Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Longstreet Portraits

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002), Jazz Age mayor – Jimmy Walker, 1929. Pen and wash with watercolor. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Stephen Longstreet (born Chancey Weiner, 1907-2002) was an American novelist, screenwriter and illustrator. A concise biography is printed with the artist’s finding aid at Yale University, which is quoted here:

“Stephen Longstreet was born in New York City on April 18, 1907, and raised in New Brunswick, NJ. His birth name was Chauncey Weiner, a surname shortened from the family name Weiner-Longstrasse; as a youth he changed his first name to Henry and in the early 1940s became known as Stephen Longstreet. He began his career as a graphic artist in New York by publishing cartoons and vignettes in periodicals such as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers, then went on to write radio, television, and film scripts. Longstreet wrote, ghostwrote, compiled, and edited nearly 140 books between 1936 and 1999, which were published under the name Stephen Longstreet, as well as his pseudonyms Thomas Burton, Paul Haggard, David Ormsbee, Henri Weiner, Stephen Weiner-Longstreet, and Philip Wiener. Many of his early drawings appeared with the signature “Henri.” . . . Longstreet wrote both novels and non-fiction works. Most of the latter were not reviewed kindly, with reviewers questioning his accuracy of content and reliability of sources.”

For his filmography: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0519487/

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002), George Orwell – It’s all a great mistake, 1927. Collotype ?81/150. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002), John O’Hara at Linebrook. We first got together in the 1920s when we both worked at the New Yorker, 1964. Pen and wash with watercolor. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002) Gertrude Stein – Paris, 1928. Pen and wash with watercolor. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002) Isak Dinesen YMHA – New York, 1958. Pen and wash with watercolor. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002), Scotty and Zelda at the Ritz, 1927. Pen and wash with watercolor. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Stephen Longstreet (1907-2002) Alice Toklas, I’m not the best dressed woman in Paris, 1955. Pen and wash with watercolor. Anonymous gift. Graphic Arts Collection GC088

Street Vendors of Naples, 1827

Count Karel Gustav Hjalmar de Mörner (1794-1837) was a Swedish nobleman as well as an amateur artist who experimented with printmaking while living in Italy during the early nineteenth century. He completed this series depicting colorful street vendors in 1827 and published it under the title Nuova Raccolta di scene popolari e costumi di Napoli disegnati esattamente dal vero (A New Collection of Popular Scenes and Costumes of Naples Drawn Exactly from Life).

Hfalmar Mörner (1794-1837) Venditore di maccheroni cotti (Baked Macaroni Vendor) from the book Nuova Raccolta di scene popolari e costumi di Napoli disegnati esattamente dal vero (New Collection of popular scenes and costumes of Naples drawn exactly from life). Also called Street Scenes in Naples. (Naples: Bianchi and Cucniello, 1827). 10 lithographs with added hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection GAX DG 845.6.N37 1840Q

It is possible that Count Mörner drew his designs directly onto the Bavarian limestone while working at the Naples lithography studio of Lorenzo Bianchi and Domenico Cuciniello. The complex coloring, however, was not printed but added by hand after the lithographs were pulled, probably by a technician in the shop.

Elmer Adler purchased the volume and brought it with him to Princeton for the new collection of graphic arts in 1940.

See also Hjalmar Mörner (1794-1837), Il Carnevale di Roma (Roma: Presso Francesco Bourliè, 1820). 20 etchings with hand coloring. Rare Books (Ex) Oversize GT4452.R6 xC2E

The Lulu Plays by Frank Wedekind and William Kentridge

Timing is everything.

On the very day that we are fortunate to have the South African multimedia artist William Kentridge visiting Princeton University as our 2015-16 Belknap Visitor in the Humanities, we also received our copy of his new artist’s book The Lulu Plays.

Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), The Lulu Plays,
with sixty-seven drawings by William Kentridge (San Francisco: Arion Press, 2015).
Copy 118 of 400. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process

Described in the prospectus as “one of Arion’s most ambitious artist books, this limited edition contains 67 drawings by William Kentridge bound into the book.

The text is the original telling of the Lulu story by playwright Frank Wedekind, which inspired the silent cinema classic Pandora’s Box and the Alban Berg opera Lulu.”

The images are derived from brush and ink drawings for projections created for Kentridge’s 2015 production of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu, which was based on the two Wedekind plays from the turn of the century, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box.

The artist drew with brush and ink directly onto dictionary pages. The definitions are in the background but the opening and closing words, in larger type, can be read.

Often, after drawing, Kentridge moves the sheets, rearranging elements of the drawings so that they become collages and can resemble moving pictures. The appearance of the drawings on pages of the book is very different from the much larger versions in the opera set, where sometimes only a detail is used and images can be altered by the surfaces on which they are projected, as well as fractured or distorted by the planes and interfering elements of the scenery.

The public is invited to Kentridge’s lecture today, October 14, “O Sentimental Machine,” which will take place at 5:00 p.m. in McCosh 10. http://humanities.princeton.edu/events/belknap-visitors. He will be introduced by Susan Stewart, Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities, who has written a monograph on Kentridge’s works. A reception will follow at Princeton University Art Museum and is open to the public.

Portmeirion

Leslie Gerry and Robin Llywelyn, Portmeirion (Risbury: Whittington Press, 2008). Copy 116 of 225. Graphic Arts Collection RECAP-91157790

Since 1971, The Whittington Press has been printing and publishing limited edition, letterpress books. In 2008, they broke with tradition to work with artist Leslie Gerry who designed the plates for Portmeirion on his iPad. The flat layers of digital color give the surprising effect of screen prints.

“Portmeirion, the extraordinary Italianate village built by the eccentric architect Clough Williams-Ellis on a remote peninsula in North Wales. Clough’s grandson, Robin Llywelyn, who spent much of his childhood with his grandparents at Portmeirion, has written short but evocative texts about each of Leslie Gerry’s seven images of the village.”–prospectus.

Princeton University library holds 49 limited edition books from the Whittington Press along with a complete run of their fine-press journal Matrix: A Review for Printers & Bibliophiles. Issued annually since 1981, Matrix has made distinguished contributions to the study, recording, preservation, and dissemination of printing history, and has done so utilizing a remarkable combination of authoritative scholarship and fine printing.

Jonas Silber 1582

Jonas Silber (active 1572-1589), [Circular Design with Saturn], 1582. Punched engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014.00905

In 1582, the German goldsmith Jonas Silber (active 1572-1589) created a series of nine designs for the bottom of bowls or plates. They have no titles because they were decorative patterns, not meant for framing but for copying onto tableware. Nevertheless, libraries and museums collect these ornamental prints, giving them descriptive titles such as this one which is called Saturn seated in a Landscape or Circular Design with Saturn or Saturn seated on a stone at the base of a tree with his scythe in his hand.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Art, “Silber studied with Samuel Spillman in Berne, then with Wenzel Jamnitzer in Nuremberg. Among the most talented practitioners of the Jamnitzer style, he popularized the goldsmith’s old technique of punch engraving in many allegorical prints, cups, and small bronze plaques. He became a master in 1572, and [examples] from that year typify his early work: it has restrained Renaissance proportions and is decorated with four classical medallions on a band of punchwork verdure.”

Note, this print is not as pink as my quick photograph appears.

Paul Revere gets the time wrong

On March 28, 1770, just three weeks after the battle we now call the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere published an engraving of the bloody scene. The week before, Henry Pelham had shared with Revere a depiction of the battle that he was planning to publish. Revere copied the picture, engraved it, and published it under his own name, working quickly to get it out before Pelham finished his print.

As we all know, when you work too quickly you make mistakes. Revere got the time on the clock wrong and didn’t catch the error until a few impressions had already been pulled. He took back the plate, changed the time to 10:20, and finished the print run. This second state of the first edition is the print now held at Princeton University.

Pelham did complain about this piracy, writing to Revere on March 29, “When I heard that you was cutting a plate of the late Murder, I thought it impossible as I knew you was not capable of doing it unless you coppied it from mine and I thought I had intrusted it in the hands of a person who had more regard to the dictates of Honour and Justice than to take the undue advantage you have done of the confidence and trust I reposed in you.” Pelham’s letter was published in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd series, volume 8 (1892-1894), page 227. Firestone Library Recap F61 .M377.
Note that Revere only claims to have engraved, printed, and sold the print, not to have designed or drawn the image.

Paul Revere (1735-1818) after Henry Pelham (1748/49-1806), The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King-Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt., [1770]. Engraving with hand color. Scheide Library, Gift of William H. Scheide, Class of 1936.

“Unhappy Boston! See thy Sons deplore. Thy hallow’d Walks besmear’d with guiltless Gore. While faithless P-n and his savage Bands. With murd’rous Rancour stretch their bloody Hands; Like fierce Barbarians grinning o’er their Prey, Approve the Carnage and enjoy the Day. If scalding drops from Rage from Anguish Wrung if Speechless Sorrows lab’ring for a Tongue, or if a weeping World can ought appease The plaintive Ghosts of Victims such s these; The Patriot’s copious Tears for each are shed, a Glorious Tribute which embalms the Dead. But know Fate summons to that awful Goal, Where justice strips the Murd’rer of his Soul; Should venal C-ts the scandal of the Land, Snatch the relentless Villain from her Hand, Keen Execrations on this Plate inscrib’d Shall reach a Judge who never can be brib’d.”

Note the unharmed dog. It has been suggested that Revere was showing that the British treated the dog better than the American colonists.

In Pelham’s print, the moon in the top left-hand corner faces to the right, whereas it faces to the left in Revere’s version.

The Red Coats are placed under the sign “Butcher’s Hall.”

There are many variations of this scene. A wonderful page comparing various Boston massacre prints has been mounted by the Boston Historical Society: http://www.masshist.org/features/massacre/comparison

See also Philomathes, The Massachusetts Calendar, or an Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1772 … 2nd ed. Boston: [s.n., 1772?]. Woodcut of the Boston massacre after Paul Revere’s engraving of 1770. Philomathes is a pseudonym of Ezra Gleason. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 59.

See also Paul Revere (1735-1818), The Bloody Massacre, 1970 (restrike). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) NE539.R5 B55q This is a restrike from Revere’s original plate.

First Lithography in English, 1813

We are proud to announce that the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired the earliest independent work on lithography in the English language.

Henry Bankes (1757?-1834), Lithography; Or, the Art of Making Drawings on Stone, for the Purpose of Being Multiplied by Printing (Bath: printed by Wood and Co., 1813). Purchased with funds from the Rare Book Division and the Graphic Arts Collection 2015- in process

The first edition of Henry Bankes’s treatise was published in Bath in 1813 with the title Lithography; or, the Art of Making Drawings on Stone, for the Purpose of Being Multiplied by Printing. A second edition was published in London in 1816 without the name of the author and titled Lithography; or, the Art of Taking Impressions from Drawings and Writing Made on Stone. As an independent publication, it is predated only by Heinrich Rapp’s Das Geheimniss des steindrucks, in 1810. It wasn’t until 1818 that Alois Senefelder completed his own account of the process he developed, entitled Vollständiges Lehrbuch der steindruckerey.

According to Michael Twyman “The value of Bankes’s treatise today is as an historical record of attitudes to the process in England in the period between its introduction right at the outset of the century and its revival by Ackermann, Hullmandel, and others around 1818; and it is of particular interest for the few shafts of light it throws on those associated with the process in Bath and on changing attitudes to lithography between 1813 and 1816.”

Only a handful of public institutions hold the 1813 edition, among them are the Bodleian Library at Oxford University; Bristol Public Reference Library; Yale University; the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress; the Bath Somerset Council; the British Library; the Victoria & Albert Museum Library; and now Princeton University Library. In addition, only a few of these small, ephemeral volumes include their original plates, most having been removed over the last two hundred years.

Not only is Princeton’s copy in perfect condition, untrimmed and partially unopened with its original stab sewing, but it has all three (title page only promises two) of Bankes’s lithographic plates. We post them here in the hope that we can complete Twyman’s survey of copies and their plates, published in the facsimile edition. It would be interesting to match them with other institutional copies:

“Lithograph, drawing on stone. An invention ascribed to Alois Sennefelder, about 1796; and soon afterwards announced in Germany as polyautography. It became known in England in 1801, but its general introduction is referred to Mr. Ackermann of London, about 1817. Sennefelder died in 1841. Improvements have been made by Engelmann and others.”– quote from Charlton Thomas Lewis, Harper’s Book of Facts: a Classified Encyclopaedia of the History of the World (New York: Harper & brothers, 1906).

See also: Henry Bankes’s Treatise on Lithography: Reprinted from the 1813 and 1816 editions. Introduction by Michael Twyman (London: Printing Historical Society, 1976). Graphic Arts Collection GA 2015- in process

Amalie von Stubenberg

This memorial portrait of Amalie von Stubenberg (1632-1661) was engraved following her death at the age of 29. Amalie was the wife of Georg Augustin von Stubenberg (1628-1691), a cousin and close acquaintance of Johann Wilhelm Herr von Stubenberg (1619-1663).

The print includes Amalie’s family crest and her husband’s at the upper corners, with two weeping putti at the bottom corners. Her portrait is framed with the words: Amalia, Herrin und Frau von Stubenberg, geborne Kevenhüllerin, Freyherrin zu Aichelberg. Ist gebohren den 9 May 1632. Starb den 26 October 1661. Ihres Alters 29 Jahr 5 Monat, 17 Tag. [Amalia, mistress and wife of Stubenberg, born Kevenhüllerin, mistress to Aichelberg. She was born on May 9 1632. Died the 26 October 1661. 29 years of age, 5 months, 17 days.]

Bartholomäus Kilian II (1630-1696), the engraver, included a few lines from a sermon by Christoph Ludwig Dietherr (1619-1687). The verse reads:

Hier ist das Tugendt-Bild, so offt für Gott getretten,
Die wol verstundt die kunst in Andachts glut zu beten,
Was sterblich an Ihr war, zeigt uns des Künstlers Handt,
Ihr Seel war Gottes Lust, sein theures unterpfandt.

Bartholomäus Kilian II (1630-1696), Amalia Herrin und Frau von Stübenberg, no date [1661]. Engraving. Graphic Arts collection GA 2014.00910

Phizzzzz

David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), Life and Labours of Hablôt Knight Browne, “Phiz” (London: Chapman and Hall, 1884). 20-volume set, extra-illustrated with tipped-in works by Browne, including: etchings (some hand-colored); engravings; aquatints; lithographs; wood engravings; pencil drawings (some with added gouache); pen and ink washes; watercolors; one albumen photograph of a drawing; illustrated letters; and book covers.

There was a need to pull our extra-illustrated set of Thomson’s “Phiz” biography this week and so, a few extra images were taken to post here. Originally, Thomson’s 1884 single volume contained an engraved portrait and 130 illustrations by the artist best known for his illustrations of Charles Dickens’s novels (GA Rowlandson 946).

Princeton’s unique copy has been vastly expanded to 20 volumes, extra-illustrated with the insertion of more than 1250 plates, including 11 watercolors, 81 pencil and ink drawings (a few with a touch of color or double-sided), and 11 autograph manuscript items signed by Browne.

Robert L. Patten, Lynette S. Autry Professor Emeritus in Humanities at Rice University, studied Princeton’s set and wrote a description for our Library Chronicle, published in the spring of 2010. http://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/libchron/LXXI-3-contents.pdf. But we recommend your coming to our reading room to see this item in the original, as we can’t do justice to the variety and number of unique materials included in this set.

Here are a few examples.

The original purchase announcement: https://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2008/06/twenty_volumes_of_phiz.html

Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of Hellenic Studies

Alessandro dalla Via (active 1688-1729), General View of Mount Athos, printed ca. 1707. Etching and engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2015- in process. Gift of the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund and matching funds provided by a gift of The Orpheus Trust to the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, in honor of the 35th anniversary of Hellenic Studies at Princeton.

This extraordinary new engraving is the gift of the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund and matching funds provided by a gift of The Orpheus Trust to the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, in honor of the 35th anniversary of Hellenic Studies at Princeton. It is first independently issued representation of Mount Athos by the engraver Alessandro dalla Via (active 1688-1729), printed ca. 1707. The monumental view was created on four sheets joined together to form a single print 77.3 x 111.5 cm.

“This wonderful acquisition strengthens our Hellenic Collections at Princeton,” writes Dimitri Gondicas, Director of the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, “especially our excellent holdings in the Byzantine and early modern Greek fields, and complements our recently acquired collection of paper icons of Mt. Sinai in Graphic Arts. Through our Seeger fellowships, we are pleased to make accessible these research collections to students and scholars from around the world. We wish to thank the Trustees of the Orpheus Trust, in particular, Mr. Christopher Cone, President of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund, and Mr. Hubert Ashton.”

Only three other copies have been found in contemporary collections: two in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (one hand-colored) and one in the Museum of Prince Czartoryski, Krakow. Another version also exists dated 1707 but without engraver’s name (67 x 105 cm.). It is known in a unique copy preserved at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.

At the bottom of the sheet is a broad band divided into six columns with a description of the Holy Mountain, written in metric verse in Greek, Latin, and Russian. The text exhorts the faithful to visit Athos. At the bottom of the fourth column there is the inscription: “Sumptibus Rever(endissi)mi abbatis Domini Abbacum Adriani, et Revere(n)di Sacerdotis, et monachi Pauli Clementis ” (also in Greek at the bottom of the fifth column).

The composition is described by Dory Papastratos:

“The two aspects of Mount Athos are shown together in this view: the western face on the left, the eastern on the right; the peak, depicted twice to illustrate both flanks, appears in the center. A torrent cascades from close to the western summit, sweeping stones and boulders before it in its almost vertical course to the sea. Set among the hills on the mountainsides and atop the cliffs along the seashore, and surrounded by their lands and gardens and plantations, are the fortress-like buildings of the twenty monasteries with their defensive towers and domed churches: the Protaton, the sketes of Saint Anne and the Virgin, Prophitis Elias (skete), Mylopotamos, and the tower of Morphonou (that replaced the old monastery of Amalfitans after its destruction); at the sea’s edge are the tower-shaped arsenals or warehouses of the monasteries, their cannon firing out to sea.”

“The names of the various buildings are written in Greek and Latin on small oval tablets above them. Diminutive figures of monks move about the landscape, some on foot, others mounted on beasts of burden. A procession wends its way from Iviron monastery towards the shore where it will receive the icon of the Portaïtissa held by the monk Gabriel standing erect on the waves. Monks can be seen also on the courtyard of the Protaton. Six tall crosses project above the cypress trees lining the ridge of the mountain range.”

“Scattered about the sea in the foreground are galleys and oared ships, large fishing vessels with monks aboard, and two huge sea-monsters. With crosses at their mastheads and on their sails, the Christian vessels display Venetian or French coats of arms on their sterns, while the crescent distinguishes the Turkish vessels. The two religious scenes in the sky represent, left, the Deisis with Christ enthroned and flanked by the full-length figures of the Virgin and the Forerunner and, right, the Virgin half-length, her arms outstretched in benediction.”

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