After Henry Smeathman (1742–1786), British Humanity or African Felicity in The West Indies,
March 8, 1788. Etching and engraving. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

“In the late 18th century, between 5,000 and 7,000 black people lived in London,” writes Simon Schama in Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (available online through Dixon eBooks) “More than 20 years before the legislation of William Wilberforce finally ended slavery in Britain, the practice was still legal – but ambiguously so. Most blacks in London were free, but not all, and slave catchers operated widely in the capital, kidnapping runaways.”

“…To his friends, Henry Smeathman was “Mr Termite”. No one knew more about ants. In 1771 he had been sent by the scientist and future president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, to the Banana Islands off the coast of Sierra Leone to collect botanical specimens for Banks’s collection at Kew. He had stayed there for three years, turning himself from botanist into entomologist.”

“In the 1780s he had pottered along giving his insect lectures, a harmless and slightly marginal figure in the scientific and philanthropic communities of which he considered himself a member. But then, in 1786, the cause of the black poor gave him a sudden, belated opportunity, and Smeathman set before the Lords of the Treasury his Plan of Settlement for the creation of a thriving free black colony in ‘one of the most pleasant and feasible countries in the known world’– Sierra Leone.”

To illustrate his articles and pamphlets, Henry Smeathman made crude sketches, later reproduced and published by the London dealer G. Graham. The graphic arts collection recently acquired one entitled “British Humanity or African Felicity in The West Indies.”

The inscription continues, “This Plate Being a Slight Sketch of the Inhuman Punishments Inflicted on the Miserable Slaves is Taken from an original drawing of a whipping after Henry Smeathman. March 8, 1788 … The Slaves both Male & Female are fastened to four Stake’s in the Ground, and lashed till they are hardly able to walk without Assistance. This shocking sight is so common that although it is executed in the Public Market Place, the People buy & sell as though nothing was doing.”

See also:

Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (London: BBC, 2005). Firestone Library (F) E269.N3 S33 2005

Deirdre Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Firestone Library (F) DA16 .C627 2005

Starr Douglas, “The Making of Scientific Knowledge in an Age of Slavery: Henry Smeathman, Sierra Leone and natural history,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 9, no. 3 (Winter 2008)

Eugen Spiro (1874-1972), Das Podium: Künstlergesten aus dem Concertsaal (1906). 37 lithographic portraits; “Exemplar No. [1].” Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

      In 1904, the German-American portrait painter Eugen Spiro (1874-1972) moved to Berlin and joined the Berliner Sezession, publishing in the Jugendstil journal Jugend (Cotsen CTSN Press Q 19871). When his marriage ended, Spiro planned a trip to Paris but not before overseeing the publication of his lithographic portraits of musicians, Das Podium. Künstlergesten aus dem Concertsaal (The Podium. Sketches from the Concert Hall). The edition of 30 copies includes 37 plates, each in a paper mat.

Among the subjects are violinists Willy Hess, Suzanne Joachim-Chaigneau, and Franz von Vecsey; cellists Max Baldner and Hugo Becker; pianists Paul Goldschmidt and Richard Buhlig; conductors Richard Strauss and Siegfried Ochs; singers Elisabeth Ohlhoff, Jeanette Grumbacher de Jong, and Lilli Hehmann, as well as many others.

After thirty years teaching and exhibiting, Spiro was prohibited from working by the rising Hitler government. He resigned his honorary posts and in 1936, resigned his German citizenship, immigrating to the United States. For more about his fascinating life, see Eugen Spiro: 1874 Breslau-1972 New York: Spiegel seines Jahrhunderts (Alsbach: Drachen, 1990). Marquand Library (SA) ND588.S644 A232 1990

Posted with thanks to Fernando Acosta Rodriguez, Librarian for Latin American Studies

Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection is delighted to announce that it has acquired the first copy of Puerto Rican graphic artist Antonio Martorell’s most recent work, Las Antillas Letradas.  Combining to create a massive map of the Antilles when placed in alphabetical order, the 27 prints in the portfolio juxtapose digital prints originating in a 19^th century map, texts of the selected authors in their original languages, and woodcuts of the letters of the alphabet and the corresponding names and faces of the letrados or lettered authors.

“Our islands spread over the Caribbean Sea as a deck of cards fanned out on a game table.  Perilous is our order, and an alphabet pretending to be literary does not have to obey in its creation the rules of dictionary or compass. 

The increasingly stingy Spanish alphabet, dispensing with the beloved “Chs” and “Lls”, has hindered an already tormenting and exclusionary selection, forcing me to unravel names and surnames in order to find the nearly drowned letter and rescue it from the wreck of oblivion.  I have dared to transform an X into a W in an effort to include voices from the main literary languages of our islands, Spanish, English and French.

In its elaboration, the map of the Antilles configured itself as echo of a colorful patchwork quilt or of nautical pennants crossing land and sea borders without visa or passport.  Anchored on words, provoking images, echoes of dreams and nightmares, our letters are not so different from our islands, subject to hurricanes and earthquakes, to invasions and exiles, saved from capsizing by their irrepressible will to be and to make.” –Antonio Martorell

Las Antillas Letradas was printed in 2014 on Okawara paper in a Hewlett Packard printer at the Playa de Ponce Workshop in Puerto Rico with the assistance of Milton Ramírez.  The edition consists of 100 numbered copies signed by Antonio Martorell.

Antonio Martorell, Las Antillas Letradas, 2014. 27 multi-media prints. Copy 1/100. Graphic Arts Collection GAX2014- in process. Purchased with funds provided by the Program in Latin American Studies.