Category Archives: prints and drawings

prints and drawings

Peterborough Cathedral Ceiling Reproduced

William Strickland (1787-1854), Strickland’s Lithographic Drawing of the Ancient Painted Ceiling in the Nave of Peterborough Cathedral. Together with descriptive letterpress (Peterborough: published by the author, W. Strickland; London: George Bell; Cambridge: E. Meadows [1849]). 12 pages and a folded color plate. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2015- in process.

Peterborough Cathedral ceiling

After a few pages of introductory text, this book consists of a single folded plate composed of 7 panels stretching slightly over 6 feet in length. The chromolithographic panorama reproduces the painted wood ceiling in the nave of Peterborough Cathedral, which dates from around 1230.

“The examples of painted woodwork of the Norman period are extremely uncommon, and it is doubtful whether any instances have come down to us, with the exception of the roof of the nave and transepts of Peterborough Cathedral. These roofs are flat and highly coloured, that over the south transept being plainer and somewhat earlier than that over the nave. On the latter are numerous figures within lozenge-shaped medallions of the Agnus Dei, various saints, and grotesque and allegorical figures.” —List of Buildings Having Mural Decorations by C.E. Keyser.

The plate is signed by the lithographers, Day & Son, and by the painter/lithographer John Sleigh (active 1819-1881, sometimes written John Sliegh). The architect and watercolorist William Strickland is recorded as working in London in 1839. It is conceivable that such a complex project might have taken ten years to complete; copying the ceiling, transferring the designs to multiple lithographic stones, and printing the plates. The color registration alone is an astonishing tour de force. Princeton is now holds only one of five copies in this country.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/peterborough-cathedral

Alfred Stieglitz’s Bookplate

Arthur Allen Lewis (1873-1957) Alfred Stieglitz’s Bookplate, 2 copies, no date [1913]. Color woodcut. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01676

Although 291, Alfred Stieglitz’s New York Gallery, is primarily remembered for its photography shows, Stieglitz also showed prints and drawings. 291’s third exhibit of prints featured the work of Allen Lewis (1873-1957), which was also the artist’s first one-man show. The catalogue lists 43 drypoints, etchings, and bookplates with a commentary by Paul Haviland, who had introduced Lewis to Stieglitz. The text is also included in CameraWork: Paul B. Haviland, “Etchings by Allen Lewis,” CameraWork no. 27 (July 1909): 27.

According to Christian Peterson, “In 1913, Stieglitz commissioned Lewis to design not only a bookplate for him, which ended up being one of his most elaborate (utilizing ten separate printing blocks), but also Stieglitz’s collection label. The latter featured stylized lettering in a round-corned box and was affixed to many of the pictorial photographs that Stieglitz acquired over the years.”

Arthur Allen Lewis (1873-1957), Collection of Alfred Stieglitz, no date [1913]. Color woodcut. Graphic Arts collection GA 2007.01726

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to hold 27 prints and bookplates by Lewis, along with many of his illustrated books. These were collected by Elmer Adler, who also commissioned designs from Lewis.

Print your thesis on satin and add a portrait

Robert Nanteuil, 1623-1678. Philippe, Fils de France, Duc d’Orléans, 1671. Engraving on satin cloth. References: Gordon no. 63B; Dumesnil no. 208; Petitjean & Wickert no. 188. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.01154. Gift of John Douglas Gordon, Class of 1905.

The subject of Nanteuil’s engraving is Philippe, duc d’Orleans (1640-1701), the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. Philippe was 20 years old when he succeeded his uncle Gaston as Duke of Orléans and then, lived for the rest of his life in the shadow of his older brother, Louis XIV. Twice married, his son Philippe II d’Orléans became regent for Louis XV.

This rare impression on satin is known as a thesis print and accompanies the thesis text, seen below. Inscribed: “Unico Regis Fratri Questio Theologica, etc …” it is the thesis of Guillaume Henry Le Jay, who commissioned the printing of the portrait and the text.

To see another example of a thesis print, this time on paper, see Steve Ferguson’s post at: https://blogs.princeton.edu/rarebooks/2009/04/jesuit-thesis-print-douay-1753/

See also: Henri-Guillaume Le Jay. Mémoire pour Messire Henry Guillaume Le Jay, evesque et comte de Cahors, deffendeur… contre Messire Charles de Lorraine, comte de Marsan. No publisher or date.

Thomas Rowlandson Site Is Live

http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0130

In 1928, the British caricature collector Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895, donated several thousand prints, drawings, and illustrated books to the Princeton University Library. Since there were no blogs at the time, the gift was announced by librarian James Thayer Gerould in The New York Times on May 6, 1928 and in the Christian Science Monitor on May 7, 1928.

Brown generously continued to augment this collection until his death in 1939. The largest group of caricatures was by Thomas Rowlandson (ca. 1756-1827) including 685 prints and 62 original drawings, many to this day never published.

Here for the first time are digital images of all Princeton’s Thomas Rowlandson prints, watercolors, and drawings from Dickson Brown: http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0130

For further details see: E.D.H. Johnson, “Special Collections at Princeton. V. The Works of Thomas Rowlandson” in the Princeton University Library Chronicle II, 1 (November, 1940) pp. 7-20 [full text] , and Joseph Grego. Rowlandson the Caricaturist. A Selection from his Works with Anecdotal Descriptions of his Famous Caricatures. (London, 1880). [2 vol. in Graphic Arts; this copy is annotated, presumably by D.Q. Brown, to indicate material in the collection]. Also see: F.J. Mather “Rowandson and Cruikshank” in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (4 March 1932).

Additional information on our caricature collection can be searched in the Visuals database for the Graphic Arts Collection: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/RBVisuals/index.htm

Additional gifts from Brown can be found in the James Gillray prints also digitized on this site: http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0015

Engelmann Archive of Proofs and Samples has been digitized

Last summer, we announced the acquisition of three amazing albums filled with chromolithographic proofs and samples from Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839) and his Société Engelmann père et fils, including examples from both houses in Paris and in London. https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/07/21/archive-of-proofs-and-samples-from-the-societe-engelmann-pere-et-fils-ca-1839/ [old post]

https://dpul.princeton.edu/catalog/3484zk471 [new digital collection]

Now, every page with every printing sample has been digitized and made available online to researchers around the world. While we don’t believe there is a chronological sequence within the volumes, the printing for each of their projects is placed together with a blank sheet in between the next project. As we identify the books and commissions represented here, we will add the appropriate indexing terms.

It is our hope that printing and book historians will find this useful and report back to us as the organization of this complex collection becomes apparent. You are welcome to share comments on this page or send them to Princeton directly.

The publisher and printer Godefroy Engelmann I (1788-1839) had offices in a number of locations, including Rue Cassette No.18, Paris (1817); Rue Louis-le-grand No 27 à Paris (1827); Rue du Faub No.6, Montmatre, Paris (after 1829); Paris & Mulhausen (1826); 66 St Martin’s Lane, Strand, London (1826-7); 92 Dean Street, Soho, London (1827-9); and 14 Newman Street, London (1829-30).

The British Museum identifies Engelmann as: “Lithographic printer, famed ‘Körner’ (grinder) for crayon-lithographs and patentee of chromolithography. Originally from Colmar; trained in Munich; set up press in Paris in June 1816. He improved lithography, particularly by developing lithographic wash in 1819. In 1825 he created a new company in association with Jérémie Graf and Pierre Thierry and named ‘Société Engelmann et Cie’. In 1826 an annex company is founded in London and named ‘Société Engelmann, Graf, Coindet et Cie’, which was dissolved in 1833. Then Engelmann returned to Mulhouse and created the company ‘Société Engelmann, père et fils’.”

Take a look: https://dpul.princeton.edu/catalog/3484zk471

Love Bites

If you are a lover of British caricature, consider joining your friends in Oxford for James Gillray@200: Caricaturist without a Conscience? on March 28 and 29, 2015, organised by Todd Porterfield, Université de Montréal; Martin Myrone, Tate Britain; and Michael Burden, New College, Oxford; with Ersy Contogouris, Université de Montréal

The two-day symposium is being held to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Gillray’s death, and in conjunction with the Ashmolean Museum’s exhibition, Love Bites: Caricatures of James Gillray, based on New College’s outstanding collection.

The conference website states: “James Gillray’s reputation in the two centuries since his death has been as varied and layered as his prints. Trained at the Royal Academy, he failed at reproductive printmaking, yet became, according to the late-eighteenth-century Weimar journal London und Paris, one of the greatest European artists of the era. Napoleon, from his exile on St Helena, allegedly remarked that Gillray’s prints did more to run him out of power than all the armies of Europe.

In England, patriots had hired him to propagandize against the French and touted him as a great national voice, but he was an unreliable gun-for-hire. At a large public banquet, during the heat of anti-Revolutionary war fever, he even raised a toast to his fellow artist, the regicide, Jacques-Louis David. Gillray produced a highly individual, highly schooled, and often outlandish body of work with no clear moral compass that undermines the legend of the caricaturist as the voice and heart of the people.”

Saturday March 28
I: Gillray in the Media Age
10.30 Douglas Fordham, University of Virginia
‘A Media Critic for the Intaglio Age’
11.00 Esther Chadwick, Yale University
‘Gillray’s Tree of Liberty: political communication and epistolary networks in the radical 1790s’
11.30 Kate Grandjouan, Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Art History,
University of Belgrade
‘Gillray’s French jokes: the “sick-list” casualties of the 1790s’

12.00 Lunch
II: Gillray in the Colonial Networks: Positionings on Race and Slavery
1.00 Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator within Rare Books and Special Collections at Firestone Library, Princeton University
‘The Sale and Resale of English Beauties in the East Indies’
1.30 Amanda Lahikainen, Aquinas College
‘James Gillray and Representations of Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign:
Islam as Republican Sacrilege’
2.00 Katherine Hart, Senior Curator of Collections & the Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood
1918 Curator of Academic Programming, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth
College
‘James Gillray, Charles James Fox, and the Abolition of the Slave Trade: Caricature and Displacement in the Debate over Reform’
2.30 Coffee
III: The Artist and Formal Means
3.00 Ersy Contogouris, Université de Québec à Montreal
‘Gillray’s Preparatory Drawings’
3.30 Cynthia Roman, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University
‘James Gillray and the Satiric Alternative to Painting History’

Sunday March 29
IV: The Artist and Literary Means
10.15 David Taylor, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English and Comparative Literary
Studies, University of Warwick
‘Gillray, Milton, and the “Caricatura Sublime”’
10.45 Rachel M. Brownstein, Professor of English, City University of New York
‘James Gillray and Jane Austen: Aesthetic Affinities’
11.15 Coffee
V: Gillray, the People, the Academy and Revolution
11.45 Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, Associate Lecturer, Department of History of Art, Birkbeck College, University of London
‘Caricature’s unconscious: James Gillray and the Academy’
12.15 Ian Haywood, Professor of English Co-Director, Centre for Research in Romanticism
University of Roehampton, London
‘Gillray’s valediction: The Life of William Cobbett’

Six billboards found

Taking a few minutes to finally unfold this small pile of paper led to a happy Friday afternoon discovery. The Graphic Arts Collection has six billboard size lithographs, probably meant for the outside marquee of a London theater. We have prints for The Pirates of Penzance; Rudigore; Trial by Jury; Patience; The Mikado; and H.M.S. Pinafore.

Once unfolded, four sections merge to form a poster approximately 96 x 80 inches, printed in bright, unmodulated colors. Each one has the logo of S. C. Allen and Company Limited, a printing firm that was active in the 1920s-1930s, in London and Belfast, Northern Ireland. Their main office is listed as 4 Lisle Street, London WC2 7BG. Note: on the one above, their company logo is placed over another company’s logo, meaning the poster was reused.

Each one is designed by the famous British poster artist Stewart Browne, active at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. There is a good interview with the artist in this journal : Frank Millward, “A Chat with Stewart Browne,” Poster 2, no. 10 (April 1899): 146–47. Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage RCPXG-6990572, also available online.

Daguerre’s Diorama

Seventeen years before Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1759-1851) perfected the capture of images on a silver-coated copper plate (daguerreotypes), he created the Diorama with the help of the architectural painter Charles Marie Bouton (1781-1853). The barn-size building was elaborately constructed to present a life-size painting moving past spectators with constantly changing light effects that gave the illusion of changing times of days, or weather or seasons or other magically moving pictures.

Daguerre’s Diorama opened in Paris during the summer of 1822 and was an immediate success. Within a year, a second auditorium opened in London. Each 30 minute show presented two paintings, usually one outdoor scene and one religion interior.

Vue du Château d’Eau prise du Boulevard St. Martin. Metz: Nicolas Gengel et Adrien Dembour, 1840. Hand colored wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA2015- in process

This vue d’optique or optical view of the Diorama comes from the Metz studio of Adrien Dembour (1799-1887) and his successor Nicolas Gengel, where over 100 workers were employed.

Like the studios nearby in Nancy and Epinal, the Metz shop produced colorful, popular prints of historic sites and urban landmarks. This print is meant to be view with a zograscope.

We are calling this a wood engraving, but Dembour devised a relief etching process around 1834, which he called ecktypography. The relief copper plate was inked and printed the same as a woodblock. It is possible this is a metal relief print.

http://www.midley.co.uk/HomePage.htm
More articles and images about Daguerre have been collected by R. Derek Wood.

The most extensive rolling press manual ever published

The Graphic Arts collection recently acquired the 1st edition, 1st issue and the 1st edition, 2nd issue of the most extensive rolling press manual ever published:

Berthiau (later Berthiaud) and Pierre Boitard (1789?–1859), Manuels-Roret. Nouveau manuel complet de l’imprimeur en taille-douce. Par MM. Berthiau et Boitard. Ouvrage orné de planches. Enrichi de notes et d’un appendice renfermant tous les nouveaux procédés, les découvertes, méthodes et inventions nouvelles appliquées ou applicables a cet art, par plusieurs imprimeurs de la capital.

The first: Paris: A la Librairie Encyclopédique de Roret rue Hautefeuille, 12 [no date] (Colophon: Toul, imprimerie de Ve Bastien), [1836?].

The second: Paris: A la Librairie Encyclopédique de Roret rue Hautefeuille, No 10 bis (Colophon: Toul, imprimerie de Ve Bastien), 1837.

Book historian Roger Gaskell has done an exdended description of these volumes and with his permission, I will repeat it here for the benefit of others.

The first edition, first issue has the half-title is headed Encyclopédie-Roret and has an Avis on the verso with authenticating facsimile signature; the titlepage is undated, headed Manuels–Roret and Berthiau is so spelled. Copies with this state of the half-title and title were re-issued with advertisements dated 1880 and 1885.

In the second issue the first bifolium is re-set, and among other differences there is no mention of the Manuels Roret, the verso of the half-title is blank, the titlepage is dated 1837, and the author spelled Berthiaud. Bigmore and Wyman I, p. 52; Stijnman 029.1, both describing the issue dated 1837.

This is the most extensive rolling press manual ever published and the first original manual since Bosse (1645). Pierre Boitard explains in his Avertis–sement that he took the part of an editor for material supplied by Berthiau, an experienced copper-plate printer. Both wooden and iron presses are described and illustrated, making this the first published account of the iron rolling-press and its operation.

It is the first manual to discuss the use of intaglio illustrations in printed books. Berthiau travelled to England to investigate copper-plate printing in London, where plates for books were apparently much better printed than in Paris.Boitard attributes this to the higher price of books in London. In his long Appendice de l’éditeur, he makes proposals for the improvements in the economy of copper-plate printing. Many of the Manuels Roret were first published as Manuels with revised editions as Nouveu Manuels, but there seems to have been no earlier edition of this manual.

This issue, which I take to be the first, is undated but Boitard says that Bosse’s Traité was published 193 years ago in 1643, giving a date of 1836 (actually the Traité was published in 1645; Boitard repeats his error on the following page).

The priority of this undated issue seems to be confirmed by the fact that the author’s name is here consistently spelled Berthiau (on the titlepage and on pp. 4 and 5) while in the 1837 dated issue it is Berthiaud on the titlepage but unchanged in the text which is printed from the same setting of type (presumably from stereotype plates).

If the OCLC holdings are to be believed, this original issue is much rarer than the later issues, with copies at the V&A and University of Virginia only; compared with 8 copies in North America of the 1837 issue and 4 undated but with 1880 advertisements.

In the first edition, second issue, the first bifolium is re-set, omitting any mention of the Manuels Roret. The verso of the half-title is blank, the titlepage is dated 1837 and the author spelled Berthiaud. (In the first issue the half-title is headed Encyclopédie–Roret and has an Avis on the verso with authenticating facsimile signature; the titlepage is undated, headed Manuels–Roret and Berthiau is so spelled – see above). Bigmore and Wyman I, p. 52; Stijnman 029.1, both describing this issue.

In this issue the relationship between author, Berthiaud, and editor, Boitard, is spelled out on the titlepage and plusieurs imprimeurs de la capitale whose improvements are reported are now identified as, MM Finot, Pointot and Rémond and other printers of the capital.

This copy belonged to a practicing copper-plate printer. Adolfo Ruperez was the leading printer of artists’ prints in Spain in the first half of the twentieth century; he learned his craft in Paris. OCLC locates copies of this issue at Getty, LC, Newberry, University of Illinois, Brandeis, Columbia, Harvard and NYPL.

John Girtin’s copper plates stolen

Maria Hadfield Cosway (1759-1838), Progress of female dissipation, engraved by A. Cardon (title leaf by John Girtin) (London: R. Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, 1800). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2005-0257Q

Recorded in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913, copper plates belonging to the engraver John Girtin were stolen on December 8, 1807 by Richard Wells. The following is a transcription of the trial:

JOHN GIRTIN. Q. What are you. – A. I am an engraver and printer.
Q. On the day of the indictment, did you employ your boy to bring some copper plates from the City to your house. – A. Yes, to No. 8, Charles-street, Middlesex hospital; it was on the 8th of December.

JOHN BANYARD. Q. Are you errand boy to the prosecutor. – A. I am. On the 8th of December, I went in the city to get some plates to carry to my master’s house; I got thirteen plates in the City, about six o’clock in the evening; when I got into Holborn, just by Red Lion-street, the prisoner asked me which was Oxford-road; I told him I was going to Oxford-road, I would shew him; he asked me to let him carry the plates; I delivered them to him; as soon as we got a little way up Holborn, I asked him where the plates were; he said he had got them under his coat; I asked him to give them to me, he said he would not, he would carry them a little farther for me; when I came to Southampton-street, I told him I was going up that way; he said, so am I; as soon as we got up a few doors in Southampton-street, he said, there are your plates, he fell down then he got up and ran away.

Q. Were your plates on the ground. – A. No; I cried stop thief, he was pursued and taken by Mr. Carpmeal; I never lost sight of him from the time he stumbled till the time he was taken; I was close to his heels. There was no plates found on him. There was a man walking close by the side of the prisoner as we were going up Holborn; I lost sight of that man.

Q. Had you an opportunity of seeing whether the prisoner gave the plates to any body. – A. No, the plates have never been found.
Court. When you gave him the plates how did he carry them. – A. Under his arm. I missed them from under his arm; then he said he had got them under his coat.

Q. Have you any doubt the prisoner at the bar is the man. – A. I am sure he is the man.

JAMES CARPMEAL. Q. In consequence of hearing the cry of Stop Thief, did you apprehend the prisoner. A. I assisted; he was running; I apprehended him two doors from Little Queen-street, Holborn; the boy was close to his heels. There was nothing found upon him but three pair of upper leathers, belonging to some shoemaker.
THOMAS FOSSIT. Q. Did you assist in stopping the prisoner. – A. I stopped him; the boy was close to his heels.
The prisoner left his defence to his counsel; called two witnesses, who gave him a good character.
GUILTY, aged 29. Transported for Seven Years.

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