Collections recently acquired a large group of illustrated Russian sheet music from the 1920s and 1930s for the Princeton University Library. We are in the process of transcribing, translating, and conserving the material but until that is finished, here is a taste of the wonderful lithographic covers. Don’t miss Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford below.

The Flying Trapeze

The Flying Trapeze was written by George Leybourne, arranged by Alfred Lee, and published by R. Wittig & Co., No. 1021 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1868.

The collection of comic songs in the Graphic Arts Collection was lithographed by Louis N. Rosenthal (born about 1824), one of four Rosenthal brothers who operated a lithography firm on Walnut Street. Born in Poland, Louis arrived in Philadelphia in 1848 and within only a few years, managed one of the first shops in the city producing lithographs for advertising, maps, magazine, books, and sheet music. The family’s youngest brother Max was their primary artist.

Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn,
Like an old coat, all tattered and torn,
Left in this wide world to fret and to mourn,
Betrayed by a wife in her teens.
Oh, the girl that I loved she was handsome,
I tried all I knew her to please,
But I could not please one quarter as well
As the man on the flying trapeze.
Chorus
She floats through the air
With the greatest of ease,
You’d think her a man
On the flying trapeze.
She does all the work
While he takes his ease,
And that’s what became of my love.

Also including Louis Rosenthal’s lithographs:
Henry Louis Stephens (1824-1882), The Comic Natural History of the Human Race (Philadelphia: S. Robinson [1851]) Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 1213q

Charles Wilkins Webber (1819-1856) The Hunter-Naturalist (Philadelphia: J.W. Bradley, …, 1851). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 466(1)q

Report of the Committee appointed by the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania to translate the inscription on the Rosetta stone ([Philadelphia: s.n., 1859]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2006-2063N and 2006-2064N

Charles Wilkins Webber (1819-1856), Wild Scenes and Wild Hunters of the World (Philadelphia, Bradley, 1852). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 466(2)

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