Recently in Acquisitions Category

These are close-ups from the Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Packenham [sic] on the 8th of January 1815 by Joseph Yeager (ca. 1792-1859) after William Edward West (1788-1857). We are adding the second state of the print to show the change in Major General Lambert’s hand.

Why? The folklore around the print states that officers in the Army complained about the view of a soldier crying for his lost comrade and demanded that the handkerchief be removed. The pointing figure was the best the engraver could do without altering more of the composition.

But which Army was complaining? Lambert was a British officer and this print shows the battle from the British point of view. It is, however, an American print published in Philadelphia. Was it the American Army that demanded the change in the British soldier? Was Lambert too sympathetic a figure when the focus of the image was meant to be the death of the British troops?

In addition to the complex iconography, there are five variants of the print, which we often categorize into two first states (with handkerchief) and three second states (without handkerchief). We believe our second print is the 2nd state, 2nd variation.

Joseph Yeager (ca. 1792-1859) after a design by William Edward West (1788-1857), The Battle of New Orleans and Death of Major General Packenham on the 8th of January 1815. Philadelphia: Published and Sold by J. Yeager, [1816]. Hand colored engraving. 1st and 2nd state. Purchased in part with support of the Barksdale-Dabney-Henry Fund, 2012.

When U.S. Navy commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed to Japan in 1853 and trade routes were opened between Japan and the United States, Americans were introduced to a new iconography from the East. Japanese designs began to find their way into all sorts of American objects.

William L. Sunderland’s lithographic printing company in Providence R.I. was producing “all kinds of lithograph work at short notice and upon the most favorable terms,” when the craze for Japanesme hit the east coast. The firm (known as L. Sunderland Co.) quickly designed and printed a series of trade cards incorporating various Japanese themes.

Among the businesses that purchased these eye-catching feats of artistic printing were Sapanule, makers of the celebrated Glycerine Lotion (said to cure rheumatism, neuralgia, pneumonia, diphtheria, sore throats and more); Dr. J.F. Brogan, “Operative Dentist” at 305 Fulton Street, Brooklyn; Summit Mineral Springs Water; and Harry Harper, a paper dealer and stationer at 60 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

Nine trade cards printed by L. Sunderland, Providence Rhode Island, 1870s-1880s. Chromolithography. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process

“André Mellerio, publisher of L’Estampe et l’affiche, wrote the decade’s most influential book on the subject, La Lithographie originale en couleurs (Paris, 1898). Describing the infrastructure for graphic art, he declared colour lithography ‘the distinctive art form of our time’ and found forty artists worthy of special mention. Chief among them were Toulouse-Lautrec and four of the Nabis—Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and Ker-Xavier Roussel.”
—Pat Gilmour, Grove Art Online

For his own book, Mellerio chose Bonnard to illustrate the volume with a lively cover and frontispiece. His essay has, happily, been translated to English in its entirety by Dennis Cate and can be read in: Phillip Dennis Cate, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890-1900; with a translation by Margaret Needham of André Mellerio’s 1898 essay La lithographie originale en couleurs (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Art Gallery, in cooperation with the Boston Public Library, c1978). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2009-0243Q

In the summer of 1812, Great Britain was at war. Seventeen-year-old William Heath (1794/95-1840) began a series of watercolors for the Strand print shop of James Jenkins featuring victorious battles scenes to be called The Martial Achievements of Great Britain and Her Allies from 1799 to 1815. Thirteen large paper parts were released between December 1814 and December 1815, including a total of fifty-three hand colored prints with aquatinting by Thomas Sutherland (1785-1838).

Orme issued several variations on this series, including Historic, Military, and Naval Anecdotes of Personal Valour, Bravery, and Particular Incidents which occured to the Armies of Great Britain and her Allies, in the last long-contested war, terminating with the Battle of Waterloo (1819). “The forty coloured aquatints … are from drawings by J. A. Atkinson, F. J. Manskirch, W. Heath, J. H. Clark, etc… . . Of the engravings, thirty are by M. Dubourg, seven by Clark and Dubourg together, and two by Fry and Sutherland together.”

Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), A Ward of Chancery, & a Commission of Lunacy Superseded, March 16, 1807. Etching with hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02667

This print, surprisingly, refers to the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1800, which required the indefinite detention of mentally ill offenders. It was passed thanks to chief counsel Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), who argued that an actor named James Hadfield (1771/72-1841) was insane when he tried to shoot King George III during a performance at the Drury Lane Theatre. Erskine convinced the judge that Hadfield had only pretended to kill the King because the actor wanted to die and knew he would be killed for the attempt.

Since the laws of the time had no provision for holding or treating criminals who were found to be insane, a bill was rushed to the House of Commons so that Hadfield would not be set free. No more than four days after the trial, “A Bill for Regulating Trials for High Treason … and for the Safe Custody of Insane Persons Charged with Offenses,” also known as the Criminal Lunatics Act was passed.

Erskine was made Lord Chancellor in the Ministry of All the Talents, although he had no background for the office and only lasted fourteen months in the position. He is seen here rescuing a dog that was being beaten by a group of boys. This actually happened in February 1807 and Williams finished the print a few weeks later, referencing Erskine’s history of rescuing mad men and mad dogs.

I am working on a catalogue raisonné of William Heath, including his prints, drawings, and illustrated books. Here’s a first draft (pdf). If anyone would like to comment or correct, I’d be glad to hear from you.

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/gapdf/heath list 6.pdf

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), Exposition de l’oeuvre de Corot: a l’École nationale des beaux-arts. Notice biographique par M. Ph. Burty (Paris: Typographie Jules-Juteau et fils, 1875). Two woodburytypes from negatives by Charles Desavary. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) in process.

Late in his life, Corot posed for a series of portraits by Desavary, as though he was painting plein-air, sitting at a canvas under a white umbrella in his garden.

Corot died in February 1875 and an exhibition in his honor was mounted at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Paris, surveying the artist’s complete works. The surprisingly slim exhibition catalogue was published in two editions; the first was a large paper edition with two of Desavary’s portraits printed by Rose-Joseph Lemarcier (1803-1887) whose firm specialized in making woodburytypes. The second edition, slightly smaller in size, used various left-over prints indiscriminately pasted onto the frontispiece of each volume, as the supply allowed.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) first met Milena Jesenská (1896-1944) when she worked as the Czech translator of his early short prose work. In April 1920, he began a correspondence from a pension in Meran, which extended through March 1924, three months before his death. In one of the early letters, he describes his fears as a young boy of six walking across Prague to the elementary school.

Letters to Milena was published in New York and Frankfurt in 1953, edited by Willi Haas. The photographic essay, Prague Through Kafka’s Eyes, was shot by Ruth Ivor (1912-2008) while on assignment for Life magazine in 1965 and left on deposit at Princeton University Library in 1980.

With sincere thanks to the Ruth Ivor Foundation, a complete set of Ms. Ivor’s Prague photographs is now a permanent part of our Graphic Arts Collection. These are a few examples.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Letters to Milena. Edited by Willi Haas; translated by Tania and James Stern (New York: Schocken Books [c1953]) Firestone Library (F) PT2621.A26 Z5513 1953.

Margarete Buber-Neumann (1901-1989), Mistress to Kafka: the Life and Death of Milena; introduction by Arthur Koestler (London: Secker & Warburg, 1966). Firestone Library (F) PT2621.A26 Z6463 1966

This portrait of Argentine novelist and short story writer Julio Cortázar (1914-1984) was created from memory by his Argentine friend and frequent collaborator Julio Silva (born 1930).

They met in Paris, where Cortázar moved in 1951 and Silva shortly after in 1955. Their first published collaboration came in 1966 when Silva provided lithographs to complement Cortázar’s Les discours du Pince-Gueule. They worked closely on the collage books, La Vuelta al Día en Ochenta Mundos (1967) and Último Round (1969) and then Territorios (1978). In 1976, Cortázar dedicated Silvalandia to the artist, who provided the illustrations.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “No one can retell the plot of a Cortázar story; each one consists of determined words in a determined order. If we try to summarize them, we realize that something precious has been lost.”

Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Ultimo Round (México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1969) Rare Books (Ex) Item 4913202

Julio Cortázar and Julio Silva, Les discours du pince-gueule. Nouv. éd. (Saint-Clément-de-Rivière: Fata Morgana, 2002). Graphic Arts RCPXG-7055109

Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos. 5. ed. ([Mexico] Siglo Veintiuno Editores [1969]) Firestone Library (F) PQ7797.C7145 V845 1969

Julio Silva (born 1930), Julio Cortázar, 1991. Ink and brush drawing. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process

Stephen Thompson (1831-1892) and George Smith (1840-1876), Chaldaean Account of the Deluge from Terra Cotta Tablets Found at Nineveh, and Now in the British Museum (London: W.A. Mansell, 1872). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process.

Smith had been hired to piece together the fragments of tablets from Ninevah and in 1871, published “The Phonetic Values of the Cuneiform Characters,” to assist in the transcription and translation of Assyrian documents. The following year, he found what he believed to be evidence of the biblical flood as accounted in the book of Genesis.

Read Smith’s paper “The Chaldean Account of the Deluge,” published in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 2 [1873] 213-34 online here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/chad/chad.htm

National Types and Costumes, with explanatory text (London: Frederick Bruckmann, ca.1885) including 15 mounted albumen photographs. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process. Gift of Bruce C. Willsie, Class of 1986.

An influential early project was a portfolio illustrating all of Goethe’s female characters. The volume featured albumen silver prints by Josef Albert, although Bruckmann was also a working photographer. They tried similar projects with the characters of William Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, and others. Soon Bruckmann Verlag developed a specialization in illustrated collections; groups of women, groups of painting, groups of decorative arts, etc.

Thanks to Bruce Willsie, Class of 1986, we recently acquired a charming example entitled National Types and Costumes. There is no information inside the volume to confirm this but it was published around the same time Bruckmann won a Silver Medal at an international competition and there is reason to believe the photographs are by Bruckmann himself.

Die Kunst für Alle. (München: F. Bruckmann, 1885-1944). Marquand Library (SA) Oversize N3 .K9q

Gustav Friedrich Waagen (1794-1868), Die Gemäldesammlungen in der Kaiserlichen Ermitage zu St. Petersburg (München: F. Bruckmann, 1864). Marquand Library (SAX) ND40.L52 W32

Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1804-1874), Goethe’s frauengestalten (München: F. Bruckmann, [1864?]) Rare Books Off-Site Storage Oversize 3445.753.11f

Fortunato Indovino, Il vero mezzo per vincere all’estrazione de’ lotti, o sia una nuova lista generale contenente quesi tutte le voci delle cose popolaresche appartenenti alle visioni e sogni, col loro numero. Esposte per ordine Alfabetico [The Surest Means to Win the Lottery Drawing, or a New General List Containing Entries for All the Everyday Things Found Inside Visions and Dreams, With Their Numbers. In alphabetical order] (Venice: Sylvester Gnoato, 1809). Frontispiece and 19 plates of woodcuts, with an additional full-page woodcut dated 7 February 1754.

Lottery dream books or guidebooks were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century but few have survived. An astrologer using the pseudonym Fortunato Indovino, or Lucky Guesser, wrote one in 1754 that was reissued many times over more than eighty years. This Venetian edition is small and light, easy to carry with you throughout the day.

“For example, you may decide (from a dream…) that the appropriate symbol for you this week is a dog. The number for a dog, in the Roman lottery, is 17. You multiply 17 by 16, its nearest inferior, and arrive at 272. Half of 272 is 136. So the number you want for the ambo is 136.”

“Dream books were in great demand for deciding the numerical meaning of dreams (a drowned man translated to 88). Events in everyday life had numbers. If a child in your family were ill with a fever, you would bet 18-28-48; if you had an unhappy or one-sided love affair, your number was 90.” — Susan Vandiver Nicassio, Imperial City: Rome, Romans, and Napoleon (Welwyn Garden City: Ravenhall, 2005). Firestone Library (F) DG812.7 .N53 2005

“There is a rich literary heritage for this kind of writing and this very much forms the basis for what we’re setting out to do. The way we think about visual writing is this: writing that uses visual elements as an integral part of the writing itself. Visual elements can come in all shapes and guises: they could be crossed out words, or photographs, or die-cuts, or blank pages, or better yet something we haven’t seen. The main thing is that the visuals aren’t gimmicky, decorative or extraneous, they are key to the story they are telling. And without them, that story would be something altogether different.”

The new edition includes 150 pages: 150 first pages and/or 150 last pages. On November 25, 2011, the Victoria & Albert Museum invited 150 people to be Read Outlouders, each one reading a different page spread throughout the Museum. Here’s a look at the event:

Marc Saporta (1923-2009), Composition No. 1, a Novel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963). Rare Books (Ex) 3290.49.326.7

Marc Saporta (1923-2009), Composition No. 1. Introduction by Tom Uglow, illustrated page entitled “The Anatomy of Your Favourite Novel” by Salvador Plascencia (London: Visual Editions, designed by Universal Everything, 2011). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2012- in process

“Koi no Yatsu Fuji, published at the New Year in 1837, is a shunga version of Satomi Hakken-den, the most representative work of Kyokutei Bakin (also known as Kyokutei Shujin), originally published in 1814-42. Both its text and illustrations are clever parodies of the original work. The author’s name is given as Kyokudori Shujin, a perversion of and is the pseudonym of the gesaku writer Hanagasa Bunkyō. The illustrations are by Bukiyo Matahei, otherwise known as Kunisada. The title is a version of the ‘eight tufts of hair-amulets (yatsu-busa)’ of the dogs in the original work, which appear as such in the main text; but for some reason the term is Yatsu Fuji in the title. The inside title reads Nansō Satomi Hakken-den.” -Yoshikazu Hayashi, Kunisada’s Koi no Yatsu Fuji Shunga Book (1996)

Utagawa Kunisada (later Utagawa Toyokuni III, 1786-1864) was the Andy Warhol of his day. He was the most popular, most copied, and most financially successful artist of that period. As a young man, he apprenticed with Toyokuni, later having the honor of taking that master printer’s name. Experts estimate Kunisada’s total work to be over 20,000 prints.

Many of the Shunga (erotic) prints and books in this country are in the backrooms of art museums and library, carefully housed and controlled by shy librarians. This is only the second such volume to enter Princeton University Library but an important example of a significant genre. The date of this edition is only a guess, there is no date inside the volume.

[above] Grete Stern (1904-1999), Juan Ramón Jiménez, 1949. Gelatin silver print. Graphic Arts Collection GA2012- in process. Purchased with fund provided by the Program in Latin American Studies.
[below] Grete Stern (1904-1999), Pedro Henríquez Ureña, 1942. Gelatin silver print. Graphic Arts Collection GA2012- in process. Purchased with funds provided by the Program in Latin American Studies

In the 1930s, the German photographer Grete Stern (1904-1999) married the Argentine photographer Horacio Coppola (1906-2012) and settled in Buenos Aires. They brought with them the ideology of the Bauhaus workshop in Dessau where they met and were important agents in the spread of European modernist theory to South America.

Already a prize-winning artist and manager of an acclaimed Berlin photography studio (together with Ellen Auerbach), Stern opened a second studio in Buenos Aires, offering graphic design, advertising, and commercial portraiture.

“In 1940 the couple moved to a Modernist house built in the outskirts of the city, designed by architect Wladimiro Acosta …The house became a meeting place for young artists and writers … both Argentine and exiled foreigners. They met to show their work and discuss cultural matters. For example, in 1945 the Madi arts group (Movimiento de Arte Concreto Invención) exhibited for the first time at her house. Stern used the gatherings in her home as an opportunity to photograph her visitors. Among her subjects were exponents of the avant-garde in the arts and letters, including Jorge Luis Borges, Clément Moreau, Renate Schottelius and others.” (Jewish Women’s Archive)

Princeton is fortunate to have acquired two of Stern’s portraits. The first is a 1942 image of Pedro Henríquez Ureña (1884-1946) a Dominican intellectual, philosopher, and literary critic, known for his essay “La utopía de América” (1925), among many others. The second, taken in 1949, is a portrait of the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881-1958), who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956.

Below is a short video of Stern and her husband with a clip from Coppola’s film Ringl and Pit, in which Stern plays the part of the maid.

See also: Grete Stern (Valencià: IVAM Centre Julio González: Generalitat Valenciana, 1995). (SAPH): Photography TR680 .S914 1995
Sueños: Fotomontajes de Grete Stern: Serie Completa (Buenos Aires: Fundación CEPPA, Centro de Estudios para Políticas Públicas Aplicadas, [2003]). (F) TR647 .S789 2003

If a political party was in trouble in the 19th century, they were said to be “up the Salt River.” This was the case for the Democrats in the presidential election of 1868. Their ticket of Horatio Seymour (1810-1886) and Francis Blair (1821-1875) ran against the Republican Party’s nominees Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) and Schuyler Colfax (1823-1885).

An unsigned political cartoon shows the Democrats on a sinking platform, along with their shipmates Jefferson Davis, Andrew Johnson, Wade Hampton, Henry Wise, and newspaper publisher Marcus Mills “Brick” Pomeroy. Blair says he wishes he “had never come aboard.”

Meanwhile, Grant and Colfax watch calmly from the shore, not far from the White House. An important aspect of the Republican platform that year was their endorsement of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which allowed African Americans to vote. Thanks to a provision that kept many ex-confederates (and Democrats) from voting, Grant won the election by 52.7 % of the popular vote and became the 18th President of the United States.

Although the zine only lasted eleven issues, it was quite influential and remains a key source for interviews in late 1970s popular culture including music, art, literature, and film. Writers featured include William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Patti Smith, Octavio Paz, and Bob Flanagan among others.

On the night of January 10, 1838, the Royal Exchange, at the corner of Threadneedle and Cornhill Streets in the City of London, burned to the ground. It was one of the most spectacular fires of the 19th century and many artists got out of bed to sketch the scene, including William Heath. At least two prints are derived from Heath’s drawings, an etching published by Robert Havell at his Zoological Gallery [above] and a lithograph published by Rudolph Ackermann at his Eclipse Sporting Gallery [below].

See also: Effingham Wilson (1783-1868), Wilson’s Description of the New Royal Exchange, including an Historical Notice of the Former Edifices … (London: E. Wilson, 1844). DA687.R69 W557 1844.