In 1801, a demonstration of electricity was held at the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam. The Society was established for the promotion of music, drawing, physics, commerce and literature and its building, designed by Jacob Otten Husly, opened to the public on October 31, 1788. These engravings depict some of the many concerts, debates, lectures, and  demonstrations held there.

Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816) after a drawing by Jacques Kuyper (1761-1808), Zaal der Natuurkunde in het gebouw der Maatschappyë Felix Meritis binnen Amsterdam = Salle de Phijsique dans l’Edifiçe de la société Felix Meritis a Amsterdam [Hall of Physics in the Building of the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam], 1801. Graphic Arts Collection Dutch prints

Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816) after a drawing by Peter Barbier (1717-1780) and Jacques Kuyper (1761-1808), Teken Zaal in het gebouw der Maatschappyë Felix Meritis binnen Amsterdam = salle de Dessin dans l’edifiçe de la Société Felix Meritis a Amsterdam [Drawing Room in the Building of the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam], 1801. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection Dutch prints

Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816) after a drawing by Noach van der Meer Jr. (1741-1822), Muzyk zaal in het gebouw der Maatschappyë Felix Meritis binnen Amsterdam = Salle de Conçert dans l’Edifiçe de la Société Felix Meritis a Amsterdam [Concert Hall in the Building of Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam], 1791. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection Dutch prints

Reinier Vinkeles (1741-1816), Gehoor zaal in het gebouw der Maatschappyë Felix Meritis binnen Amsterdam. = Auditoire dans l’Edifiçe de la Société Felix Meritis a Amsterdam [Audience in the Building of the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam], 1794. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection Dutch prints

    Antonio Frasconi (1919-2013), Santa Barbara [triptych], 1951. Color woodcut.
Graphic Arts Collection GA2008.00937

This triptych was created in 1951 not long after Frasconi married Leona Pierce and moved to her hometown of Santa Barbara, California. He found a day job with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, where he also had his first one man show.

Born in Argentina and raised in Uruguay, Frasconi died ten months ago in Norwalk Connecticut at the age of 94. It was a scholarship to the Art Students League that provided the young artist with access to New York City where he learned printmaking. Within a year he was showing his work at the Brooklyn Museum.

Frasconi went on to specialize in woodcuts, using them to illustrate hundreds of books (OCLC lists 261), many of which are here at the Princeton University Library. In 1996, the Grolier Club gave him their gallery for an exhibition of his books, one of the few living artists celebrated by the Club (GAX Oversize NE539.F86 G72q).

“Sometimes the wood gives you a break and matches your conception of the way it is grained,” Antonio Frasconi told a New York Times reporter in 1963, “But often you must surrender to the grain, find the movement of the scene, the mood of the work, in the way the grain runs.”

Special thanks to the Program in Latin American Studies for this acquisition.

Cell from The Yellow Submarine, including Ringo, 1968. GC184 Animation Cells Collection

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have a small collection of animation cells, including two from the 1968 film based on the music of The Beatles called Yellow Submarine and one from Walt Disney Studios of Donald Duck, among others. They offer an interesting contrast in styles.

While George Dunning (1920-1979) was the director of Yellow Submarine, Heinz Edelmann (1934-2009) was the creative director and the one most often credited with the overall style of the film. Born in Czechoslovakia and trained in Germany, Edelmann only worked on Yellow Submarine from 1967 to 1968 but it over-shadowed all his other projects, such as the illustrations of Andromedar SR1 (1970, Cotsen Eng 20Q 87723) and German edition of Kenneth Grahame children’s book The Wind in the Willows [Der Wind in den Weiden] (1973).

In his 2009 New York Times obituary, Steven Heller wrote, “Heinz Edelmann, the multifaceted graphic designer and illustrator who created the comically hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, died on Tuesday in Stuttgart, Germany.  …The movie’s mod-psychedelic look, which typifies the era’s spirited graphic art, emerged around the same time as the related psychedelic work of Terry Gilliam, Alan Aldridge and Victor Moscoso, but it has its own whimsical aesthetic. The bulbous Blue Meanies, which personify an evil mood as actual villains, pursue the innocent, well-coifed cartoon Beatles across an ever-shifting milieu of mysterious seas and holes that can be magically picked up and moved. The yellow submarine itself stops in an ocean of pulsating watches, representing time, to light a cigar for a friendly sea monster.”

Donald Duck first appeared in 1934 and has been drawn by many talented artists over the years, most notably Al Taliaferro (1905-1969), Carl Barks (1901-2000), and Don Rosa (born 1951). Of course, all images of Donald are © Walt Disney Studios

On October 8, 2013, the new $100 note will begin circulating. Once it is issued, any commercial bank, savings and loan, or credit union that orders $100 notes from the Federal Reserve will have its order filled with the new design. According to the U.S. government website , distance, demand, and the policies of individual financial institutions will be the deciding factors in how quickly redesigned $100 notes reach the public, both in the U.S. and in international markets.

While older designs of Federal Reserve notes remain legal tender, and will not be recalled, demonetized or devalued, beginning on October 8, 2013, Federal Reserve Banks will only be paying new design $100 notes out to financial institutions. As older designs make their way through the banking system, they will eventually get returned to the Federal Reserve, where they will be destroyed.

The United States government primarily redesigns U.S. currency to stay ahead of counterfeiting threats and keep counterfeiting levels low. The Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, its Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the United States Secret Service continuously monitor the counterfeiting threats for each denomination of U.S. currency and make redesign decisions based on these threats.
Currency Image Use [from the U.S. government]

Federal law permits color illustrations of U.S. currency only under the following conditions:

The illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated.

The illustration is one-sided and all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.
18 U.S.C. § 504(1), 31 CFR § 411.1.

Use and reproduction of U.S. currency for advertising purposes prohibited under federal law. Under section 475 of the U.S. Criminal Code,  “whoever designs, engraves, prints, makes, or executes, or utters, issues, distributes, circulates, or uses any business or professional card, notice, placard, circular, handbill, or advertisement in the likeness or similitude of any obligation or security of the United States issued under or authorized by any Act of Congress or writes, prints, or otherwise impresses upon or attaches to any such instrument, obligation, or security, or any coin of the United States, any business or professional card, notice, or advertisement, or any notice or advertisement whatever, shall be fined under this title.”  18 U.S.C. § 475.

John Sartain (1808-1897) after a painting by George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), The County Election, 1854. Mezzotint and engraving. Signed in plate, l.l.: “Painted by G.C. Bingham”. Signed in plate, l.c.: “Entered According to act of Congress in the year 1854 by G.C. Bingham, in the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York”. Signed in plate, l.r.: “Engraved by John Sartain”. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953. Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

William Hogarth (1697-1764), Four Prints of an Election, 1755-58. Plate III: The Polling, February 1758. Third state. Graphic Arts, GC113 William Hogarth Collection

Not unlike William Hogarth in the 18^th century, George Caleb Bingham painted a raucous 19^th century scene presenting county politics, both good and bad. Although it is not recorded in the picture, we know that he was depicting an 1850 election in Saline County, Missouri, where he lived.

Neither African Americans nor women could vote in this election. In fact, there was no voter registration at all but any white male, conscious or unconscious, could participate. Each man had to swear on the Bible that he hasn’t already voted and then, speak his choice to the judge. Caucusing and drinking are all taking place nearby.

The man seated is the painter George Bingham himself, making sketches.

Henry Papprill (1817-1896) after a design by John William Hill (1812-1879), New York with the city of Brooklyn in the distance. From the steeple of St. Paul’s Church, looking east, south and west, 1849. Engraving and aquatint with hand color. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953. Graphic Arts Collection

From atop the steeple of St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City’s only pre-revolutionary building still standing, located at the intersection of Broadway and Fulton Street, John W. Hill made a magnificent watercolor view of Lower Manhattan, which would serve as the basis for Papprill’s splendid print. The spire of Trinity Church commands the right (southern) part of this vista; at the center is the tower of the former Middle Dutch Church, which housed the city’s main post office. In the left foreground is P.T. Barnum’s Museum of Sensational Curiosities [and] in the center foreground is portrait photographer Mathew Brady’s Daguerrean Miniature Gallery. –From Marilyn Symmes, Impressions of New York (2005)

The corner of Fulton and Broadway today

Mathew Brady occupied two large buildings, the old gallery at the corner of Fulton street and Broadway and the new gallery, No 359 Broadway, over Thompson’s Saloon. The latter gallery is apparently one of the most completely arranged daguerrean galleries in this country or in Europe.

Note all the skylights at Brady’s studio

“Photography: Brady’s Daguerrean Saloon,” 11 June 1853 (Posted at http://www.daguerreotypearchive.org. Published in: Illustrated News (New York) 1:24 (1 June 1853): 384)

“IT is well known to many of our readers that this art has been elevated to a higher point in this country than in the land of its discovery. …Among the most widely celebrated daguerrean artists of our own city, M. B. Brady has been long favorably distinguished, and we have frequently presented our readers with copies of his production. The establishments of Mr. Brady occupy two large buildings, the old gallery, corner of Fulton street and Broadway, and the new gallery, No[.] 359 Broadway, over Thompson’s Saloon. The latter gallery is apparently one of the most completely arranged daguerrean galleries in this country or in Europe. The facilities for first-class pictures appear unrivaled; an additional building has been erected by which the reception room, ladies dressing-room, and operating rooms are on the same floor, being a desirable arrangement.”

One dollar portraits on the second floor in the shadow