Photography in the Princeton University Library

George Cruikshank, Midnight scenes and social photographs: being sketches of life in the streets, wynds, and dens of the city (Glasgow: T. Murray and Son, 1858). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1858.4.

Members of the Friends of the Princeton University Library will be seeing a new Princeton University Library Chronicle in their mailbox soon. For others, please note that this issue is dedicated almost exclusively to the photography holdings in Rare Books and Special Collections. I think I can guarantee it is an eye-opener and will introduce wonderful resources possibly unknown and certainly underutilized.

The table of contents for v. 75, no. 2 (winter 2014) reads:

“Clyde-built: The Photographic Work of Thomas Annan” by Lionel Gossman

“Who Art These Masked Men? The Early Ku Klux Klan, a Photograph, and a North Alabama Family” by Frances Osborn Robb

“Photography and the Princeton Collections of Western Americana” by Gabriel A. Swift

“Photography and the Princeton Print Club” by Julie Mellby

with additional articles about John White Alexander, Arthur Dove, Thomas Rowlandson, and Lionel Grimston Fawkes.

As one of the very few academic libraries still researching and publishing about their collection, I am very proud of this initiative at Princeton. Please consider joining the Friends and/or requesting the issue through interlibrary loan.

Still to come: An issue dedicated to the upcoming exhibition: Versailles on Paper: A Graphic Panorama of the Palace and Gardens of Louis XIV.

Each magazine has a different photograph

The Philadelphia photographer (1864-1888). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0008M

In the summer of 1868, Edward Wilson, editor of The Philadelphia Photographer, was busy organizing opposition to the extension of the Bromide Patent. The application for this extension had already been made by Asa Oliver Butman, administrator of the estate of James A. Cutting, and would have passed had the National Photographic Convention, led by Wilson, not resolved to fight it.

In the meantime, Wilson failed to edition a photographic print for the July issue of his magazine. With no time to lose, Wilson contacted several friends and came up with a group of negatives, which were all printed and bound into various copies as available.

So far, we have found three different photographs in July 1868 issues but undoubtedly there were many more.

In his description of “Our Picture,” that July, Wilson confesses, “We have endeavored to secure, to each of our subscribers this month, a pleasing picture of some pretty little Missie or other, and as we shall, doubtless, be found out, we had better confess that they are not all of the same subject.

We have had so large a portion of our time occupied, since the convention, by correspondence, and business attendant upon the opposition to the bromide extension, that, among other things neglected, we failed to make our usual provision for our picture.

Several of our friends have come to our aid, and kindly loaned us negatives, from which we have printed our large edition in less than a month, and much of the time rainy. For this reason, we can say but little about them.

We hope all will be pleased with what they get, overlook our shortcomings this time, and charge them to bromide.”

–The Philadelphia Photographer July 1868, Issue 55.

Please let us know if you find other examples.

Campus Closed, Libraries Open

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January 27, 2015

Snow is coming

Morton C. Hansen, Untitled [Snowy landscape with horse-drawn sleighs on tree-lined street, houses at right], 1928. Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01397.

Adolf Arthur Dehn (1895-1968), Snow, 1930. Lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01186. Edition 16/30. Inscribed: “For Elmer Adler”.

Hans Frank (1884-1948), Untitled [Deer in Snow], no date. Woodcut. Graphic Arts Collection GC121

Ruth and James McCrea, The Snows of Kilimanjaro [Book jacket design for Hemingway novel], no date [1970]. Oil on board. Graphic arts Collection GA 2006.02555. Gift of Charles Scribner III, Class of 1973.

John Lawrence, The Four Seasons (Winter), 1997. Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.00893. Portfolio cover: “Four wood engravings made in 1982 to illustrate The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill, now issued by the Fleece Press, August, 1997.” Edition 101/120.

Iain MacNab (1890-1967), The First Snow, 1925. Sand-grain etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01770

Umetaro Azechi (born 1902), Stand on the Snow Gorge, 1956. Woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2009.00485.

Guy Crittington MacCoy (1904-1981), Sugar Snow, 1946. Screen print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01785

Norman Kent (1903-1972), Untitled [Landscape with snow and four houses], no date. Woodcut. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01530

Gillray’s Sale of English Beauties and Books

When the London book and print dealer William Holland announced the sale of a new print by James Gillray entitled The Sale of English Beauties in the East Indies, he also listed the books available for sale in his shop. This is interesting because within Gillray’s print is a box of books that has been shipped to India along with a group of prostitutes. Since Holland’s partner, George Peacock, was a dealer in adult books such as Fanny Hill, this may have been an early example of product placement.

The copy of this print in the Graphic Arts collection is unfortunately damaged in the bottom left corner, obscuring the text on the box by the auctioneer. Happily, the British Museum’s print is complete, and we can read the titles of the books included in this shipment. The box is inscribed: For the Amusement of Military Gentlemen. Crazy Tales; Pucelle; Birchini’s Dance; Elements of Nature; Female Flagellants Fanny Hill; Sopha; and Moral Tales.

Princeton University on the left and British Museum on the right.

Here are a few of the titles that Gillray imagined would have been included ‘for the amusement of military gentlemen.’

After nearly 25 years, another print/book dealer Thomas Tegg commissioned a new edition of Gillray’s print by Thomas Rowlandson. The great British caricature historian Dorothy George

notes in her Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires that a decision was made to include only the first, second, and fourth book titles given in Gillray’s print; that is, Birchini’s Dance, the Female Flagellants Fanny Hill, Sopha, and Moral Tales are no longer being shipped. Perhaps the books were out-of-print?

Rowlandson’s version above. This is the beginning of a longer paper. Any comments are welcome.

Joe Jefferson, the Painter

Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905), Untitled [Landscape], 1905. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated: “J. Jefferson // 95”. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02631.

The actor Joseph Jefferson, best known for his performance as Rip Van Winkle, was also a talented painter. If the date on the work in the Graphic Arts Collection is 1895, the painting was probably included in his 1901 Washington D.C. exhibition, admired and reviewed by Willa Cather in her 1901 essay “Joe Jefferson, the Painter.” See: Willa Cather (1873-1947), The world and the parish; Willa Cather’s articles and reviews, 1893-1902 (1970). Firestone Library (F) PS3505.A87 A16 1970

A second review by A.D. Albert Jr. begins, “On the occasion of a recent exhibition of paintings by Mr. Joseph Jefferson, the artist was present and joined frankly in the criticisms of those professionals and students who were in attendance. His evident pleasure in intelligent compliment and the eagerness with which he argued for the mood of particular paintings indicated unmistakably the spirit of earnestness and affection out of which the pictures have grown.

…Those of Mr. Jefferson’s critics who have seen him as Caleb Plummer or Rip Van Winkle insist, unconsciously perhaps, on regarding his paintings as the “aside” of a great character of the stage, or the studies of a dilettante. …There is too much merit in the work to warrant any study of it except as the ripened productions of a true student of nature. No concessions are necessary because Mr. Jefferson has done other things well or allowances required because his appearance as a painter is one of the later manifestations of his artistic temperament.

That any man whose life has been so busy could acquire a deep insight into the art-spirit of trees and rolling hills is not often to be expected, probably; but when that insight once speaks in serious purpose to express itself it deserves to be taken seriously and the expression judged solely on its merits.”–A.D. Albert Jr., “Mr. Joseph Jefferson as a Painter,” The Critic 39 (1901).

Exhibition catalogue auctioned

Congratulations to our colleague Andrea Immel and the others involved in the exhibition One Hundred Books Famous in Children’s Literature at the Grolier Club in New York. A uniquely bound catalogue for the exhibit, curated by Chris Loker with contributions by Immel and six others, was auctioned off tonight for a winning bid of $20,000.

A number of loans from the Cotsen Children’s Library can be seen in the exhibition, which presents 100 children’s books printed from 1600 to 2000. Among the volumes on display are Robinson Crusoe, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Tom Sawyer, Where the Wild Things Are, and Harry Potter. Immel was part of an international team of children’s book scholars chosen by Loker to make the difficult selection. Shown with the 100 books are also 50 historic artifacts that demonstrate the interrelationships between the famous books and the culture of their era.

One Hundred Books Famous in Children’s Literature is the sixth in a notable series of “Grolier Hundred” exhibitions. The Grolier Club previously has organized only five such exhibitions in its 130-year history, focusing on English literature (1902), American literature (1946), science (1958), medicine (1994) and fine printed books (1999).

http://www.princeton.edu/cotsen/

http://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/

http://www.grolierclub.org/Default.aspx?p=dynamicmodule&pageid=384800&ssid=322394&vnf=1

Letters to Anna

Brody Neuenschwander, Letters to Anna. Photos by John Decoene and drawings by Peter Jonckheere (Belgium: Neuenschwander, 2014). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process. Gift of Alfred Bush.

“The freedom of the book format is astonishing,” writes Brody Neuenschwander, Class of 1981. “The order of the pages continues to change, bringing new combinations into being. Of course, you have to settle on a final order at some point. Or perhaps not. Books do not have to be bound…”

Neuenschwander’s new book Letters to Anna is a good example of a successful unbound book. Together with photos by John Decoene and drawings by Peter Jonckheere, the 120 pages can be rearranged to produce new texts.

Completed in 2014, Neuenschwander’s artists’ book is sold to raise money for children at risk, through a program run by the King Boudewijn Foundation in Belgium. Special thanks go to Alfred Bush for his generous gift to the Graphic Arts Collection.

Bunbury’s designs after Tristram Shandy

Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), “The Siege of Namur by Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim” from Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, no date [1772]. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.00548.

thomas_rowlandson_the_siege_of_namur_by_captain_shandy_and_corporal_tr_d5771657h

Undated etching from the Walpole Library attributed to Thomas Rowlandson [left] and a drawing sold by Christies also attributed to Rowlandson [right]. After Bunbury’s design but note the difference on the door on the far right.

Laurence Sterne is “the most illustrated novelist of the eighteenth century,” writes Peter de Voogd. “The English language editions alone yield well over 1,300 different illustrations and the field is so vast that it must be subdivided.” [“Sterne and Visual Culture” in The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne (2009)]. Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759 and the last in 1767.

A series of etchings were designed in 1772 by the amateur draughtsman Henry William Bunbury, including “The Overthrow of Dr. Slop,” “The Battle of the Cataplasm,” “The Siege of Namur,” and “The Damnation of Obadiah.” This set was inspired by Sterne’s book but never bound with the text. They were published by James Bertherton in 1773; re-etched and published in 1799 by S.W. Fores; and then, lithographed in 1815-17.

Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection owns several prints etched by Bunbury before the Bertherton edition, including one laterally reversed from the final published print. Although Thomas Rowlandson prepared two plates for a later bound edition of Tristram Shandy, they are different images, not the same as Bunbury’s designs.
Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), “The Damnation of Obadiah” from Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, no date [ca.1772]. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.00546. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), “The Overthrow of Dr. Slop” from Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, no date [ca.1772]. Hand colored etching. GA 2011.00547. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

James Bretherton (active 1770-1781) after Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), “The Overthrow of Dr. Slop” from Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, 3 February 1773. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.00506. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

Beneath the design is engraved, “When Obadiah & his Coach Horse turn’d the Corner rapid, furious, pop, full upon him – nothing I think in Nature can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter – Obadiah pull’d of [sic] his Cap twice to Dr Slop, once when he was falling & again when he saw him seated.”

James Bretherton (active 1770-1781) after Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), “The Battle of the Cataplasm” from Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, 3 February 1773. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection, GA 2011.00505. 1773/02/03. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, class of 1895.

Beneath the design is engraved, “Susannah, rowing one way & looking another, set fire to Dr. Slop’s Wig, which being somewhat bushy & unctuous withal was as soon burnt as kindled – You impudent Whore cried Slop (for what is passion but a wild Beast) You impudent Whore cried Slop getting upright with the Cataplasm in his hand – I never was at the destruction of any body’s nose said Susannah, which is more than you can say; – Is it? cried Slop, throwing the Cataplasm in her face – Yes it is cried Susannah returning the Complement with what was left in the pan”

Gerald Kenneth Geerlings’ winning etching

Gerald Kenneth Geerlings (born 1897-1998), Grand Canal, America (also called Electrical Building at Night) [Chicago Fair], 1933. Etching and drypoint on yellow/green paper. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01331

The American artist Gerald Geerlings was awarded first prize for the best etching at the 1933 “Century of Progress,” Chicago World’s Fair. Click here to view a large photographic panorama of century of progress from the Library of Congress collection.

According to the Chicago Tribune‘s 1934 World’s Fair Notes I: “In two seasons the 85,000 lights at the Fair have cost $800,000 forty. According to J. L. McConnell, construction chief, 35,000 of them have been broken or replaced. The largest was a 3,000 watt arc and the smallest a 73h watt bulb.” [Chicago Tribune 10/21/1934]

“[Shepard] Vogelgesang collaborated with J. L. McConnell, the director of electrical effects, to get an idea of how to effectively merge color and light at night. Illumination in 1934 was reported to be about fifty per cent greater than in 1933. Two scintillators shot variegated patterns of colored light into the sky. The most spectacular new feature of the 1934 fair was the huge new fountain which was illuminated and colored by submarine flood lights extending the length of the fountain. The ever changing lights could be controlled either automatically or by hand.” [Century of Progress website http://www.cityclicker.net/chicfair/index.html]

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