November 2011 Archives

In 1962, the Nobel-Prize winning French poet-diplomat, Saint-John Perse, composed a poem in honor of the artist Georges Braque’s eightieth birthday. He wrote about birds in general, but also about Braque’s birds in particular. Braque responded with twelve aquatints, realized at Aldo Crommelynck’s atelier in Paris. Together these were published as L’ordre des oiseaux (The Order of Birds).

The men only met twice, in 1958 and again in 1961, introduced by Jean Paulhan at the artist’s request. Braque had recently visited the bird sanctuary in Camargue and he spoke to Perse about developing a project around these birds. They worked independently and Braque chose as their epigram Perse’s line: “…L’oiseau plus vaste sur son erre voit l’homme libre de son ombre, à la limite de son bien.”

Victor Brombert writes, “Saint-John Perse’s unexpected collaboration with Braque began as a poetic meditation on birds and turned into a poem about space and the rapture of the poet. Exile, migrant and navigator of the air, Perse’s bird, like the rhapsodist, brings the seasons together. His allegiance to life and to nature is that of the ascetic. Launched on his wings, doubly loyal to air and land, he liberates himself from the “tragic shores of the real,” only to reaffirm, through the austerity of flight, a sense of peace and unity achieved at the very frontiers of man. He is a “prince of ubiquity,” a creator of his own flight.” (Hudson Review, 1966)

See also: http://www.sjperse.org/oiseaux.html

A complete English translation of Perse’s poem can be found in Birds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966) Firestone Oversize PQ2623.E386 O73713 1966q

On June 16, 1827, the actress Harriot Mellon (1777-1837) married William Beauclerk, 9th Duke of St. Albans (1801-1849). At age fifty, it was Harriot’s second marriage and William’s first. He was twenty-six. Harriot’s first marriage was to Thomas Coutts, a banker in his eighties.

There are two series of Mellon caricatures, the first making fun of her marriage to an old man (assuming it was for his money) and the second making fun of her marriage to a young man (portraying her as an over-powering matriarch). Harriot is usually given a mustache and seen taking control.

Here, the Duke is being measured for a new pair of trousers while his wife puts a feather in his cap. At her feet is a comic mask from the theater and bags of money (from her first husband). On the wall, we see the portrait of King Charles II and his mistress, the actress Eleanor (Nell) Gwynne.

Below the title:
Kings may boast of their efforts in making of Dukes
But those sages may try if they can,
With their planning and scheming and practice to boot,
Without money to make me a Man.

No, no! the wise elves to my Duchess must bow,
One and all must acknowledge her plan,
That with Staymakers, Tailors, and money, she now
Most completely has made me a Man.

And how wisely she’s acted we very well know;
‘Twas a Man that she wanted, she said
And the thing when once wanted, amongst high or low
Must be had, and the price must be paid

So with heart like a hero, & face like a Turk
She (her mind fully bent on the plan)
Mustacheo’d & whisker’d went boldly to work
And thus you see made me a Man.

The Ladies’ Wreath (New York: Martyn & Ely, 1846-1855). Monthly. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2004-0010M

“We commenced this work … without a subscriber, and now our subscription list numbers between six and seven thousand, and is rapidly increasing… . The expense of getting up our Magazine, in the superior style in which it is issued, and of the plates and flowers, is so great, in proportion to the extremely low price at which it is offered, that less than ten thousand subscribers will not support it. We have made arrangements for the coming year, which will render the Wreath still more valuable, by adding a short botanical department, for the benefit of our fair readers who love and cultivate flowers. No expense or trouble will be spared to render the work still more worthy the popularity it has already gained; and in return, we trust our subscribers will not only continue with us another year, but wherever practicable, exert their influence with others in our behalf.”

Special thanks to Michael Heist, Senior Bibliographic Specialist, for finding the missing issues to our collection.

This beautiful drypoint was discovered inside a collection of French World War I prints and posters. The artist can be identified by his signature, Auguste Brouet (1872-1941), a printmaker who was born and lived all his life in Paris. As of yet, no title can be found for this image of refugees traveling along a country road.

Writing in The International Studio (1920), Marcel Valotaire described the career of this little known artist: “At the age of sixteen he made his first attempt at etching, using as his sole implement a nail, and as his plate a scrap of zinc gutter-pipe with a ground— if one may so call it—of floor polish. The proof obtained from a single biting of this little plate, Les petits Joueurs de Dis, is quite remarkable, and arrests attention because it immediately reminds one of Rembrandt, although at that time the youthful debutant was completely unaware of the great Dutch master’s existence as an etcher, and certainly had never seen one of his etchings. Thus from this early beginning as an aquafortist, Brouet has remained himself, and his manner and style are borrowed from no one, but are peculiarly his own.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

In 1858, Mathew Brady opened a Washington D.C. gallery in Willard’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th street. http://tinyurl.com/bradygallery. Built eleven years earlier, the hotel was both close to the White House and frequented by both northerners and southerners. Some called it the “Residence of Presidents.” Nathaniel Hawthorne said it was “more justly called the center of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.”

It was from this location that Brady and his staff began to photograph the politicians and celebrities of Washington D.C., including the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. When he finished capturing all the heads of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, Brady combined the individual portraits into two enormous panels measuring three by five feet. Then, he rephotographed them and sold large prints at $5.00 each. See the Senate photograph in an earlier post.

As the Southern states began to secede from the Union, Brady’s photographs were copied to wood engravings and published in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Monthly. Sales to Brady, however, were not good and he lost a great deal of money on this project.

For more information, see
Mary Panzer, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), Firestone TR140.B7 P36 1997

Certainly, it’s the first one that glows. Radioactive’s cover is printed with phosphorescent ink so that it glows in the dark.

In an interview with Megan Gilbert, Redniss spoke about the design and printing of the physical volume, “Many of book’s images are made using a technique called cyanotype printing. Cyanotype is a 19th-century, camera-less, photographic process in which chemically saturated paper turns blue when exposed to the ultraviolet rays of the sun.”

“…For Radioactive, I designed everything: front cover, back cover, spine, endpages, all the pages in between. It was important to me that the design of Radioactive be as carefully considered as the written narrative and the artwork—to echo the story’s themes and to layer the book with meaning. …I designed a typeface based on the frontispieces of old scientific manuscripts in the New York Public Library. I hand-drew every letter and number, the punctuation, the symbols and accents. I wanted the typeface to have a stately but imperfect quality. I named the font Euspia LR, after Eusapia Palladino, an Italian Spiritualist medium whose séances the Curies attended.”

Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love & Fallout (New York: !t Books, 2010). Dixon Books (Dixon) in process.

In conjunction with the book, Redniss created a website where, among other things, you can create your own cyanotype: http://exhibitions.nypl.org/radioactive/

Sonorama: le magazine sonore de l’actualité. Edited by Claude-Maxe. Paris: [Sonopresse], No 1, Octobre 1958-No 42, Juillet-Août 1962. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

Graphic Arts is fortunate to have acquired a complete run of Sonorama, an innovative French news magazine that readers can both read and play. Published eleven times a year, each issue consisted of six articles and six flexi discs offering contemporary news, sports, interviews, speeches, and music. The discs are playable by folding back the pages and placing the entire issue onto a turntable (note the center hole).

Featured celebrities include Edith Piaf, Brigitte Bardot, Sacha Distel, Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Pagnol, André Malraux, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Albert Camus is interviewed about his new play Les Possédés, only months before his death. Musicians include Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Maria Callas.

This complete run of forty-four issues includes the supplement to No 15 on cycling legend Fausto Coppi and a special number, hors série, celebrating Charles de Gaulle’s December 20, 1960 speech on Algeria.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, no date [ca. 1845]. Oil on board. C022 Cruikshank Collection

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bottom the Weaver and Titania, no date. Watercolor with heavy varnishing. GC022 Cruikshank Collection.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Sc. I: O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray, masters! Fly, masters! Help!, no date [ca. 1845]. Watercolor on paper. GC022 Cruikshank Collection

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Landscape, 1980. Acrylic on cloth. 27 x 41 cm.

Thanks to the assistance of the Executive Committee for the Program in Latin American Studies, Graphic Arts recently acquired thirty-four painting and drawings by the novelist, critic, poet, and visual artist Severo Sarduy (1937-1993). Artifacts from his studio accompany the paintings, along with several works by his friends Roland Barthes, Jorge Camacho, and José Luis Cuevas.

Kamel Ouidi, Portrait of Severo Sarduy, ca. 1980. Gelatin silver print.

Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Triptych (I, II, III), 1990. Coffee and acrylic on linen. 27 x 19 cm.

Jorge Camacho (1934-2011), Placard Sarduy, 1976. Text by Sarduy. Lithograph. Edition of 500. 87.4 x 59.4 cm.

Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Untitled, no date. Mixed media on paper. 53.5 x 35.5 cm.

Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Untitled, 1967. Acrylic on paper. 14 x 20 cm.

Sarduy continued to draw and paint throughout his life. A retrospective of his art was held in 1998 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and many of the painting now at Princeton were first seen by the public at this exhibition.

"I write only in order to make myself well," Sarduy once said. "I write in an attempt to become normal, to be like everybody else, even though it's obvious I am not. I am a neurotic creature, a prey to phobias, burdened with obsessions and anxieties. And instead of going to a psychoanalyst or committing suicide or abandoning myself to drink and drugs, I write. That's my therapy."

Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Untitled, 1991. Acrylic on paper. 32 x 47.5 cm.

More information on Sarduy and this new collection will be published in an upcoming issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, including an essay by his colleague François Wahl. Until then, here is an interview with Sarduy completed shortly before his death:

Unknown artist, Beulah Brewster, age 24, 1896. Pastel on canvas. 100 x 57 cm. GC059 American drawings and paintings.

This is a portrait of the young woman who would become Mrs. Beulah Rollins, wife of Philip Ashton Rollins (1869-1950), the founder of the Friends of the Princeton University Library and of the Western Americana collections. Here’s a biographical note from our finding aid to the Rollins collection: “Rollins was born in Somersworth, New Hampshire and spent a good deal of time during his youth out West, where he developed a fascination with a culture and lifestyle that would last his entire life. He attended Princeton University and graduated in 1889. He and his wife, Beulah “Pack” Rollins, settled in New York City, where he practiced law. Despite their East Coast home, Mr. and Mrs. Rollins spent much of their time traveling through the western United States.”

This fine press edition documents the remaining sixteenth-century village churches in and around Santiago de Guatemala. Pen and ink drawings of twenty-two buildings were transferred to metal relief plates, printed and hand-colored by Grove Oholendt. The accompanying two letterpress books—one in English and one in Spanish—include twenty-two tipped-in photographs by Mitchell Denburg. Each volume is covered in traditional Maya hand-woven petate paper weaving and the woodcut endpapers are printed by the Guatemalan artist Guillermo Maldonado.

“Libros San Cristobal is a fine book press and atelier located in Antigua, Guatemala. Our hand-publishing studio produces limited edition fine books and portfolios on Central American subject matter. …Between Mexico and Colombia, we are the only fine press making [letterpress] books about the region, in the region. …All publications are made under one roof, by a team of three Americans and four Guatemalans, all Kaqchikel Maya. We do [letterpress] printing with type [cast] in San Francisco and metal plate impressions made in Guatemala City; we hand craft our boxes, case work, and fine bindery; we illuminate, paint, hand stamp on imported as well as our own fine amate fig park paper … .”

“For the past 23 years, all books have been designed, crafted, and printed by bookmaker Christopher Beisel…. The press team for all books is: Sergio Bucu Miché, bookmaker and binder; Felipe Bucu Miché, printer and binder; Carlos Bucu Miché, painter and printmaker; Roquel Lopez, papermaker, printer, and master painter/designer, Grove Oholendt.”

See also:
Italo Morales, U cayibal atziak: imágenes en los tejidos guatemaltecos = images in Guatemalan weavings (1992). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) F1465.3.T4 M67 1992q
Ana Livingston Paddock, Onamuh y la luna: un mito de la creacion = Namuh and the moon: a creation myth (1994) Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) 2005-0096Q
Barbara G. Nottebohm, Ancient ceremonial hachas of Southern Mesoamerica (1996). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) F1434.2.S38 N67q
Caly Domitila Kanek, Hueso de la tierra (1996). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA): PM3576.Z95 S5 1996
Christopher Beisel, Guatemalen designs from woven paper (2005). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2009-2354N

This commemorative plaque was given to President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) in 1916 by the newly formed Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines in gratitude for Wilson’s help in establishing an autonomous Filipino government. On August 29 of that year, Wilson signed the “Jones Law” or the “Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916” into law. This bill replaced the Philippine Commission with a sovereign Philippine senate, the first step towards granting independence to the Philippine Islands.

It was not until April 1946 that free elections were finally held and Manuel Roxas became the first president of the independent Republic of the Philippines. The following July, the United States ceded its sovereignty over the Philippines.

Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916 commemorative plaque, 1916. Copper plate, metal with gilding. Museum objects collection.

Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857), The Caudle History: a Droll Game (London: Edward Wallis, 1845-47?). Also called Wallis’s New Social Gamer, the Caudle History. Designed and lithographed by G. E. Madeley, 3 Wellington Street on the Strand. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

Composed of thirty-four hand-colored panels, the game follows closely on the thirty-six chapters or lectures published in Punch. There are six bed and five wedding ring squares that might set a player back. On square thirty-three, Mr. Caudle is dressed in mourning over the loss of his wife but in square thirty-four he is jumping for joy on the winning panel.

Introduction: “Poor Job CAUDLE was one of the few men whom Nature, in her casual bounty to women, sends into the world as patient listeners. He was, perhaps, in more respects than one, all ears. And these ears, Mrs. Caudle … took whole and sole possession of. They were her entire property; as expressly made to convey to Caudle’s brain the stream of wisdom that continually flowed from the lips of his wife, as was the tin funnel through which Mrs. Caudle in vintage time bottled her elder wine. There was, however, this difference between the wisdom and the wine. The wine was always sugared: the wisdom, never. It was expressed crude from the heart of Mrs. Caudle who, doubtless, trusted to the sweetness of her husband’s disposition to make it agree with him.”

See also Charles Zachary Barnett, Mrs. Caudle! or, Curtain Lectures! A Dramatic Sketch in One Act, Founded on the Celebrated Series of Papers in “Punch”. The only edition correctly marked, by permission from the prompter’s book … As performed at the London theatres. Embellished with a fine engraving by Mr. T. Jones … (London: J. Duncombe [1845?]). Rare Books: Theater Collection (ThX) TC023 (Playbooks Collection) Box 7

Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857), Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures: Delivered During Thirty Years by Mrs. Margaret Caudle (New York: E. Winchester, 1845). Firestone Library (F) PR1105 .H665 v.20

Douglas William Jerrold (1803-1857), Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, Illustrated by Charles Keene (New York : D. Appleton, 1866). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2003-0371

Preces Christianae: Barmanorum lingua atque litteris editae (Rome: Typis Sac. Congreg. De Propaganda Fide, 1785). Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

In the eighteenth century, publishing a translation of Christian prayers meant not only studying the foreign language and selecting the right words but also cutting and casting the type needed to print those words onto paper. The Propaganda Fide Press, or Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, did it all.

Founded in 1622 to promote the spread of Catholicism in non-Catholic countries, the Propaganda Fide served missions in North America, Africa, and the Far East. They were the first European press attempting to publish in all the languages of the world.

Father Percoto was sent to Burma in 1761 and became fluent in the Burmese language, authoring both a Latin-Portuguese-Burmese dictionary and a Burmese grammar in manuscript. Fifteen years later, the Propaganda Fide published the first printed book in Burmese, Alphabetum Barmanum seu Bomanum regni Avae finitimarumque regionum (1776).

The Preces Christianae offers Christian prayers printed in Burmese script. In addition, it has been set to show-off the talent of the Propaganda Fide designers and the variety of type forms available.

Josef Luitpold Stern (1886-1966), Der entwurzelte Baum (The Uprooted Trees).Woodcuts by Otto Rudolf Schatz (1900-1961) (Berlin: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1926). Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

Austrian author and poet Josef Luitpold Stern was an active member of the sozialdemokratischen Bildungszentrale (Social Democratic Educational Center) and in 1924, co-founded the Büchergilde Gutenberg (Gutenberg Book Guild) together with Bruno Dressler, chairman of the Education Association of German printers. With offices in Leipzig and Berlin (and later Prague, Vienna, and Zurich), their objective was to publish inexpensive books in an effort to make them available to a broad audience.

While teaching at the Vienna Workers’ University, Stern collaborated with the equally progressive Viennese artist Otto Rudolf Schatz on several woodblock books. Their first was Der entwurzelte Baum in 1926, followed by Die Neue Stadt (The New State) in 1927. Both volumes promoted the ideals of social democracy through poetry and graphic images beautifully carved and printed from full-page wood blocks.

When the Nazis took over the Book Guild, both men moved temporarily to the United States. Schatz lived briefly in New York City but when he tried to return in 1938, both he and his wife were sent to a concentration camp in Bistriz. Stern made his way to Philadelphia and worked for a time at the newly established Pendle Hill, a Quaker study center at Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

April fish or April fool

Do you need a head model?

La Maison Aubert was opened in 1829 by Charles Philipon (1802-1862), his half-sister Marie-Francoise-Madeleine Aubert, and his brother-in-law Gabriel Aubert. Initially, the shop sold lithographs by Philipon and his friends. Their first caricature magazine was La Silhouette (1829), followed by La Caricature (1830) and Le Charivari (1832).

End of the hunt.

Legitimate fears.

In 1836, Philipon acquired a “brevet” or license so that La Maison Aubert could run its own lithographic press. When the July Monarchy ended in 1848, Philipon led the way into the second Republic with Journal pour rire, and then, Petit journal pour rire. Arguably the most popular Parisian journal of the day, the latter title continued through the end of the century and into the next.

More exploitation of women by men.

Félix Nadar (born Gaspard-Félix Tournachon 1820-1910) served as the editor, as well as illustrator, for Petit journal. The other principal artists included Cham (1818-1879), André Gill (1840-1885), Henri Monnier (1799 or 1805-1877), Bertall (1820-1882), Alfred Grévin (1827-1892), Gilbert Randon (1814-1994), Gripp, and Félix Régamey (1844-1907).

Sincere thanks to the Friends of the Princeton University Library for this wonderful new acquisition.

Jules Chéret (1836-1932), Vin Mariani, [1895]. Color lithograph. Graphic Arts GC077 French prints

To read more about Mariani’s wine, see his publication Coca and Its Therapeutic Application (New York: J. N. Jaros, 1890). Firestone Library (F) RS165.C5 M375 1890.

After the poster was released, a second print (see above) was prepared for a January 6, 1895 supplement to the weekly Le Courrier français: littérature, beaux-arts, théâtres, médecine, finance (Paris: Jules Roques, 1884-1908). This variant image came with a poem by Hughes Delorme:

Regardez bondir en plein ciel
La superbe danseuse rousse
Tenant de l’index et du pouce
Le nectar providentiel:

Rieuse de s’être grisée,
elle verse toujours, encor…
La fraiche clarté du décor
Fait resplendir sa chair rosée;

Sa chair que l’on pairait cher; et
Qui ne frissonne, hélas! qu’en rêve;
Charme furif; vision brève
Que pour nous évoqua Chéret.

Pour avoir sa grâce robuste,
—O ballerines d’Opéra
Sur qui la fatigue opéra
Le morne écroulement du buste,—

Il vous faut, le travail fini
Les gazes une fois rangées,
Avaler quatre ou cinq gorgées
du bon Vin de Mariani.

See plates 1119-1124 in Jules Chéret (1836-1932), La Belle Époque de Jules Chéret: de l’affiche au décor (Paris: Les Arts décoratifs/BNF, 2010). Firestone Library (F) Oversize ND553.C582 B374 2010q.