The Prophecies of the Sibyls

Philippus de Barberis (ca. 1426-1487), Opusculum de vaticiniis Sibillarum (Oppenheim: [Jacob Köbel, ca. 1514). Large woodcut on title-page and 12 full page woodcuts of female soothsayers. Previous owner: W.J. Le Mattre. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process

This collection of the prophecies of the Sibyls was printed by Jacob Köbel (1460-1533), who ran a press in Oppenheim from 1503 to 1532. Although there is no date in the book, we believe it was printed about 1514 (Goff B-122, after 1500). Counting the title page, there are 13 large woodcuts with quotations and architectural borders. This is not the copy owned by Arthur Vershbow but in equally good condition.
The source for the texts of the prophecies of the Sibyls is by the Dominican Philippus de Barberis, Discordantiae sanctorum doctorum Hieronymi et Augustini adiunctis aliis opusculis, which was compiled c. 1479 and appeared in several printed versions.

“L’Opusculum de his in quibus Augustinus et Hieronymus dissentire videntur in divinis litteris fu riedito in una raccolta di scritti detta Opuscula (pubblicata perla prima volta nel 1481; il titolo è ricavato dalla prefazione), con il titolo di Discordantiae sanctorum doctorum Hieronymi et Augustini (unico opuscolo della raccolta che sia opera del B.): il contenuto degli altri scritti degli Opuscula (i vaticini delle sibille, i carmi della poetessa Falconia, il simbolo anastasiano, l’orazione domenicale, la salutazione angelica, ecc.) induce a pensare che questa raccolta fosse destinata a uso scolastico; essa, comunque, ebbe una certa fortuna e varie edizioni, alcune delle quali successive alla morte del Barbieri. Iù stata avanzata dal Di Giovanni l’ipotesi che il B. fosse anche l’autore di un’opera intitolata De vita et moribus philosophorum (Codice 3. Q.q. A. III, cc, 65 della Biblioteca comunale di Palermo): centoventotto biografie di filosofi, poeti e scrittori, seguite, per meglio porne in evidenza il pensiero, da brani delle opere dei biografati. Poiché il manoscritto proviene dal convento domenicano di Palermo e fu copiato in Sicilia, poiché il B., sino al Quattrocento, fu l’unico a interessarsi di storia delle scienze, il Di Giovanni gli attribui questo lavoro, seppure con riserva. Questa conclusione tuttavia non può che rimanere allo stato di ipotesi; né si può ritenere che tale lavoro sia da identificarsi con il De inventoribus,noto soltanto attraverso la citazione della Viroruni illustrium cronica dello stesso Barbieri.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 6 (1964)

A Budget of Wit was found while moving the collection

The Budget of Wit; or, Choice Selections of Bon Mots, Irish Bulls, Witty Stories, &c. … (London: Dean & Munday [1818]). 286 p.; 7 cm. Engraved title and 1 pl. “Cruikshank, del., Davenport, sculp.” In brown wrapper original back preserved, title of which is “Little budget, 1818.” Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1818.28s

Thanks to our good colleagues, this miniature book was discovered today during our collection move. It is one a many humorous volumes with designs by George Cruikshank (1792-1878) etched by Samuel Davenport (1783-1867). Although it is small, it is extremely rare and we are glad to have it back in the right sequence on our shelves.

Lithographic covers by Toulouse-Lautrec

Julien Sermet (born 1855), Les courtes joies: poésies (Brief Pleasures: poems); préface de Gustave Geffroy [Cover illustrations by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec] (Paris: Joubert, 1897). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2015- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired four small books with original lithographic paper wrappers designed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). All of them were included in the exhibition catalogue Toulouse-Lautrec Book Covers & Brochures published by the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Library in 1972 (Graphic Arts GA NC980.5.T68 H37).

On several of these volumes the design continues around and onto the back cover. On this book, the artist depicts a fishwife selling herring on the front, with the image of Don Quixote on the back.

Tristan Bernard (1866-1947), Les pieds nickelés: comédie en 1 acte (Nickel-plated Feet, i.e. Those Who Don’t Work: A Comedy in One Act) [First performed in Paris at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, March 15, 1895. Cover illustrations by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec] (Paris: P. Ollendorff, 1895). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2015- in process

On the front of this book [above], Lautrec has drawn three figures. The woman seen at the bottom has been identified as the pianist Misia Sert (born Maria Zofia Olga Zenajda Godebska, 1872-1950) who was a patron to many French artists and with her first husband Thadée Natanson, hosted a salon in Paris. She also posed for many of the painters, including Lautrec.

Tristan Bernard (1866-1947), Le fardeau de la liberté; comédie en un acte (The Burden of Liberty. A Comedy in One Act) [Cover illustrations by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec] (Paris: Éditions de la Revue blanche, 1897). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2015- in process.

Louis Marsolleau (1864-1935) and Arthur Byl (died 1908), Hors les lois: comʹedie en un acte (Outside the Law: a Comedy in One Act) [Performed first at the Thʹeatre Antoine, Nov. 5, 1897. Cover illustrations by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec] (Paris: P.-V. Stock, 1898). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2015- in process

If you open the wrapper fully on this volume, you will see a couple watching two costumed actors admiring a bust of Molière. Lautrec went to the theater often and designed both posters and programs for many productions.

Stamps, marks, and monograms by George Auriol

George Auriol, Le Premier Livre des cachets, marques et monogrammes. [with] Le Second Livre des monogrammes, marques, cachets et ex-libris. [and] Le Troisième Livre des monogrammes, cachets marques et ex-libris (Paris: Librairie Centrale & Henri Floury, 1901; 1908; 1924). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process

“Auriol served as writer, illustrator and editor of the Chat Noir for ten years (1883–93). He produced book covers for the Chat-Noir Guide (1888) and the two-volume Les Contes du Chat Noir (1889–91) as well as 15 programmes for the Chat Noir shadow theatre. From the end of the 1880s the bold colours and flat patterning of his illustrations and typographical designs show the influence of Japanese art.

In 1888 he created his first monograms for Rivière and himself in the style of Japanese seals, and during the next decade he produced hundreds of such monograms for artists, writers and publishers, including Rivière, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Verlaine, Anatole France, Ernest Flammarion and others. In 1901 Henri Floury published the first collection of Auriol’s Cachets, marques et monogrammes, followed by two more volumes in 1908 and 1924.

. . . Auriol’s assimilation of Japanese aesthetics resulted in highly decorative and often abstract floral designs for hundreds of book and sheet-music covers by the avant-garde writers and composers for the publishers Enoch, Flammarion and Ollendorff as well as ornamental typography for Larousse’s encyclopedias (1895–1930) . . . Auriol’s collaboration with the G. Peignot & Frères type-face foundry (1901–5) resulted in the creation of Auriol type styles such as Française Legère and Auriol Labeur.”– Dennis Cate

John Wilson 1922-2015

Illustrator, printmaker, and sculptor John Woodrow Wilson was 92 when he died in January 2015. He pursued the path of an artist, “since he was a boy on Roxbury’s streets, learning to sketch and honing a burgeoning talent that eventually would place his paintings and sculptures in the Museum of Fine Arts and far beyond,” wrote Bryan Marquand for the Boston Globe. “In the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., stands a 3-foot-tall bronze bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that is surely the most viewed creation of John Wilson, an artist who grew up in Roxbury and painted, sculpted, and made prints out of his home studio in Brookline for decades. Like much of his most important work, the bust brings viewers to the intersection of art and politics, of pure creativity and the desire to examine social injustice.”

Princeton University Library holds two of his illustrated books: Joan M. Lexau, Striped Ice Cream; illustrations by John Wilson (Philadelphia; New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, c1968). Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) Eng 20 61725 and Arnold Adoff, Malcolm X; illustrated by John Wilson (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, c1970). Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) Eng 20 33357.

In addition, the Princeton University Art Museum has a drawing for the cover design of “The Reporter,” July 23, 1959, entitled Steel Worker (pastel and gouache on cream wove paper. Museum purchase Kathleen Compton Sherrerd Fund for Acquisitions in American Art 2005-16).

For more information on the American artist, listen to his oral history interview made March 11, 1993 to Aug. 16, 1994 under the auspice of the Archives of American Art. 11 sound cassettes (16 hrs, 30 min.). Transcript: 497 p. Abstract: “Wilson discusses his childhood as a member of a family of middle class blacks from British Guiana (now Guyana); his father’s grave disappointments in the face of racial discrimination; his parents’ push for their children to succeed; early urge to read and draw; encouragement by School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston students who taught at the Roxbury Boys Club; his secondary education; and friends. …His first teaching position at the MFA School; his involvement in civil rights in Boston; his gregariousness and the use of his studio as a meeting place for artists and political activists; his involvement with socialism in Boston and New York; and working in a socialist children’s camp.…his move toward sculpture, beginning in the early 1960s, as a medium most expressive of black persons, culminating in the 1980s in a series of colossal heads and a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the U.S. Capitol (1985-86).”

A memorial for the artist is being held today at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Mr. Ego’s Marvellous Story

Within the Graphic Arts Collection’s extensive blocks & plates collection GC 148 is this etched copper plate by Thomas Rowlandson (ca.1756-1827) for the illustration entitled “Mr. Ego’s Marvellous Story,” opposite page 40 in The Pleasures of Human Life by Hilari Benevolus & Co. (pseud. of John Britton, 1771-1857).

We also have one sheet pulled from the plate (Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014.00381) and several copies of the published book with hand colored plates.

“Such is the character of Mr. Placid: how different is that of Mr. Ego! Both are attached to literature, and both may be said to be learned; but, whilst the former reads solely for self-satisfaction and mental instruction, the latter Hunts after knowledge merely to sport it in company.

His only pleasure is derived from an ostentatious display of learning; and there is no music so harmonious to his ear, as the sweet voice of praise, in being flattered on his deep researches and profound reading. Should others neglect to tickle him in this susceptible part, he absolutely contrives to tickle himself; and this is not a very common case. Even the Miss Livelys and Miss Sensibles cannot provoke laughter with their own fingers, either applied to the arm-pits, knees, or feet; nor even in the most susceptible part, just under the fifth rib on the left side, near the heart.

Mr. Ego’s vanity, in this respect, affords him only an occasional pleasure, and not one that he can command at all times. It depends on company, and requires that company to be good-naturedly civil; for unless the hinges of his tongue are kept in easy play by the oil of encomium, he soon grows dull, and sulkily stupid. Tempt him to talk, and. you will surely be amused, if not instructed; for, if the truths of learning fail to effect this, his flexible fancy can soon create; and he will embellish his narratives with the most dazzling and effulgent colours of fancy.”

John Britton (1771-1857), The pleasures of human life: investigated cheerfully, elucidated satirically, promulgated explicitly and discussed philosophically in a dozen dissertations on male, female and neuter pleasures … by Hilaris Benevolus, & Co. … Embellished with 5 illustrative etchings and 2 headpieces. 2d ed. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1807. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Rowlandson 1807.31

Illustrated by Brunelleschi

Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), La nuit venitienne. Fantasio. Les caprices de Marianne. Illustrated by Umberto Brunelleschi (1879-1949) (Paris: L’edition d’art H. Piazza, 1913). Colophon: Il a été tiré de cet ouvrage cinq cents exemplaires sur papier du Japon signés par l’artiste./ “Achevé d’ imprimer a Paris le 10 Novembre 1913.” Graphic Arts Collection 2015- in process. Gift of Andrea G. Stillman.

Umberto Brunelleschi (1879-1949), Contes du temps jadis (Paris: l’Édition d’art, H. Piazza, 1912). “Achevé d’imprimer le 10 Octobre 1912 par G. Kadar, Paris”–Colophon. “Il a été tiré de cet ouvrage 400 exemplaires sur papier du Japon”–Verso of half-title. Graphic Arts Collection 2015- in process. Gift of Andrea G. Stillman.

Thanks to the generous gift of Andrea G. Stillman, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired two volumes with illustrations designed by Umberto Brunelleschi. Both were published in limited editions by Jules Henri Piazza (1861-1929) under the imprint L’Edition d’Art (The Art Edition H. Piazza and Company). For over 30 years, Piazza issued luxury books in French and English illustrated with reproductions after designs by living artists. We are fortunate to add these two to our collection.

La Lune: ou le livre des poème

Pierre Albert-Birot, La lune, ou, Le livre des poèmes (Paris: Budry, 1924). “Cet ouvrage a été tiré à 326 exemplaires: 26 exemplaires sur Chine … dont un imprimé pour l’auteur, et 25 numérotés de 1 à 25 … [et] 300 ex. sur vergé pur fil Lafuma … numérotés de 26 à 326”–Page [2]. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process

The artist who in his painting and drawing comes to an understanding of the creative act and produces a microcosm of creation through the form and space of the canvas applies himself as poet to the concrete dimensions of the poem to produce a construction which is at once visual and verbal. It is this which makes an understanding of Albert-Birot’s visual poetry essential for an appreciation of his work as a whole. The fact that he mastered the printing process cannot be reiterated often enough. Creation does not take place only in the mind of the poet, it is received not only in the mind of the reader: creation is concrete, the poem is an object.

The printed space is a practical, functional, mechanical one. The poet and the reader replace it with a “literary or aesthetic space”, an imaginary space, a space of the imagination. Here mechanics and aesthetics fuse to create space which is at once imaginary and material. The superficial visual delight belies deeper bodily sensation just as the sound poems of La Lune explore the archaic noises and rhythms of poetry. This is not experimental poetry for its own sake, nor merely playful audacity in breaking the rules, being willfully “modern”, not a sterile artistic practice in search of something “new”. The relationship between the body of the poet and the body of the poem is fundamental to Albert-Birot’s work as a whole and it is here that it assumes its place in the modern aesthetic as a questioning of the processes of creation and of the place of the self in that creation.”

–Debra Kelly, “From Painter to Poet: the Visual Poetry of Pierre Albert-Birot in La Lune: ou le livre des poème,” in Forum for Modem Language Studies 1996, Vol. xxm, no. 1, p. 50.

For the complete article see: http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/XXXII/1/37.full.pdf+html

Heat Wave

Charles Bukowski, Heat Wave, serigraphs by Ken Price (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Graphic Arts, 1995). “There are 170 numbered examples, each copy signed by Ken Price, constituting the regular edition, containing 15 original serigraph prints after illustrations by Ken Price. Four of the 15 original serigraph prints in the regular edition have been individually numbered and signed by Ken Price”–Colophon. Copy 169 of 170. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize NE2237.5.P753 B85 1995f

David Godine wrote a short biography of John Martin, founder of Black Sparrow Books, which is posted on his website: http://www.blacksparrowbooks.com/aboutbsb.htm
Here is a portion:

John Martin, the great collector of avant-garde books, visionary patron of Charles Bukowski, and founder, publisher, and for thirty-six years sole proprietor of Black Sparrow Press, once said: “There have always been two streams in American literature. First, the ‘insiders,’ the ones who conform to accepted standards. Some of these insiders are very good writers . . . but their work is of interest only up to a point, [because] they completely satisfy readers’ expectations of what literature should be. On the other hand, there has also been this second, parallel stream of ‘outsiders’––mavericks, beginning with Walt Whitman. To my way of thinking, Leaves of Grass is the first great modern literary statement . . . and to this day, perhaps the greatest and most astounding.”

From 1966 through 2002, Martin sought out the great and astounding statements of America’s literary outsiders, writers whose kinship is with the red blood of Whitman not the blue blood of Longfellow, with the dirty hands of Dreiser not the kid gloves of Edith Wharton. Writers who, on the whole, have looked west, toward the frontier and its promise of wildness, and away from the east, away from “civilization” and its received ideas of excellence and form. And Martin found them––in little magazines, in collectors’ libraries, and among that band of bards and truth-tellers who emerged from the jazz cellars of the 1950s into the Day-Glo orange sunshine of the 1960s and ’70s. . . . John Martin retired from publishing on July 1, 2002, but his outsider literary legacy will endure. Bukowski lives––indeed he and a handful of his old Black Sparrow stablemates (Paul Bowles, John Fante, and Joyce Carol Oates especially) not only live but now thrive on the “inside”: times change, and tastes change, and small presses like Martin’s are powerful compact agents of change.”

Vishnu, Rama, and the Ramayan

Princeton’s department of rare books and special collections holds a group of 11 carved wood plaques that tell stories about Vishnu, Rama, and the Ramayana. The first (above) shows the four armed Vishnu encountering a sage (not the Buddha) in the forest.

The next (above and below) shows Rama and his brother Lakshmana hunting in the forest, being lured away from Sita by the golden deer, the demon Maricha in disguise, so Ravana can steal her away.

A third plaque (below) depicts Hanuman finding the forlorn Sita in the forest, probably after she has been abducted by the evil Ravana, to reassure her that Rama is on his way to rescue her.
These are shown in no particular order and we have eight additional scenes. Museum Objects01. Our sincere thanks to Lisa Arcamono in helping to identify the stories.

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