With thanks to Charles E. Greene

cooke queen victoria

Alf Cooke (1842-1902), Queen Victoria, the Sovereign of Sixty Years, 1897. Chromolithograph. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. Gift of Charles E. Greene.

On Sunday 20 June, 1897, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) celebrated her Diamond Jubilee Accession Day at Windsor Castle. To commemorate the event, a number of paintings, sculpture, medallions, posters, and all types of printed materials were created.

cooke queen victoria2 The master printer Alf or Alfred Cooke (1842-1902) of Leeds, was no exception. Cooke’s first printing factory opened in 1866, was rebuilt twice after fires, and managed to grow into one of the largest chromolithography plants in Great Britain. This led to Cooke’s appointed as “Colour Printer to the Queen” and later, Mayor of Leeds.

His third and final factory, which operated until 2005, was called “New Crown Point Printing Works” and claimed to be the “largest, cleanest, healthiest and most completely fitted printing works in the world.” At its height, Cooke had 300 presses run by a staff of over 600 workers.

Thanks to Charles E. Greene, the Graphic Arts Collection is the proud new owner of Cooke’s 1897 Diamond Jubilee portrait of Queen Victoria, which was later reproduced hundreds of times in posters and advertisements.

 

loofrom W. Herbert Scott, The West Riding of Yorkshire at the Opening of the Twentieth Century: Contemporary biographies (W.T. Pike, 1902)

36 University Place

ppc90In the spring of 1952, the headline “Tragedy on University Place” ran in the Daily Princetonian (Vol. 75, No. 55, March 29, 1951). 36 University Place had been the home of the Graphic Arts Collection, five galleries, a reference library, meeting rooms, and living space for the curator of Graphic Arts, Elmer Adler. In 1948, the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library opened its doors and by 1952, space on the second floor was completed to house the Graphic Arts Division. Not everyone was happy about this. As we are in the midst of yet another renovation, it is instructive to read the comments of an earlier generation. The author “w.e.b.” wrote:

“The [Julian] Boyd Economy Plan brings to mind several of the grievous errors that exist in the Firestone Library— some which have occurred, and one of far more significant implications which is yet to come. We are not speaking of the “Crime of ’48,” its bastard Gothic design. Far abler voices from points as far distant as our own Architecture Department have long been heard on this touchy subject. …
image004The Graphic Arts Room can be seen as another example in this “perfectly planned” library. The Graphic Arts is primarily concerned with prints and the showing of them to students. Therefore a first consideration ought to be to its wall space. And thus where did they locate the Room in the new library? In some interior section unsuitable for regular office space for that very reason? No, sir, they gave it a corner site on one of the upper floors; we, right here in Princeton, probably have the Graphic Arts room with the most window space in the whole world. And this little distinction cannot be attributed to oversight or accident. Mr. Elmer Adler, the first and current Curator of Graphic Arts here, remarked on the fact of these windows, but it was pointed out to him by a responsible official that one could get a marvelous view of Nassau Street from the location. Mr. Adler had to remark that if he managed to get up the stairs to the room, it was his job, and that of the room, to show them prints, not selected landscapes.

Our Way of Life Threatened

But what is done is done; about these mistakes we can only laugh and perhaps wonder. Not so, however, is the case of the outcome of the whole Graphic Arts Program here at Princeton. Another mistake, of far deeper significance, is scheduled to occur at the end of next year. The story is simply this: We are privileged at present to have here at our college the outstanding authority in the field of Graphic Arts, in the person of Elmer Adler. At the moment, he, together with his magnificent book and print collects, is located on University Place in that yellow bit of wandering architecture known as “36.”ppc91

Here he runs his Print Club, his Graphic Arts seminars, his Book-Collecting Contests, his many exhibits and guest lectures. But to enter 36 University Place is to do more: it is to enter a world apart from the rest of the campus.

The house is old and badly planned; the walls creak with the weight of the pictures hung there. But the pace is slow, the tempo quiet and the human touch has not been replaced by the grim efficiency of a Firestone carrel patrol. Small groups — from the University and from the town — gather there, and as its doors are always open to all, interesting people with interesting things to say somehow seem to gather. It is perhaps a backwash in the great tide of efficient administration, but it is the type of thing that gives one meaning to spending four years in the New Jersey damp. But like the dink and the old-fashioned cane-spree, it too is to pass.

Mr. Adler retires next year; he will have a successor, but his collections will be removed to their bright cases in some slot high in Firestone, where only a grad student may come across it looking for Beowulf in the original.

adler36 University Place will be straightened out and made quite efficient; some say as a new “Prince” office, others as administration space. But it doesn’t really matter; the old ways, the old high teas, the old conversations will be gone. We noticed in the paper that in the first three months of 1951, Harvard already has been given almost three million dollars, while we are still straining with the five-year-old Third Century Fund. When we are alumni and are asked to support Princeton, let’s be sure that there is enough of Princeton left to support. If we are to give our money to chrome and tinsel, I suggest the Johnson & Johnson Plants on Route 1; it fits there.” —w.e.b.

 

Ephraim George Squier

squier 3“In 1865, in the ancient Inca city of Cuzco, Ephraim George Squier, explorer, archeologist, ethnologist, and the U.S. charge d’affaires in Central America, received an unusual gift from his hostess, Senora Zentino, a woman known as the finest collector of art and antiquities in Peru. The gift was a skull from a vast nearby Inca burial ground.” — Dr. Charles G. Gross (Department of Psychology) “A Hole in the Head” by in The Neuroscientist 5, no. 4 (1999). Keep reading: https://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/neuroscientist_99_hole.pdf
squier 2

The Graphic Arts Collection holds one box of Squier’s drawings in watercolor, pencil, and pen-and-ink intended for illustration in his publications on Central and South America. There are drawings of artifacts, plans and sections of buildings, and archaeological remains, including twenty-four published in Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877). As far as we can tell, there are unpublished drawings of archaeological sites in Ollantaytambo and Sacsahuaman in Peru, include some of the “Seat of the Inca.” In addition there are fourteen color photographs of selected Squier drawings and five albumen photographs of Peruvian artifacts by Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908).

Among Squier’s other books are Serpent Symbols (1852); Nicaragua: its People, Scenery, and Monuments (New York, 1852); Notes on Central America (1854); The States of Central America (1857) and Monographs of Authors who have written on the Aboriginal Languages of Central America (1860).
squier 4
squier 1

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) and E.H. Davis, Ancient monuments of the Mississippi Valley (New York: Bartlett & Welford; Cincinnati, J. A. & U. P. James, 1848). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Hamilton 1929q

Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888), Central and South American drawings of E. G. Squier, 1864-1877. One box. GAX Graphic Arts Collection

squier 6

One of the many obituaries for Squier begins, “Dr. Ephraim George Squier, the well-known archeologist … was born in Bethlehem, N.Y. in 1821, graduated at Princeton in 1848. His first work of note was the investigation, in company with Dr. E.H. Davis, of the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, the results of which, formed the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.

…In 1863 he visited Peru, but his account of his investigations in that region was cut short in the middle of its publication by a mental disorder, which left him for the last seventeen years of his life utterly incapacitated for work.” The American Naturalist 22, No. 258 (June 1888): 566-69.

Weeds and Wild Flowers

colt weeds3

When the Grolier Club presented an exhibition of the best books created in the twentieth century, Weeds and Wild Flowers was included among the exemplary volumes (Martin Hutner, A Century for the Century, David R. Godine, 2004. Annex A Z1033.F5 H87 2004q).
colt weeds1

Armida Maria-Theresa Colt wrote the text, subtitled Some Irreverant Words and George Mackley (1900-1983) created wood engravings, which were printed by William Carter (1912-2001) at Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, and published by Two-Horse Press in London. A second volume includes a suite of 11 wood engravings without the text, covered with yellow Tatsumaki Japanese handmade paper.

The book joins 40 others printed by the Rampant Lions Press, founded in 1924 by William Carter and continued by his son, Sebastian, until 2008 when the press was closed. The elder Carter described his work as “a matter of seeing the simplest way of doing something, which is usually the best.” (The Guardian, 21 March 2001)
colt weeds2

Armida Maria Theresa Colt, Weeds and Wildflowers, Some Irreverent Words, with wood-engravings by George Mackley (London: Two-Horse Press, 1965). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

The Chimera and The Princeton Print Club

chimera1Guy Crittington MacCoy (1904-1981), Abstraction #2 [later called Yellow Heads],  1937. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 3 (winter 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection  GA 2007.01781.
chimera4Leo John Meissner (1895-1977), Oyster Shells, 1933. Included in The Chimera  1, no. 2 (autumn 1942). Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01851.

In the February 4, 1943 Daily Princetonian Bulletin it was noted that beyond the exhibitions and lectures sponsored by the Princeton Print Club (PPC), “the Club is endeavoring to produce a silk screen lithograph for each issue of the newly formed publication, Chimera.” When the little magazine began in the spring of 1942, Elmer Adler was asked to join the publication’s advisory board and Kneeland McNulty, Class of 1943 and the second president of the PPC, was made art editor. For the second issue, Adler arranged for a wood engraving by Leo Meissner (1895-1977) entitled Oyster Shells, to be printed for the Princeton journal.

In October of 1942, the PPC mounted an exhibition of 40 prints by contemporary American artists, to be sold for $5 each to benefit the club and to enrich the lives of the students. Adler arranged for the prints, including Meissner’s Oyster Shells. Highlighted were a number of serigraphs, which was a new variation in screen printing Adler wished to promote. A Princeton reviewer wrote, “A group of serigraphs make Guy MacCoy the find of the show.” The Chimera published MacCoy’s Abstraction in their winter 1943 issue with a note, “It is the belief of the editors that this is the first serigraph to appear in a widely distributed magazine.”

Although Adler hoped the students would print a new serigraph for each issue of Chimera, only one other print was ever included. The book illustrator E. McKnight Kauffer (1893-1954) often created designs to be reproduced in pochoir or stenciled prints. For Chimera’s spring 1943 issue, he designed a portrait of Homer, which was presumably printed at Princeton for the magazine. Seven years later, Kauffer was given an exhibition of his work by the PPC in their new headquarters in 36 University Place.
chimera2

chimera3E. McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Homer, 1944. Included in The Chimera 1, no. 4 (spring 1943). Serigraph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01503

 

Next year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Princeton Print Club. If you or your father were members, please let us know. We are gathering stories and memories.

 

 

Collection décors et couleurs

album no 1

Near the end of his life, the French painter Georges Valmier (1885-1937) discovered abstraction and created a number of design based works in vibrant colors. Twenty were translated into pochoir or stencil prints by the French master Jean Saudé, commissioned for a series entited Collection décors et couleurs (Decoration and color collection). Only one more portfolio was published in the series featuring the work of Jean Burkhalter.
album no 1e           album no 1c
album no 1d
album no 1a

Album no 1: Georges Valmier (1885-1937), Collection décors et couleurs (Paris: A. Levy, [1930?]). 20 pochoir plates in portfolio.  Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize NK8667.S28 V34f

Album no 2: Jean Burkhalter (1895-1982), Jean Burkhalter : soixante-dix motifs décoratifs en dix-huit planches (Paris: A. Lévy, [ca. 1930]). 18 pochoir plates in portfolio. Collection décors et couleurs. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2004-0011F

 

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5-2010104105442_original

Alonzo Chappel

chappel audubon
chappel madison

At the age of twelve, Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887) was selling his portraits on the streets of New York City for the price of $10 and within only two years was able to raise his price to $25. With no formal art education, Chappel went on to paint hundreds of portraits specifically to be steel engraved as book plates.

Among the books Chappel designed and authored (although the caption writers usually get the credit) were Jesse F. Schroeder’s Life and Times of Washington (1857), Jesse A. Spencer’s History of the United States (1858), Evert A. Duyckinck’s Lives and Portraits of the Presidents of the United States (1865) and National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (1861-1862), as well as plates for the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William Cullen Bryant (1888).

Many of these portraits were done after existing paintings rather than from life, with the original sometimes noted on the print and sometimes not. The many talented engravers hired to complete the prints after Chappel’s paintings are not identified.

Princeton has several copies of the two volume National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans (E176 .D98 1862) and the Graphic Arts Collection holds a number of unbound sheets from this project. Seen here are portraits of John James Audubon (1780-1851), Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), James Madison (1751-1836), and George McClellan (1826-1885).

chappel mcclellan              chappel pierce

 

Affair of Princeton, January 3, 1777

affairs of princeton

Henry Schenck Tanner (1786-1858), Affair of Princeton, January 3rd, 1777, [1816]. Engraving. Graphic Arts collection GA 2008.00875 Provenance: On deposit from A.C. Smith III.

We leave map collecting to our colleagues but this plan for the 1777 Battles of Princeton and Trenton was recently found in the Graphic Arts Collection. It turns out to be one of the maps published in James Wilkinson (1757-1825), Diagrams and Plans Illustrative of the Principal Battles and Military Affairs Treated of in Memoirs of My Own Times (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1816). Happily, it was not removed from our own copy (Rare Books (Ex)  E353.1.W6 W6).wilkinson diagrams

The rare Revolutionary War battle plan details the area from the Delaware River northward, depicting the movement of troops from late December 1776 to January 3, 1777. Shown in particular are Washington’s Route, the Road to McKinley’s Ferry, and the Hessian surrender. Princeton College is seen at the very top of the plan with a tiny view of Nassau Hall, built in 1756. Below, you see what is now the Princeton Battlefield State Park.

A different perspective was offered by the artist John Trumbull (1756-1843) and we are fortunate to hold several of the preliminary sketch done in 1786 for Trumbull’s The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton. Here is one:trumbull three

For a complete set of Trumbull’s sketches and final oil paintings of this battle, see: http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2011/06/the_death_of_mercer_at_the_bat.html

An Original “Brownie” Picture

palmer cox santa2

The Canadian illustrator Palmer Cox began drawing Brownies for a February 1883 issue of St. Nicholas magazine. By 1895 there was a Brownies theme song with illustrated sheet music and by 1900 the pixies were so popular that Kodak named its new camera after them.

Cox published seventeen books using these characters, beginning with The Brownies, Their Book, the same year as this drawing. He wrote and drew for St. Nicholas, Harper’s Young People, Ladies’ Home Journal, Scribner’s Monthly, and many others but it is his Brownies for which he is best remembered.

The Brownies in Successful Return Engagement by Rebecca Deming Moore. “Every once in a while a new race of beings is discovered by some intrepid explorer, into the realm of fancy. The scantily attired Kewpies, the rolypoly Happifats, the Goops, those horrible examples of infant depravity, have come, been seen, and conquered. Brownies, to be sure, had existed for ages, but not until Palmer Cox came along to act as their publicity agent were they widely introduced to a public of little folk.

Palmer Cox took some liberties with these little creatures who, according to tradition, obligingly did the farmer’s chores, if only a bowl of milk were left out for their consumption. He gave them nationality, to wit: the Chinaman, the Indian, the Irishman. He gave them occupation: the sailor, the policeman and so on. But he did not rob them of their original virtues. Palmer Cox’s Brownies have always been the maddest and merriest of small beings, but ever in the front ranks when some kind act needed doing.

palmer cox 1If one were statistically inclined, it would be interesting to estimate just how many little fingers have felt their way over Palmer Cox’s pictures and how many little squeals have followed of “There’s the dude,” “I’ve found Uncle Sam,” etc. For there have been thirteen Palmer Cox Brownie books, all told, dating back to 1887 . . . Indeed, there be a few people who were not brought up on Palmer Cox’s Brownies.” — The Publishers Weekly 94, Pt.1 (F. Leypoldt, 1918).

palmer cox santaPalmer Cox (1840-1924), The Brownies in the Toy Shop, January 1887. Pen drawing. Drawn for Saint Nicholas Magazine  XIV (January 1887). Also reproduced in Roger W. Cummins, Humorous but Wholesome: A History of Palmer Cox and the Brownies, N.Y., 1973, p. 238. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02370.

See also: Palmer Cox (1840-1924), Squibs of California or Every-day life illustrated   (Hartford, Conn.: Mutual Publishing Company, 1874). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton SS 605

Palmer Cox (1840-1924), How Columbus found America, in pen and pencil (N[ew] Y[ork]: Art Printing Establishment, [c1877]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) PN6161 .C674

Palmer Cox (1840-1924), The Brownies: Their Book (New-York: Century Co., c1887) Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) Eng 20 unprocessed item 6815855

Les portraits de quelques personnes signalées en piété

portraits de quelques personnes3

portraits de quelques personnes4Les Portraits de quelques personnes signalées en piété … de l’ordre des minimes, avec leurs éloges tirez des historiens et des chroniques du mesme ordre (Portraits of some people reported in the pious order of the Minimes. Praised by historians & chronicles of this order), ([Paris?]: 1668). 18 engraved plates engraved by Etienne Picart (1632-1721); Jean Boulanger (ca. 1606-ca. 1680); Gérard Scotin (1643-1715); and others. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

Bound with: Antonio Tempesta (1555-1530), Vita et miracula D. Bernardi Clarevallensis abbatis (Rome, 1587) and Les figures et l’abrégé de la vie, de la mort et des miracles de S. François de Paule (Paris, 1664). More about these two in other posts.

portraits de quelques personnes6Although canonized by Pope Leo X in 1519, St. Francis of Paula (1416- 1507) was never ordained a priest. He founded the order of Minims and this volume is a graphic record of Francis and other friars in that order.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In 1474 Sixtus IV gave him permission to write a rule for his community, and to assume the title of Hermits of St. Francis: this rule was formally approved by Alexander VI, who, however, changed their title into that of Minims. After the approbation of the order, Francis founded several new monasteries in Calabria and Sicily. He also established convents of nuns, and a third order for people living in the world, after the example of St. Francis of Assisi.”

Other notable Minim friars are Charles Plumier (1646-1704); Louis Feuillée (1660-1732); Louis Feuillée (1660–1732); Marin Mersenne (1588–1648); Jean François Niceron (1613–1646); and Charles Plumier (1646–1704).

portraits de quelques personnes    portraits de quelques personnes2

portraits de quelques personnes5St. Francis of Paula has his own webpage: http://www.francescodipaola.info/ where you can learn more about the miracles he performed.