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.

Things Japanese, 1742

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a complete 10 volume set of the rare Illustrated Book of Comparable Things in Yamato (Japan), also called Illustrated Study of Things Japanese, written and published in 1742. Each book is bound in black paper with unique floral decoration painted in gold.

Nine of the ten volumes are filled with illustrations by Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671-1751) of Kyoto, compiled by Ban Yūsa of Naniwa of Osaka. The cutting of the blocks was done by Fujimura Zenyemon and Murakami Genyemon.

Each volume is dedicated to one genre or subject matter, including 1. Preface, landscapes, animals.–2. Historical figures of poets and painters.–3. Historical figures of women.–4. Historical subjects.–5, 6. Historical figures in literature.–7. Miscellaneous historical figures.–8. Historical figures in anecdotes.–9. Illustrations of poems.–10. Contents, text and notes.

 


Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671-1751), Ehon Yamato hiji / Naniwa Ban Yūsa sanshū · Heian Nishikawa Sukenobu gazu = 繪本和比事 / 浪華伴祐佐纂輯·平安西川祐信畫圖 = Illustrated Book of Comparable Things in Yamato (Japan) (Ōsaka: Kanseidō Kawauchiya Uhezō ban, Kanpō 2 [1742]) 10 volumes. Graphic Arts Collection 2017- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection also includes Nishikawa Sukenobu’s Ehon mitsuwagusa ([Japan]: [publisher not identified], [between 1750 and 1760]) and his Ehon fudetsubana [ge] (Kyōtō: Kikuya Kihē, Enkyō 4 [1747]).

Ancient Textile Patterns

Shinsen kodai moyō kagami. ten / Kodama Eisei hen = 新撰古代模様鑑. 天 / 児玉永成編 = Collection of Newly Selected Ancient Patterns, volume 1. (Tōkyō: Ōkura Magobe, Meiji 18 [1885]. 48 unnumbered pages. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2017- in process

This is the first of a two-volume set of ancient textile patterns. Each small textile sample is labeled by its source. The preface was written in 1885 by classical scholar and member of the Meiji government’s office of Shinto worship, Fukuba Bisei (1831-1907). His seal is stamped near his signature. The editor provides introductory remarks. –research and cataloguing by Tara McGowan, PhD

“Fukuba Bisei was Under-Secretary in the Office of Rites in 1868, and instructor to the Meiji Emperor in matters of Shinto ceremonial. Along with Vice-Minister of Rites Kamei Koremi, he was among the chief officials responsible for the shinbutsu bunri (“separation of Buddhism and Shinto”) policies. He was an adherent of the kokugaku (Nativist) teachings of Okuni Takamasa.” –James Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan, Princeton University Press (1991)


Where the West Begins

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a small photography album compiled by Elbert John “Dutch” Reuter (1896-1975), an Arizona printer, typographer, and publisher. Through approximately 230 photographs, the album documents Reuter’s trip from Peru, Indiana, to his new home in Prescott, Arizona. The pages are decorated with captions and poems presumable by Reuter himself, although he soon married Ruth Sylvia Reed in Gallup, New Mexico, and she might of helped to layout the book.

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At the age of 14, Dutch became an apprentice to a printer in his hometown of Peru, Indiana, and learned all aspects of the printing and publishing trade. Not long after his 21st birthday, he joined the army but a few days later the  armistice was signed that brought World War I to a close and his release followed soon after.

In 1923, Dutch and a friend applied for a printing job at the Jerome Verde Independent in Arizona but when they showed up for work–after driving cross country for many days–the boys were told the paper decided not to expand and didn’t need them.  Two weeks later, they were hired by the Journal-Miner in Prescott, where Reuter remained for the rest of his life.

Eventually, Dutch became owner and publisher of the Yavapai County Messenger and manager of the Prescott Printing Company. The album follows him through his first years in Arizona as he gets to know the people and the landscape. Several photographs document his joining the “Smoki People,” a group of Prescott businessmen who dressed up and performed their own versions of Hopi ceremonial dances and rituals (finally shut down in 1990).

See more of his biography here: https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/family-tree/person/tree/4934424/person/24200355633/story

Read more about the Smoki People here: https://www.dcourier.com/news/2010/jul/04/smoki-the-beginning-controversial-group-basically/

Dutch Reuter at the top right with his Linotype machine.

Welcome Baltimore Museum Friends

Members of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Print, Drawing & Photograph Society (PDPS) traveled to Princeton on Saturday to visit our campus and collections. (Sorry we missed a few for the group picture above.) Treasures were pulled from the Princeton University Art Museum’s Prints and Drawings; the East Asian Library and the Gest Collection; and the Graphic Arts Collection.

Special thanks go to Rena Hoisington, Curator and Department Head, for her wonderful planning, and to Jay Fisher, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs; Ann Shafer, Associate Curator; and Morgan Dowty, Curatorial Assistant.

https://artbma.org/documents/pdps/PDPS-Newsletter_2-29-16.pdf

There are only a few more weeks left to see their exhibition: Off the Shelf: Modern & Contemporary Artists’ Books, closing June 25, 2017. The show presents more than 130 rarely shown artists’ books and related prints by more than 50 renowned artists, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Grace Hartigan, David Hockney, and Ed Ruscha. Stephen King, Frank O’Hara, and Robert Creeley are among the more than 30 authors represented.

For more information about exhibitions, programs, courses, and resources on artists’ books in the Greater Baltimore region, visit Book Arts Baltimore.

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

Early Bookplates

Bookplate for Jacobus Maximilianus, count of Collalto and San Salvatore and count of the Holy Roman Empire, engraved in 1771 by Teodoro Viero (Italian, 1740–1819)

While searching our collections for Piranesi’s bookplate, other interesting prints turned up.
Here are a few.

Hand colored bookplate of the French politician Pierre de Maridat (1613-1689), Councillor at the Grand Conseil (1640), inscribed “Curae numen habet justu move 40 Eneid. / Inde cruce hinc trutina armatus regique deoque milito disco meis hcec duo nempe libris / ex libris Petri Maridat in magno Regis consilio Senatoris.”

Bookplate for David Garrick (1717-1779), engraved around 1755. Above is a bust of Shakespeare and below the inscription “La premiere chose qu’on doit faire quand on a emprunte un Livre, c’est de la lire afin de pouvoir le rendre plutot. Menagiana. Vol. IV.” = “The first thing one must do when one borrows a book is to read it in order to be able to give it back. Menagiana. Vol. 4.”

 

Bookplate of the booksellers C.S. Jordani and Associates, with their motto “Dulces ante omnia musae” (Sweet before all muses) at the top and below “Deus nobis haec otia fecit” (God has given us this tranquility, Virgil, Eclogues I, l.6).

 

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) bookplate engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815).

 

Pour Raillerie

Bookplate collections often include prints that have names embedded in their design, mistaken as bookplates. This is the case with the above engraving found in a box of unsorted bookplates in our collection.

It is the title page for a series of eight plates by the Swiss engraver and entomologist Johann Rudolph Schellenberg (1740-1806). The small volume was called Pour raillerie (For mockery or All in Mockery) and was originally published in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1772. (available for free download by the Swiss National Library):
https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/pages/user/access/frontPageTwo.jsf?callnumber=nbdig-28434&BITfw2Ctx=I7lX2Q7BcpMS1u5t

Schellenberg partnered with Johann Caspar Fuessli (1743-1786) on multiple projects, most notably Archiv der Insectengeschichte / Archives de l’histoire des insects (Winterthour: Chez J. Ziegler, 1794). “The figures, which occupy 37 plates, are designed, etched and coloured by Mr. Schellenberg, of Winterthur, a man of uncommon knowledge in this branch of painting, whether we consider fidelity of character, high finish, or spirit of altitude. They appear chiefly to have been drawn from the insects themselves, a few excepted, in which the figures of Roesel may be traced.” –J. Johnson, Analytical Review: Or History of Literature, Domestic and Foreign, vol. 10 (1791).

We have yet to find the other plates in Pour raillerie, but they may still turn up.