“Two cases in the gallery are devoted to Fanny Elssler, the Austrian ballerina who brought the romantic ballet to the United States in 1840,” wrote Mary Ann Jensen, describing a Firestone Library exhibition Let Joy Be Unconfined: Three Centuries of Ballet. “Americans had seen dancers before, but never anything like Elssler’s performances. A contemporary caricature by F.O.C. Darley, the gift of Sinclair Hamilton, depicts Elssler dancing across America with its inhabitants at her feet. Alas, ‘Modesty’ is shown weeping in the lower corner!”

Mary Ann Jensen, former curator of the Seymour Theatre Collection in Firestone, died Tuesday, March 04, 2014. Jensen’s funeral and celebration of life will be at All Saints Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey on Thursday, March 13th at 11:00 AM, with the Right Reverend William “Chip” Stokes as Officiant and Celebrant.

She leaves behind a wonderful collection of theater, dance, and performance that continues to inspire students and researchers–this drawing was called to the reading room today!

Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1821-1888), Fanny Elssler, 1840-1842. Ink wash. GC007 F.O.C. Darley Collection. Gift of Sinclair Hamilton, Class of 1906.

See also Mary Ann Jensen, “New and Notable,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 41, no. 3 (spring 1980).

“Although George Washington never attended any college,” writes Donald Egbert, “in many ways he had particularly close relations with the College of New Jersey, as Princeton University was known.” In 1783, trustees of the College commissioned a portrait of Washington by the Philadelphia painter Charles Wilson Peale, which was hung in Nassau Hall.

To celebrate the University’s bicentennial year, a large print was editioned after the Peale painting. The process began with the enormous canvas being carried outside to the lawn in front of Nassau Hall, so that it could be photographed in direct sunlight. Ira Martin, photographer of the Frick reference library, was brought down to Princeton to make the photographic negative. Then, 500 black and white collotype positives were printed by the Meriden Gravure Company.

To add the correct color, twenty-six stencils were designed by the twin sisters and pochoir specialists Kate and Martha Berrien, working in their Greenwich Village studio. Each individual stencil was used to hand paint one layer of watercolor over the collotype until Peale’s original was reproduced exactly. Copies of the final print were given to select donors and alumni throughout 1946 and today, only a few copies remain in the Graphic Arts Collection.

Egbert’s article on the making of this facsimile was published in the Princeton University Library Chronicle 8, no 2 (February 1947): http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/pulc/pulc_v_8_n_2.pdf