Verso of print

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a rare Rex Edition Carnival Bulletin published February 16, 1904. Founded in 1872, the Rex Organization of New Orleans was established to provide a monarch to lead the parade and to add spectacle to the city’s Mardi Gras celebration. http://www.probonopublicofoundation.org/about-us/

The foundation describes the Rex process as “the highlight of Mardi Gras day since the Rex Organization was formed and first paraded in 1872. While there had been celebrations in many forms on Mardi Gras before that time, the Rex Parade gave a brilliant daytime focus to the festivities, and provided a perfect opportunity for Rex, King of Carnival, to greet his city and his subjects.

The Rex Procession today is true to the long tradition of rich themes, elegant design, and floats built with traditional materials and designs. Most of Rex’s floats are built on old wooden wagons with wood-spoked wheels. In recent years the theme and design of the parade have been suggested in advance of the parade with the publication of Parade Bulletins, designed to give the public a glimpse of what will roll from the Rex Den on Mardi Gras day.”

http://www.rexorganization.com/Tradition

The verso of this pencil drawn title page is inscribed “[Washington] Irving’s Guests from Gibbet Island, illustrated by Charles Greene Bush, November 1859.” The Graphic Arts Collection holds this oblong folio with original sketches by Charles Bush (1842-1909), including the fourth plate showing two drunken pirates with three skeletons in chains. Apparently unpublished, this is the mock up for a proposed illustrated edition of Irving’s 1839 pirate story.

“In 1839 Irving published a story in the Knickerbocker Magazine called Guests from Gibbet-Island. His source was Gäste vom Galgen (Guest from the Gallows), a tale in the Grimm Brothers’ Beutsche Sagen (1816-1818), a work Irving had acquired in Dresden in 1823 and had been reading in Paris later that year.

The Grimms’ tale is brief. A drunken innkeeper on his way home encounters three hanged men on a gallows and in jest invites them to supper with him. When he reaches his home he finds them waiting for him and he collapses in horror and dies. To Americanize and expand this tiny German tale Irving set it in the Dutch community of New York in the British colonial period, and he has given it a background of piracy . . . .

Irving’s title, Guests form Gibbet-Island, indicates the dependence of his plot on the German source, but he has used the Grimms’ tale for what he calls ‘the butt-end of his story’ and stretched it to cover many years.” –Neil Rennie, Treasure Neverland: Real and Imaginary Pirates (2013).

See also volumes under Charles Bush’s pseudonym Sir Michel Angelo Ralph Smith.

William H. Beckett, Rhymes of nonsense, truth and fiction by Prof. Chaucer Jones with illustrations by Sir Michel Angelo Ralph Smith (New York: G.W. Carleton and Company, 1874). Rare Books (Ex) PN6231.L5 B42 1874

George Brehm (1878-1966), “Do You Mean to Stand There an’ Tell Me You Has Lost my Ring?” for The Malady Lingers On by Octavus Roy Cohen, signed 1945. Charcoal sketch. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.00212

George Brehm (1878-1966) gave this sketch to his friend Al Pach in 1945. It was a study for the illustration “Do You Mean to Stand There an’ Tell Me You Has Lost My Ring?” published in the November 12, 1938, Saturday Evening Post with the story The Malady Lingers On by Octavus Roy Cohen (1891-1959).

The Indiana-born artist spent most of his working life in New York City, drawing for a variety of publications, including The American Magazine, Broadway Magazine Colliers, Cosmopolitan, Country Gentleman, The Delineator, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Monthly, Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, Metropolitan Magazine, Munsey’s, Pictorial Review, The Red Book Magazine, and Woman’s Home Companion.

Broad Walk, Christ Church

Trinity College Chapel

Radcliffe Library from the Quadrangle of All Souls

William Delamotte (1775-1863), Original Views of Oxford, Its Colleges, Chapels, and Gardens. From drawings made expressly for this work by William Alfred Delamotte; executed in lithography by William Gauci (London: T. Boys, 1843). 25 lithographs. Text by Charles Ollier (1788-1859). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize LF528 .D3e

Brasenose College

Magdalen College from the High Street

“O Ye Spires of Oxford! Domes and Towers!
Gardens and Groves! Your Presence Overpowers”

Walter J. “Pat” Enright (1879-1969), Al Pach Told Me That One, no date. Pen and wash drawing. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.00223

This is an original drawing from Al Pach’s personal copy of the 1935 Artists and Writers Golf Association membership directory. Alfred Pach (1884-1965)–the brother of the artist Walter Pach–had friends autograph and sketch inside his copy of the directory. Rube Goldberg wrote the foreword as well as captions for each member’s portrait, which were photographed by Pach.

The political cartoonist and illustrator Walter J. “Pat” Enright (1879-1969) was born in Chicago and studied at the Art Institute before moving to New York City. He drew cartoons for the New York Evening World in the 1920s and the New York American in the early 1930s. After moving to Florida, he worked for the Miami Herald from 1933 to 1943 and the Palm Beach Post from 1943 to 1948.

While living in Florida, Enright became interested in wildlife conservation, the alligator in particular. In 1947, he wrote and illustrated Al Alligator and How He Learned to Play the Banjo.