February 2013 Archives

William Charles (1776-1820), The Ghost of a Dollar or the Bankers Surprize ([Philadelphia: William Charles], no date). Engraving and etching.
Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013- in process

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the First Bank of the United States stood on South Third Street in Philadelphia. Just down the block, Scottish-born artist William Charles (1776-1820) opened his first American print shop, publishing etchings, illustrated books, and caricatures. Over by the river on North Water Street, the shipping magnate and financier Stephen Girard (1750-1831) operated his trading business and made more money than anyone else in the United States.

When the charter for the First Bank expired in 1811, Girard bought the building and most of its stock, opening his own bank in its place. Charles watched as Girard’s fortune grew and eventually, published a caricature of the banker.

In the print Girard envisions a Spanish Dollar and conjures it to drop into his till. He says: “Surely my eyes do not deceive me—It certainly must be a dollar! I declare I have not seen such a thing since I sold the last I had in my vaults at 18 per cent premium—If thou art a real dollar do drop in my till and let me hear thee chink—As I have been sued for payment of part of my notes in specie I must collect some to pay them for quietness sake or the game would be up at once—”

A sign behind him reads, “Stephen Graspall, banker & shaver. Paper wholesale & retail NB No foreign bank notes taken on deposit except such as are about 5 per cent above par.”

.

See also Stephen Girard (1750-1831), The Will of the Late Stephen Girard, esq., procured from the Office for the Probate of Wills (Philadelphia: T. and R. Desilver, 1832). Rare Books (Ex) LD7501.P5 G583

Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822-1888), Study for Thinking of Home, [1866]. Charcoal and graphite. Graphic Arts Darley collection GC007.

John Sartain (1808-1897) after a drawing by Felix Octavius Carr Darley (1822-1888), Thinking of Home. [1866]. Mezzotint and engraving. (c) American Antiquarian Society

The Atlanta Constitution published an article in 1879 entitled Felix O.C.Darley. “‘Men with four names,’ said Dickens once to a friend, ‘are as useless as they would be with four legs.’ Darley comes under the ban thus pronounced and yet he is as useful, probably, as he could have been with a less number of titles. One of the most powerful draughtsmen of the age, his sketches of subjects from contemporaneous literature are unrivaled. His illustrations from Cooper and other novelist, and the drawings furnished by him for various standard periodicals, have stamped him as an artist of rare fidelity and unusual power.”

“His face is one of the most striking to be found in New York. A tremendous expanse of forehead, fringed with the silken hair, and lighted by a pair of deep-set eyes, that sparkle from their cavernous recess like two finely-set jewels of mammoth size and wondrous purity are the first of his features that catch the beholder’s vision … Mr. Darley is a hard worker, a companionable gentleman, and a hearty hater of anything like sham. That he may live to pencil, crayon, sketch, and design, in his own inimitable way many years to come, is the wish of all who have ever enjoyed the pleasure of his hearty friendship.”

Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942), Christmas Greeting 1915 (New York: Jessie Tarbox Beals, 1915). Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process. Single sheet with letterpress poem “A Nocturne of New York” and a silver chloride photograph
of the Flatiron Building.

Jessie Tarbox Beals (c) Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

The Flatiron Building at 175 Fifth Avenue opened in 1902, one block east of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. If you watch this 1920 film closely you will see both skyscrapers around the middle of the reel. http://rbsc.princeton.edu/pathebaby/node/1629

Kosai, edited by Takeda, Narajiro (Daimaru Gofukuten). Kyoto: Daimaru Gofukuten, 1911 (Meiji 44). Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process

This kimono sales catalogue was published by a fabric shop in Kyoto, just before it developed into a modern department store. Although there are no other records for the book in OCLC, the Japanese National Diet Library, or other similar databases, we have the editor’s seal and publisher’s seal listed on the colophon page to identify the volume.

In 1717, Shimomura Hikoemon Shokei opened Daimoniya, a kimono fabric store in Fushimi, Kyoto. Later moved to Osaka, the store’s motto was “service before profit.” In the twentieth century, they opened a modern department store in its present Kyoto location and in 1928, changed the name to Kabushiki Kaisha Daimaru. A history of Daimaru has been posted at: http://www.j-front-retailing.com/ir/annual_report/jfrnowe36.pdf.

The kimonos are beautifully printed with multiple woodblocks and striking color. My poor images here don’t do justice to the actual catalogue.

“Born in Kagoshima, in the south of Kyushu, the son of a minor traditionalist painter, [Hashiguchi Goyo] became interested in Kano-school painting in his youth and in 1899 went to Kyoto to study with Hashimoto Gaho (1835-1908). However, he was persuaded to take up Western painting by the influential Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) who came from the same district as Goyo, and went to Tokyo to study at the Hakuba-kai (Western Painting Institute) and then at the Tokyo School of Art, where he graduated in 1905.”

“In 1911 he became interested in ‘Ukiyo-e’ prints after winning a poster competition with a study of a beautiful woman, and began to publish articles and studies on early artists of that school. As a consequence of these activities he met the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, for whom he designed a print (‘Bath’, 1915) which was virtually the first of the ‘Shin Hanga’ movement, but wishing to have complete control over all the processes, he published his subsequent prints himself. In 1916-17 he supervised the twelve-volume ‘Ukiyo-e fuzoku Yamoto nishikie’ (Japanese Brocade Prints in Ukiyo-e Genre Style) containing hundreds of woodblock reduced-size facsimiles of the works of early masters.” —Goyo biography posted by the British Museum

Gabriel Liquier (1843-1887), Voyage d’un âne dans la planète Mars (The Journey of a Donkey on the Planet Mars) (Genève: Lith. Excoffier, 1867). All lithography.
Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013- in process

Born in Anduze, Liquier studied theology and spent three years as a minister in Ardèche before moving to Paris and changing careers. He went on to publish both images and texts, sometimes using the pseudonyms “Trick” and later, “Trock” for his caricatures.

Liquier was only twenty-four, studying in Geneva, when he created this cartoon book about a donkey traveling to Mars, a satire on both Geneva politics and the French. Of particular note is his early use of the cartoon cell and progressive narrative, not unlike the early work of Rudolph Töpffer (1799-1846).

Déjeuné frugal de M. Aricosec cousin de la Jobardière dans son voyage a paris, no date [1815]. Etching with hand coloring. Inscribed in plate, l.l.: “Un vieux concierge de chateau qui vient pour réclame une place a Paris” (possible translation: An old castle caretaker who comes to Paris at the offer a place).
Graphic Arts Collection French prints

In 1815 a small volume was published in Paris under the pseudonym of Mr. de La Jobardière, with illustrations by Adolphe Lalauze (perhaps the father of the etcher Adlophe Lalauze 1838-1906). M. de La Jobardière aux acteurs, actrices et critiques du Théâtre français is the first published mention of the character of de La Jobardière, named after the French city. He is a tall, unsophisticated man who has many adventures and troubles.

In the Vinck collection of prints at the Bibliotheque Nationale De France, there are a series of caricatures featuring Mr. de la Jobardière. At least one can be dated to March 1815 and the only artist’s named are Forceval and Aubry, of which little it known. Fifteen years later a one-act comedy appeared at the Variétés by Théophile Marion Dumersan (1780-1849) and Henri Dupin (1791-1887) entitled Monsieur de La Jobardière, ou La Révolution impromptu.

A few of the print titles are Bravoure et générosité de M.r de La Jobardière; Vision de M.r de La Jobardière; M.r de La Jobardièrede retour dans son Manoir; Déjeuné frugal de M.r Aricosec cousin de la Jobardière dans son voyage a paris; M.r de La Jobardière chez son secrétaire; M.r De La Jobardière Marquis de terre en cour; and M.r de la Jobardière se pousse chez les Grands.

Oddly, in April 1860, a comic story turns up in the Chicago Tribune titled The Czar and the Frenchman, describing a trip by a Frenchman Mr. De La Jobardière, clearly taken from this earlier series.

In Psyché, I, Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) described the beauty of the grotto:
Au haut de six piliers d’une égale structure,
Six masques de rocaille, à grotesque figure,
Songes de l’art, démons bizarrement forgés.
Au-dessus d’une niche en face sont rangés.
De mille raretés la niche est toute pleine:
Un triton d’un côté, de l’autre une Sirène,
Ont chacun une conque en leurs mains de rocher;
Leur souffle pousse un jet qui va loin s’épancher.
Au haut de chaque niche un bassin répand l’onde:
Le masque la vomit de sa gorge profonde;
Elle retombe en nappe, et compose un tissu
Qu’un autre bassin rend sitôt qu’il l’a reçu.

Above six even, ordered pillars stand
Six masks of shell and rock grotesquely shaped
Imagining of art, bizarre demonic forms
Perch high above them can a facing niche.
Inside it jostle myriad rarities:
A Triton and a mermaid, stand each side,
And in their hands a conch of rock they hold,
Hurling a jet of water as they breathe.
Above each niche, a basin spills the flow;
Spewed from within the mask’s cavernous throat;
It cascades, as a curtain, falling into folds
Caught by another basin, and instantly let go.

Taken from Michel Baridon, A History of the Gardens of Versailles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) Marquand SB466.F83 P37213 2008

Unidentified Artist, a qui Mal veut, Mal arrive, no date [1790s]. Etching with hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.01066.
Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

An this anti-Jacobin, pro-Girondist print, seven prisoners are seated on stools in a prison cell. Each one wears a feathered Liberty cap and each is tied to the cell wall by a rope around his neck. The red caps were a symbol of the French revolutionaries in the 1790s. The caption at the bottom of the print is a proverb that can be translated “To those who want evil, evil comes.” At the top, “Les Commissaires devenus des otages - arrestation de Dumouriez”.

“After a major defeat in the Battle of Neerwinden in March 1793, [Dumouriez] made a desperate move to save himself from his radical enemies. Arresting the four deputy-commissioners of the National Convention who had been sent to inquire into his conduct (Camus, Bancal-des-Issarts, Quinette, and Lamarque) as well as the Minister of War, Pierre Riel de Beurnonville, he handed them over to the enemy, and then attempted to persuade his troops to march on Paris and overthrow the revolutionary government.” [wikipedia]

The unknown artist may be reacting to the Commission extraordinaire des Douze, established during the French revolution by the French National Convention. The commission was to take all necessary measures to find proof of these conspiracies and to arrest the conspirators.

See also Lectures on the French Revolution by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, first baron Acton (London, Macmillan and co., 1910). Firestone Library (F) DC143 .A3 1910

Thank you to Prof. Volker Schroder for his help with the translations.

Mary Evangeline Walker (1894-1957), Portrait of William Seymour, no date (1900s). Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.02653.

“Acquisition of the extensive theatrical collection of the late William Seymour, who was actively connected with the American stage as actor and stage manager for seventy years, was announced tonight by Dr. Harold W. Dolds, president of Princeton University.” The article in The New York Times (November 23, 1936) continued, “The collection has been presented to the university by Mr. Seymour’s five children, May Davenport Seymour, curator of the theatrical collection of the Museum of the City of New York; Edward Loomis Davenport Seymour, horticultural editor of New York City; the former Fanny Lydia Davenport Seymour of Princeton, wife of [Geology] Professor Richard M. Field; James William Davenport Seymour of Hollywood, lately on the staff of Warner Brothers; and John Russell Davenport Seymour, actor of New York City.”

William Seymour was born in New York City on December 19, 1855, the son of two actors, James Seymour (The Irish Comedian) and Lydia Eliza Griffith. He had his first speaking role at the age of seven and in 1865, played Hendrick to Joseph Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle at the Varieties Theatre. After a lengthy career as an actor, director, and stage manager, Seymour died in Plymouth, Massachusetts on October 3, 1933.

We do not know what year Mary Evangeline Walker painted this portrait. A Boston native trained at the Boston Museum School of Fine Art and elsewhere, Walker returned to teach and paint in Boston for most of her adult life. Seymour worked for the Boston Museum Stock Company as stage manager from 1879 to 1889 and married May Davenport, a member of that company. When he retired in 1927, the well-traveled actor chose South Duxbury as his home and spent his last years directing high school theater groups in his neighborhood. It may have been in the late 1920s that Walker asked him to pose.

During the College Art Association annual conference this weekend, we were able to view Tracey Emin’s new graphic work published by Times Square Arts (TSA) and s[edition]. The three minute video, I Promise to Love You, was prepared as part of the Midnight Moments series and plays each night in February from 11:57 to midnight on dozens of the Times Square monitors.

According to TSA, “the program is the largest coordinated effort in history by the sign operators in Times Square to display synchronized, cutting-edge creative content on billboards throughout Times Square every night.” Emin wrote six love messages, which have been animated and synchronized across several blocks. Glowing red and blue text slowly spells out her message as if written by her own hand, complete with crossed-out mistakes.

s[edition] is a digital publisher working with top selling artists to produce limited editions that exist only in a digital format. Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, Jenny Holzer, and Yoko Ono have also created works for this series selling from $8 to $1600 (including a certificate of ownership). Emin’s digital neons are in an edition of 2,000 and the price rises as the edition sells.

Raymond Savignac (1907-2002), Bal des Barbus, 1950. Published by Watelet-Arbelot in Paris. TC094 Oversize Theater Posters Collection.

Although the Bearded Balls were held in Paris throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Raymond Savignac was only responsible for one of its posters. In an obituary for the popular graphic artist, Richard Hollis writes,

“Raymond Savignac, who has died aged 94, was the last of the great Parisian poster artists. For several decades, their works lit up the métro, and those by Savignac were the most entertainingly unmissable. He claimed that his career began in 1949 with the poster, Monsavon Au Lait. ‘I simply thought of a cake of soap for Monsavon, and a cow for the milk,’ he said. With a comic picture of a cow, its udders emptying themselves into a bar of soap, he made a visual scandal - and he went on making them well into his 90s.”

“…By chance, while touring the Paris publicity agents, Savignac met Cassandre, the most celebrated of these designers, and, in 1935, became his assistant. During Cassandre’s winter absences in New York, Savignac was found a place at the smart printers, Draeger Frères, but since Draeger commissioned their more interesting work from outside designers, it was more than a disappointment: ‘Là, c’était l’horreur.’ This horror was interrupted by another - the war.”

“After demobilisation, and during the Nazi occupation of France, Savignac was again unemployed. A colleague suggested he should hold an exhibition, an unusual course of action for a commercial artist. At that time, poster designers worked by preparing a graphic idea for an imaginary brand name product, which would then be hawked around advertisers in the hope that they could match the design to a client.”

“…The style of a Savignac poster has nothing in common with Cassandre’s purist compositions. But they share the humorous single figure, as it had appeared in Cassandre’s famous “Dubo, Du bon, Dubonnet” designs. The public could identify with these recurring, isolated comic characters. With the air of put-upon, but smiling, consumers, they often have the look of Savignac self-portraits.” —Richard Hollis, “Raymond Savignac: Brilliant poster artist who brought colour, wit and style to the French advertising industry,” The Guardian, November 8, 2002.

Sydney Henry Shadbolt (born 1853), The Afghan Campaigns of 1878-1880 (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1882). 140 woodburytypes. Contents: [v. 1] Biographical division.— [v. 2] Historical division.
Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2006-0006M

Sidney Shadbolt was a barrister of the Inner Temple, an organization of lawyers dating back to the 12th century (see: http://www.innertemple.org.uk/history). Besides this extensive historical and biographical study of the Second Afghan Campaign, Shadbolt is also responsible for publishing a study of the South African Campaign of 1879 or the Anglo-Zulu War (Annex A, Forrestal DT1875 .M3 1995)

140 oval woodburytype portraits were cut and pasted into the front of Shadbolt’s two volume set, with biographical details following. Also included are descriptions the two expeditions sent to Kabul, along with 6 maps and accounts taken from both official and private sources.

In a 1884 report on newly published books in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series, vol. 1 (1883-1884), p. 199, an unknown author writes, “The Afghan Campaigns of 1878-80 have furnished an interesting theme for Mr. Sidney H. Shadbolt, who has elaborated from official and private sources a sketch of the war, with maps illustrating the operations of the forces, a list of officers who fell in the campaigns and the recipients of the Victoria Cross, summaries of the movements in the field of the various regiments which were engaged, and separate records of every British officer employed in the war (2 vols. 4to, Low, 60s.).”

Many lives were lost during this campaign. “On July 27, 1880, Mohammad Ayub Khan decisively defeated a British force led by Brig. G.R.S Burrows at Maiwand, near Kandahar. Of the 2,476 British and Indian soldiers engaged in the fighting, 971 were killed in action and 168 wounded, in addition to 331 camp followers who were killed.”—Stephen Farrell “Kandahar More Than a Century Ago,” The New York Times, September 9, 2010.

Collège no 1 (Paris: R. Labadie, 1930). Pochoir prints. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2013-0022Q

The Bibliothèque nationale de France and Princeton University are the only institutions with copies of this journal. Each page of Princeton’s copy is stamped with the word ‘specimen’ leading us to believe our copy is a prospectus for a proposed magazine.

The publisher’s imprint “R. Labadie” is taken from the back cover and the art deco “no 1” can be seen at the top of the cover. Our issue is filled with pochoir prints by illustrators Georges Goetz and Stephen Bourgoignon among others. Essays, poetry, and commentary by Jean Albery and Fred Koch are also included.

Dan Kainen and Carol Kaufmann, Safari: a Photicular Book (New York: Workman Pub., 2012). Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process.

Safari recently joined our collection of optical devices. Photographer and lighting expert Dan Kainen created the plates and Carol Kaufmann, a staff writer for National Geographic, wrote the commentary.

Kainen has a small website, http://www.dankainen.com/index.htm, where he describes his process. “Photicular, also known as Lenticular, or Integrated Photography, was first conceived in the early 20th century, but the basic concept has been around since 1692 when a French painter created paintings that revealed one, and then the other as the observer walked by. The simplest form of it is to cut two images into thin vertical strips and interleave them, placing in front of the composite image a plane of bars, like a picket fence, which only allows one to see one image at a time though the gaps. Instead of bars, lenses can be used, and more than two images - as many as dozens - can be interleaved.”

A lenticular image can easily be made using Photoshop and a number of tutorials are available on the internet. An image is broken into layers that are viewed from slightly different angles, tricking the eye into thinking the image is moving. Here’s one site: http://www.vicgi.net/lenticular-interlacing-algorithm.html

As an interesting sidebar, Kainen is the son of the painter and printmaker Jacob Kainen (1909-2001). In the 1930s, Jacob was a member of the Graphic Arts Division of the WPA and from 1942 to 1970, curator of the Division of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian Institution. As the divisions of the Smithsonian grew, his collection moved to the Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History).

“Fresh from her Hollywood success in The Philadelphia Story and the current Woman of the Year, Katharine Hepburn returns to the legitimate stage in Philip Barry’s new comedy, Without Love,” announced the Daily Princetonian on Monday March 2, 1942.

“Presented by the Theatre Guild, the play will receive its world premiere at the McCarter Theatre Wednesday evening at 8:30 and will stage a repeat performance on Thursday at the same time.”

The play moved to Broadway where it had an extended run at the St. James Theatre. In 1945, it was made into a movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, directed by Harold S. Bucquet, and a screenplay adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart.

This hand-painted poster advertising the two performances was found recently among a group of commercial posters in the RBSC theater collection.

In the Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. 47, no. 3 (spring 1986) there are two mentions. The first in a report of the Library Council’s winter meeting held on November 23, 1985 in the Friends Room on the second floor. “Before calling for the treasurer’s report, the chairman commented on the splendor of the new Leonard l. Milberg Gallery which has transformed the entrance to both the Graphic Arts collection and the Theatre Collection on the second floor of Firestone Library.”

Finally, Roylance notes in his report for the exhibition and catalogue, European Graphic Arts, “On May 11, 1986, a new exhibition gallery for the Princeton University Library, the Leonard L. Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts, was officially opened. The architectural renovations to the second floor of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections have also created new entrances for both the Graphic Arts Collection and the Theatre Collection, with access directly from the main exhibition gallery of the Library. All of this has been made possible through funds given to the Graphic Arts Collection by Leonard L. Milberg, ‘53.”

By the way, the opening lecture to celebrate the gallery, the exhibition, and the catalogue was given by Robert C. Darnton, Shelby Cullom Davis ‘30 Professor of European History, entitled “Confessions of a Book Historian.”

Thanks to Christine Lutz, we also found photographs of the dedication of the gallery in the archive for the Office of Communications Records. http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/AC168/c03558

Thanks very much for asking a good question, Mr. Bumas!

(left) Edward Ruscha, Twentysix Gasoline Stations. 3d ed. (Alhambra, Calif.: Cunningham Press, 1969).Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2006-2396N.

(right) Sowon Kwon, Dongghab ([Montpelier, VT]: Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2010. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013- in process

point of departure is the discovery that the publication of Edward Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations and the suicide of Sylvia Plath by oven gas both occurred in 1963, the year of Kwon’s birth.

Cued by Ruscha’s seminal work, Kwon unveils an uncanny cosmology of events constellated by the convergence of “1963” with “gasoline” such as the assassination of Medgar Evers (after having lead a successful boycott of white-owned gasoline stations in Jackson, Mississippi) and the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc in Saigon (in protest of the oppression of Buddhists by the Catholic administration of then president Ngo Dinh Diem), among others.

The Korean word dongghab describes a social relationship between people born in the same year, so that the idea of a (self) portrait as socially contingent and historically determined as much as individuated, informs the book.”

New York-based artist Sowon Kwon works in a range of media including sculptural and video installations, digital animation, drawing, and printmaking. Her recent work explores portraiture, perception, and historical memory as our bodies are increasingly submitted to and made accessible through technology.

The first office was located on the second floor of a garage on East 32 Street that belonged to wealthy socialite and financier William Goadby Loew (1876-1955). Adler had three presses but only one customer and within a year, he was the only partner left in the business.