Norske Grafikere

The Association of Norwegian Printmakers has a new exhibition of book arts in their Oslo gallery, called Innbundet / Ubundet, Bok-Trykk-Skulptur = Bound / Unbound, Letterpress Sculpture. On view during the month of April are works by Simon Faithfull, Jan Freuchen, Sarah Jost, Imi Maufe, rebeliCa angeCCa, Randi Nygård, Ellen Marie Blakstad Paus, Samoa Rémy and Randi Strand. http://www.norske-grafikere.no/utstilling

The exhibition presents artist books from the printmaker’s perspective, with a focus on the book as a unique object. The artists are working with, against, and across textual communication, while also dealing with the properties of the physical books as a visual sculptures and tactile objects.

The Association of Norwegian Printmakers was founded in 1919 by, among others, Erik Werenskiold, Edvard Munch and Harald Sohlberg. Situated in the center of Oslo, the organization has at any time more than 4000 prints represented by more than 300 artists, making the gallery Norway’s principal venue for contemporary prints.

Their website states that the purpose of their organization is to make printmaking recognized as an independent art form and to improve the artists’ situation. Since its establishment, the Association has worked continuously to maintain high professional and ethical standards. Their artists use traditional and contemporary techniques, including digital printing as well as classical intaglio and relief techniques, lithography and screen printing, among many others.

Bürkel

The pastoral genre paintings of Heinrich Bürkel (1802-1869) are not found in many American museums and so, the name is relatively unknown to our audiences. He was an important member of the German landscape school in the middle of the 19th century, which is the period we believe this untitled canvas can be attributed to.

“Bürkel was the son of an inn-keeper who wanted him to follow a business career. His aptitude for art, however, was so marked that he overcame such obstacles and was able to devote himself entirely to painting. He studied at the Munich Academy of Art, travelled in Italy with Köbell, and was made an honorary member of the Vienna, Dresden, and Munich Academies of Art. He painted mainly popular scenes.” —Benezit Dictionary of ArtistsHeinrich Bürkel (1802-1869), Untitled [Hunters resting along the trail], no date [ca.1850]. Oil on canvas. Gift of J. Monroe Thorington, Class of 1915. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.01489

Sidney Marsh Chase, author and illustrator

Sidney Marsh Chase (1877-1957), The Lobster Men, 1909. Oil on canvas. Reproduced in Scribner’s Magazine 46 (July 1909): 9. Graphic Arts Collection framed paintings

Both an artist and a writer, Chase lived most of his life in Haverhill, Massachussets. His summers were spent in Maine painting his three favorite subjects: the fishermen, their boats, and the sea. Illustrations and short stories by Chase appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Illustrated Sunday Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s Magazine, and Youth’s Companion among other publications. This is one of several canvases that came to Princeton University thanks to generosity of the Scribner family.

See also: Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915), Forty minutes late: and other stories (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909). Illustrated by Sidney M. Chase. RECAP 3935.1.335

Reverend Sylvester Woodbridge Beach

Paul-Émile Bécat (1885-1960), Rev. Sylvester Woodbridge Beach, 1927. Pencil on paper. Graphic Arts Collection Framed Art

This portrait of Reverend Sylvester Woodbridge Beach, Class of 1876 (1852-1940) and father of Sylvia Beach (1887-1962), was drawn by Paul-Émile Bécat, the brother-in-law of Beach’s partner Adrienne Monnier (1892-1955). At the time the portrait was made, Rev. Beach was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton and on the board of the Princeton Theological Seminary.

According to Accestry.com Reverend Beach received an American passport in 1922 and made several trips to Europe “to visit family.” His last voyage was in the summer of 1927, after receiving a telegram from Sylvia announcing the suicide of his wife. Eleanor Beach had been staying in Paris with her daughter, who had the body cremated and buried in Père Lachaise cemetery. Sylvester stayed for a short visit, which included sitting for his portrait with Bécat and arrived back in New York on July 22, 1927.

“Mr. Beach is a graduate of Princeton University of the Class of 1876, and was graduated by the Seminary in 1880. After successful pastorates at Baltimore, Md., and Bridgeton, N. J., Mr. Beach conducted the work among the students of the Latin Quarter, Paris, France, from 1902-1906, during a part of which time he served as pastor of the American Chapel in Paris. Mr. Beach has been serving the First Church of Princeton since 1906, and has shown a deep a sympathetic interest in all the work the Seminary. “– The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1910.

Sylvia and Sylvester Beach have adjoining graves in the Princeton cemetery. Rev. Beach’s tombstone reads: “I have kept the faith.”

Dansante de Tacunga, Cobrando el Bario

Thanks to our donor J. Monroe Thorington, Class of 1915 (1895-1989), the Graphic Arts Collection holds several paintings with Ecuadorian themes. These small oil paintings depict the dancers of Tacunga or Latacunga and below, travelers from ‘the East’. Neither painting is signed and so, it is uncertain whether the subject matter alone is Ecuadorian or if the artist was also a native of the country.

See also several tourist paintings: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2015/06/02/ecuadorian-painting/
Unidentified Artist, Dansante de Tacunga, Cobrando el Bario, no date. Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.01501 [above]

Unidentified Artist, Del Oriente, no date. Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.01502 [below]

A View of the Capitol in 1866

William Bell (1830-1910), “United States Capitol Building,” in The Philadelphia Photographer 4, no. 43 (July 1867). Graphic Arts Collection 2007.0008.

It is curious that one of the most valued photographs published in Edward L. Wilson’s The Philadelphia Photographer was unplanned and offered to readers with an apology. The Canadian photographer William Notman had given Wilson negatives to print for the July issue but when the prints were damaged, Wilson scrambled to find a substitute.

William Bell (not to be confused with William A. Bell or William H. Bell) was well-known in Philadelphia, having worked at John Keenan’s daguerreotype studio since 1848. After serving in U.S. Army during the Civil War, Bell moved to Washington D.C. as chief photographer at the U.S. Army Medical Museum. For whatever reason, this position did not last long and in 1867, Bell returned to Philadelphia, bought James McClees’s photography studio at 1200 Chestnut Street, and opened his own business.

William Bell (American, born England, 1830-1910), United States Capitol Building, 1866, albumen silver print, Museum Purchase: Photography Fund, no known copyright restrictions, 2003.26.1

According to Bell’s notes, his negatives of the Capitol were made in 1866 and he probably carried them back when he moved home. As usual, multiple glass plates were given to Wilson, who arranged for the contact printing of hundreds of albumen silver prints to be pasted into each issue of his magazine.

Note the photograph at the Portland Museum of Art [left] is slight different, missing the final row of windows seen above on the right.

Ut Scribat Non Feriat = May it write, not strike

A single leaf was discovered in our collection, which was removed from a copy of Vincentezo Vittoria (Vincente Victoria, 1658-1712), Osservazioni Sopra Il Libro Della Felsina Pittrice Per Difesa Di Raffaello Da Urbino (Roma: Nella Stamperia di Gaetano Zenobj, della Santità di N.S. Clemente XI. Intagliatore, nella Gran Curia Innocenziana, 1703).
Getty Research Institute’s book above and below

Graphic Art’s plate shows a man sharpening a quill dangerously close to a copy of Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice (Lives of the Bolognese painters), captioned above Ut Scribat Non Feriat (May it write, not strike, as a wish, referring to the sharpened quill). The motto was used in Vittoria’s other books with a simplified image.

The Spanish painter and printmaker Vicente Victoria y Gastaldo (1658-1712) was born in Valencia but spent much of his working life in Rome. See E. Páez, Repertorio de Grabados Españoles (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1981). Marquand NE699 .P34 1981

Besides writing in defense of Raphael in the above volume, Vittoria also wrote a sonnet in praise of painting:

Emula del criador, arte excelente
Misteriosa deidad, muda canora
Sin voz sirena y sabia encantadora
Verdad fingida, engafio permanente,
Del alma suspension, sombra viviente
Erudita y no garrula oradora,
Libro abierto, que mas ensefia y ora
Que el vohimen mas docto y eloqiiente:
Quanto el juicio comprehcnde, ama el anhelo
Si advierte en ti ; y en tu matiz fecunda
Otra naturaleza halla el desvelo.
Admiro en ti casi un criador segundo,
Pues Dios crio de nada tierra y cielo,
De casi nada ti’t haces cielo y mundo.

Great Art, that emulates the Maker’s hand,
Mute speech, that holds man’s spirit in suspense,
Sweet voiceless Siren, charming every sense,
Fiction, that firm, as truth herself, shall stand,
Shadow, full fraught with life and meanings grand,
That more in briefest compass can condense
And speak, of lore and lofty eloquence
Than any tome, or teacher of the land!
Whate’er the mind can grasp, whate’er the soul
Embraces in its love, whate’er the earth
Brings forth of beauty, in thy tints we see.
In thee creations, new and bright, unroll
Their goodly stores, and nature’s second birth
From formless nothing springs to light in thee !

Francis Hoffman, writer and artist

Note the books illustrated in this religious broadside are only ones sold by the publisher of the sheet.

Francis Hoffman (active 1706-1750), The Heavenly Aurora, or, Dawn of Christ’s 1000 years reign [written, designed, and engraved by Hoffman] ([London]: Sold by B. Bragg in Pater Noster Row, [ca. 1710]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) in process.

Very little is known about the writer and printmaker Francis Hoffman, who was active at the beginning of the 1700s. An attempt at a bibliography was published by Edward Solly in Walford’s Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographical Review (Vol. 9, 1886). “When I commenced this article, I had utterly failed to find any record of Francis Hoffman as a writer, and thought I should have to end by the admission that I could find no evidence of the existence of such a person in 1712; but, even as I write, I have, by one of those curious little accidents which used so much to please Horace Walpole, met with a piece of evidence which is highly suggestive, if not conclusive.

Having read the valuable bibliographical note by Mr. Buckley in Notes and Queries, October 31, 1885, on the first edition, of Gulliver’s Travels, 1726, it was natural to turn to copies of the book and examine them by the light of his notes. . . . Attention was drawn to the head-piece, [where] the artist had placed his initials in the centre of the two end flower ornaments, a thing by no means common in such head-pieces, and these initials were F. H. . . . [and] there was clearly at the foot of the altar, “F. Hoffman.”

The hint thus given soon led to further inquiry, and, on looking into Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters, 1816, vol. ii. p. 695, something like evidence was found. He says: ‘This artist was probably a native of Germany, but he resided in England about the year 1711. He engraved a plate representing the portraits of the Right Honourable Henry St. John, one of the principal Secretaries of State; the Right Honourable William Bromley, Speaker of the House of Commons; and the Right Honourable Robert Harley, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Underneath is a printed account of the transactions of the House of Commons for the year 1711. It is etched in a coarse tasteless style, and inscribed Francis Hoffman fecit aqua forte. In Mr. Gulstone’s Collection was a portrait of Francis Hoffman drawn and engraved by himself, in which he is styled the inventor of Ships with three bottoms.'”

Sully goes on to list a number of books enhanced with ornaments and engravings by Hoffman, including T. Warner, Dennis’s Remarks on Steele’s ‘Conscious Lovers’ (1723); W. Meadows, Heywood’s Poems (1724); H. Woodfull, Davys’s Works (1725); B. Lintot, Somerville’s Poems (1727); T. Astley, Mrs. Thomas’s Poems (1727); and C. Ackers, Ralph’s Poems (1729) among others.

See also: John Bunyan (1628-1688), The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is To Come . . . And now done into verse [by Francis Hoffman] (London: printed by R. Tookey, 1706). Rare Books (Ex) 3653.372.15

Francis Hoffman, Secret Transactions During the Hundred Days Mr. William Gregg Lay in Newgate (London: [s.n.], printed in the year 1711). Rare Books (Ex) 14454.471

Climbing Mont Blanc 1908

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a set of 125 French stereoscopic glass slides depicting mountaineers ascending and descending Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, in the summer of 1908. The date is significant because that was the year a railroad opened to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc (or Chamonix), a resort area near the junction of France, Switzerland and Italy. The tourist industry grew quickly offering visitors spectacular views, exceptional alpine skiing, and dangerous glacial climbs.

The Office de Tourisme de la vallée de Chamonix-Mont-Blanc provides a brief history: “The first inn opens in 1770 and marks the early development of the hotel trade and the first mountaineering exploits. The conquest of mont Blanc in 1786, contributes to the demystification of the summits and seals the destiny of this mountain community. The influence of pre-romantic and romantic writers also helps to alleviate the fear of the unknown and consecrates the mountains as being an expression of nature totally preserved. The first luxury hotel was built in 1816 and the hotel industry continued to thrive through the 1800’s, crowned by 3 splendid palaces built in the early 1900’s.”

Photographs of Princeton

A box of full-plate glass negatives was found recently. It is unclear if the photographs are of Princeton High School or Princeton University or Princeton, New Jersey. Perhaps a mixture.

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