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In 1997, John Bidwell (former curator of graphic arts) arranged the acquisition of the Charles Rahn Fry Collection, holding significant work by artists who specialized in the pochoir technique, preeminently Robert Bonfils, Georges Lepape, and George Barbier.

Bidwell wrote, “The definitive commentary on the elegant excesses of the postwar period is George Barbier’s Le bonheur du jour, ou les grâces à la mode (ca. 1924), a hymn to modern luxury, glorifying the pursuit of pleasure amidst splendid surroundings stocked with precious trifles. The Fry copy includes a proof of the “Eventails” plate with a completely different color scheme, apparently rejected by Barbier because he wanted richer tones and greater contrast in this group portrait of theatergoers, sporting an assortment of delicately tinted ostrich-feather fans, clearly intended more for plumage than for comfort.”

For a longer description of the collection, see http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/pulc/pulcv59n_1.pdf

The French designer, architect, and engraver Jean Bérain, the elder (1640-1711) has been credited with being one of the creators of the Louis XIV style. His drawings of the wall and ceiling ornaments of Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre and those for doors and wall paneling of Louis XIV’s apartment in the Tuileries were published under the title Ornemens de peinture et de sculpture (ca. 1710). The large folio volume included an engraved title page and twenty-eight engraved plates. An incomplete, unbound set is in graphic arts.

These designs have been alternately ascribed to Bérain, the elder, and to his son, Jean Bérain, the younger (1674-1726). What is clear is that the Bérains engraved eleven of the plates themselves and had the rest done by a series of French printmakers. François Chauveau (1613-1676) engraved thirteen, Jean Lemoyne (sometimes spelled Le Moine, 1638-1715) engraved four, and Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin (1671-1716) is responsible for the title page.

In 1968, Princeton acquired a collection of nearly 600 botanical watercolors by the British artist Mary Lind (Mrs. James) White made in 1876 during a trip through the United States to China. Her great granddaughter, Lady Berwick of Attingham Park, Shrewsbury, facilitated the acquisition with our curator of Western Americana Alfred Bush.

In a letter to Bush, Lady Berwick writes, “I am delighted to hear that you are pleased with the collection of botanical studies of Californian flora by my great grandmother Mrs. White (née Lind). I wish I could tell you more about her life and travels—all I know is that her husband Mr. James White had a business as a China merchant (teas, etc.) and he took his wife on journeys to China and America, though as they had a family of three or four daughters and five sons, it must have been difficult for her to get away.

Mr. White was [a] member of Parliament (Liberal) for Brighton for many years. Their home was at 8 Thurloe Square, London S.W. Both Mr. & Mrs. White died in 1883, I think. I wish I had a diary or other correspondence in order to give you more facts about Mrs. White—all I have is an album with a few larger flower paintings handsomely bound and inscribed Shanghae [sic] Flowers presented to James White by his wife on his Birthday April 10, 1868. Mr. White was in the U.S. again in the 1870s.”

James White was indeed part of the English Liberal party in the House of Commons between 1857 and 1874. Many of Mary White’s watercolors are dated August 1876 and the box includes a handwritten list of every plant dated 1879, presumably written after she had returned home.

Mary Lind White (1810?-1883), Botanical sketches of California flora, 1876. Watercolors. Graphic Arts 2011- in process

James Gillray (1756 -1815), The Zenith of French Glory; -the Pinnacle of Liberty, 12 February 1793. Etching. Graphic Arts GA201-01475

The British caricaturist James Gillray drew this printed to commemorate the beheading of Louis XVI (note the crown on the guillotine’s blade). Beneath the title is written “Religion, Justice, Loyalty, & all the Bugbears of Unenlightened Minds, Farewell!” A sansculotte (sans-culottes, without the knee-length pants that were fashionable) is perched on a lamp post fiddling, one foot on the hanged body of the bishop. His cap says “Ca ira” (It will be fine), the song of the working class radicals of the French revolution.

François Le Villain is commenting on the trouble caused by the images in the portfolios of lithographs that printsellers were turning out in huge numbers during the early nineteenth century. He points to Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet (1792-1845) and Hippolyte Bellangé (1800-1866) in particular, who were among the most prolific of the illustrators. Both used subject matter of military exploits under the First Empire, which made their work popular with the opposition under the Restoration and influential in the propagation of a mythic view of the Napoleonic era. The two are shown being burned at the stake by a fire of their own work.

Charlet and Bellangé both studied in the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros. They each went on to have careers as commercial illustrators, using the popular new process of lithography for their plates. Between 1823 and 1835, Bellangé alone published fifteen albums of lithographs devoted to the patriotic military subjects. During the same period, Charlet published a number of albums with the firm of Gihaut, who also published this print.

Attributed to James Reid Lambdin (1807-1889), Theodore Frelinghuysen, 1787-1862, ca. 1844. Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts collection, PP 183. Gift of Frederick T. Frelinghuysen.

During his six-year term as Senator, Frelinghuysen lobbied hard for the rights of Native Americans and against the Removal Act of 1830, which relocated eastern Indian tribes to land west of the Mississippi. He gave a six hour speech during the congressional debate on the bill, saying “Some matters, by universal consent, are taken as granted, without any explicit recognition. Under the influence of this rule of common fairness, how can we ever dispute the sovereign right of the Cherokees to remain east of the Mississippi, when it was in relation to that very location that we promised our patronage, aid, and good neighborhood?” Unfortunately, the bill was passed anyway.

This portrait has been attributed to the artist James Reid Lambdin (1807-1889), who painted many of our American presidents. According to Donald Egbert in Princeton Portraits, “This is presumably the portrait known to have been presented in 1866 by Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, [1817-1875]. The attribution to Lambdin, who established himself in Philadelphia in 1838, was tentatively made by William Sawitzky on the basis of a photograph … it seems probable that the portrait was painted about [1844].”

Felix Gallet, Arbre généalogique des langues mortes et vivantes, gravé par Geusler de Genève (Paris, ca. 1800). Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

Purported to be the first tree of languages, Felix Gallet's engraved broadside predates that of August Schleicher, who is generally credited with inventing the form. Winfred Lehmann in Historical Linguistics (1992) states: "The suggestion that the relationship between subgroups of a language is similar to that between branches of a tree was propounded by August Schleicher, who was strongly influenced by views on evolution."

The tree here shows two distinct groups, the first emerging from "La Langue Primitive," from which we see languages such as Greenlandic, Guianan, Turkish, Mexican, Persian, Hebrew and Tahitian. The second group derives from "Le Celte," which in turn generates the bulk of European languages. The interaction between the two groups is fascinating and shows what must be an early attempt to integrate some of the discoveries of the New World into the existing linguistic framework.

A more recent language mapping can be found at: http://llmap.org/about-llmap.html

George Cruikshank (1792 - 1878) after a design by HTDB, Bumpology, 24 February 1826. Etching. Graphic Arts Cruikshank collection.

A mother has brought her son to the phrenologist John De Ville, in the Strand, who published Outlines of Phrenology as an accompaniment to the Phrenological Bust (1824) and A Manual of Phrenology (1826). His assistant makes the note: “Very large Wit N° 32.” Caption reads:
Pores o’er the Cranial Map with learned eyes
Each rising hill and bumpy knoll descries
Here secret fires, and there deep mines of sense
His touch detects beneath each prominence.

In De Ville’s manual, which appeared shortly before this print, Cruikshank probably read: “…For the immense number of facts collected proved that every head, except idiots, has the thirty-five organs; but we do not attempt to say they are all largely developed and active in one individual; but by observations on a few persons, every organ in one or the other will be found fully developed…except in very extraordinary cases.”

Design attributed to Benjamin West (1738-1820), Talk of an Ostrich! An Ostrich is nothing to him; Johnny Bull will swallow any thing!! 1795. Etching. GA 2011.00702. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895.

In this caricature, William Pitt (1759-1806) is using a musket to force Convention Bills down the throat of England. Pitt says “What, it sticks in your throat does it? Oh, I’ll ram it down I warrant you. And when it is once past, you’ll easily digest it. You must not be obstinate Johnny, when Laws are made, you have nothing to do but to obey them.”

Francis A. Comstock (1897-1981), Tiger Gate and Little Hall, Princeton University, [1952]. Lithograph. GA 2007.01044

Still Life no. 2, 1950s. Lithograph. GA 2007.01043

Still Life, 1948. Lithograph. GA 2007.02.74

James Heath (1757-1834) after Francis Wheatley (1747-1801), The Riot in Broad Street, 1790. Hand colored engraving. Graphic Arts 2011- in process

In the following days about 100 buildings owned by Roman Catholics or by the Catholic Church were looted or burnt down. The Bank of England, Buckingham Palace and Downing Street were all attacked. On June 7, the militia was called in; nearly 450 people were arrested and 300 were shot.

Before the work was completed, there was a fire at Heath’s house and the painting was destroyed. Unfortunately, the contract stipulates that Boydell was responsible to return the work, barring “Fire or other Inevitable Accidents.” The engraving was issued in 1790.

Princeton’s graphic arts collection holds a large box marked only “Minstrel blocks,” containing woodblocks cut to illustrated a nineteenth-century story. We have not been able to identify the artist or the book. If you have a clue, please drop us a note or attach the answer here. Thank you.

The French engraver and typographer Louis Luce was the inventor of the light typeface we call “Luce”. He was born in Paris in 1695 and worked first for the silver and goldsmiths. Eventually, he was named printer to the King and engraver to the Imprimerie Nationale. In 1771 Luce wrote Essai d’une nouvelle typographie: ornée de vignettes, fleurons, trophées, filets, cadres & cartels, inventés, dessinés & exécutés. Graphic Arts GAX Z250.L944. Just a note, former owners of our copy include William M. Ivins and Theodore Low De Vinne.

Louis-René Luce (1695-1774), L’impremerie presente aux sciences une epreuve, et les couronnes au temple de memoire (Printing Presents Science a Proof, and the Crown to the Temple of Memory), 1761. Engraving. GC077 French Prints Collection.

Etienne Picart (1632-1721) after a painting by Correggio (ca. 1489-1534), Allegory of Vice, 1676. Engraving. Graphic Arts French prints GC077.

The French engraver Étienne Picart (also known as Picart Romanus or Stephanus Picart) spent his early years in Rome engraving the Italian masters before settling in Paris. He opened a studio on the Rue St Jacques, au Buste de Monseigneur, engraving prints and book illustrations. In 1710, Picart and his son Bernard emigrated to the Netherlands where he continued to print until his death at the age of eighty-nine.

Explanations of this allegory describe a naked man, his hands tied behind him, being tormented by three naked women with serpents in their hair. Personally, I’m not sure he looks tormented. In the center foreground, a small boy tempts us with a bunch of grapes. The inscription reads in part: Image de l’homme sensuel, enchante par la volupte, lie par la mauvaise habitude, et tourmente par la synderese (The image of the sensual man, enchanted by lust, bound by bad habit, and tormented by conscience).

Dublin born, Harvard educated John Trumbull (1756-1843) had only one good eye but he didn’t let that stop him from pursuing a career as a painter. At the age of twenty-four, he moved to London to study with Benjamin West (1738-1820), painting alongside another of West’s students, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828).

Under West’s influence, Trumbull completed The Death of General Montgomery, The Death of General Wolfe, The Death of General Mercer, The Death of General Warren, The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and Surrender of General Burgoyne.

In the case of The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, “complete” is not the right word since he worked on the subject on and off for forty-five years, leaving at least twelve sketches and three oil paintings. Princeton University is fortunate to own seven of the twelve sketches, which many critics have valued for their spontaneity and freshness over the final oils.

In 1950, Theodore Sizer worked out the sequence of works and their owners: (Princeton University Library Chronicle 12, no.1):

1, 1786, pencil sketch, Yale University 1938.277(1)

2, 1786, pen and ink wash sketch, Princeton University [at the top]. General Mercer has been beaten to his knees. George Washington and his officers are on horseback.

3, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. General Mercer has been moved to the right. On the left Lieutenant Charles Turnbull is backed against a cannon. Washington can be seen in the center with Nassau Hall in the distance.

4, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. Mercer is back in the middle, Turnbull is at the right, and Washington on the left.

5, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. Turnbull is at the left, Washington on the right, and Mercer at the center.

6, 1786, pen and ink wash sketch, Princeton University. This combination has been finished in an ink wash but Trumbull still is not satisfied.

7, 1786, pencil sketch, Princeton University. Washington is back in the center and Turnbull on the left, balanced with two soldiers walking out of the frame.

8, 1786, pen and ink wash sketch, Princeton University. A file of British infantrymen march in from the right. The triangle is complete and Trumbull creates a finished sketch, before working in oil.

9, ca. 1786-88, oil painting, Yale University. 1832.6.2

10, 1790, pencil sketch, private hands [not illustrated]

11, 1791, pencil sketch, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Robert W. de Forest, 1906 (06.1346.2). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: www.metmuseum.org. This drawing represents Brigadier General Hugh Mercer. Because his subject was deceased, Trumbull used for his model Mercer’s son Hugh Jr.; he twice sketched the young man in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in April 1791.

12, 1791, pencil sketch, Fordham University [not illustrated]
13, 1791, pencil sketch, Fordham University [not illustrated]

14, ca. 1789-ca. 1831, oil painting, Yale University. 1832.6.1

15, 1844, oil painting, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, #1844.5. This painting was In the possession of the artist until his death in 1843, when it was purchased by Daniel Wadsworth and committee members of the Wadsworth Atheneum from Benjamin Silliman, executor of the artist’s estate, in 1844.

Trumbull gave sketches no. 3-8 to his nephew-in-law Professor Benjamin Stillman in the late 1830s, who passed them on to his son, Stillman II, and then to Stillman III. In 1896, the sketches were sold at auction to Junius Spencer Morgan, Class of 1888, who donated them to Princeton University in 1904 (GA 2005.00005-10). The seventh drawing, no. 2, was purchased in 1957, thanks to the generosity of Edward Duff Balken, Class of 1897 (GA 2006.02348).

Our sincere thanks to Yale University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum for allowing us to post their images. More of Trumbull’s work at Yale can be seen at: http://discover.odai.yale.edu/ydc/Author/Home?author=Artist%20John%20Trumbull

Early in her career, Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) took the geometry of color and form that she and her husband, Robert, were exploring on canvas and translated it to printed fabrics. She called these textile and costume designs “simultaneous contrasts.”

While living in Portugal during the First World War, Delaunay opened a store in Madrid called Casa Sonia, where she sold “simultaneous” dresses, coats, home furnishings, and accessories. She also designed the costumes for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe performance of Cléopâtre (1918) and other avant-garde productions.

Back in Paris, Delaunay created a sensation with her two-dimensional cardboard “poem-dresses” for Tristan Tzara’s 1923 Dada production La Coeur a gaz (The Gas Operated Heart) . She and Robert were offered numerous exhibitions of both their canvases and textiles, including the influential Grand Bal Travesti-Transmental.

In 1924, Delaunay opened a Paris textile printing workshop, Atelier Simultané, to produce her line, Maison Delaunay. In addition, she collaborated with Jacques Heim on a display for the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. As a result, a limited edition portfolio of her designs was printed in pochoir and published by Librairie des Arts Décoratifs.

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), Sonia Delaunay: ses peintures, ses objets, ses tissus simultanés, ses modes, préface d’André Lhote; poèmes de Cendrars, Delteil, Tzara, Soupault (Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, [1925?]). Charles Rahn Fry Pochoir Collection, Graphic Arts (GAX) Oversize 2004-0020E

In December 1726, William Hogarth (1697-1764) designed an etching, entitled The Punishment Inflicted on Lemuel Gulliver, in response to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels [below]. An enormous backside (Britain) is being given an enema by the Lilliputians (the Whig ministry and church). The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, supervises the action.

On July 30, 1746, a lawyer named David Thomas Morgan (1695-1746) was executed for his part in the second 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Within days, an anonymous print, using Hogarth’s premise, was issued “for Jonathan’s father.” It is titled Orator H—y laying the Independent Rump Ghosts. A faithful narrative of the wonderful and surprising appearance of Counsellor Morgan’s ghost: at the meeting of the independent inhabitants of the city and liberty of Westminster, last Friday night being the first of August; Giving a full and true Account of the Behaviour of the Club upon that fearful Occasion; together with a genuine copy of the speech he made to them, without his head.

The title refers to Reverend John Henley (1692-1756) who performed monologues or lectures at a theater near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and was briefly arrested in 1746 for outspokenness supporting the Battle of Culloden (the last battle of the Jacobite uprising, won by the English in 40 minutes, leaving over 1,200 dead).

Henley is shown drinking and smoking with a political club whose chairman is at the head of the table, followed by Jakey of York, Baron Bumpe, Count Newport the Butcher, Henley, Esq’ Thrift ye Executioner, Charlton the Butcher, and Buckhorse the Bruiser. They are interrupted by several shrouded figures, described as the The Independent Rump Ghosts, led by Counsellor Morgan, who moons the club and then, farts “See What you shall all come to.”

Paul-Albert Besnard (1849-1934), Souscrivez pour Hâter la Paix par la Victoire (Subscribe to Hasten Peace through Victory). Poster for the Third Loan of the National Defence. Paris: Maquet Gr., 1917. Lithograph. Graphic Arts French prints

During the First World War, the French government solicited funds from its people through National Defense Loans. Both the second and the third appeal, 1916 and 1917, were led by lithographic posters designed by Albert Besnard. As a decorative artist, Besnard worked on a large scale, creating frescoes at the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Pharmacie, the Salle des Sciences at the Hotel de Ville, and the ceiling of the Comédie-Francaise, among others.

At the time that Besnard designed these posters, he was the director of the École des Beaux Arts and one of the most sought after artists of the day. Two years later, he was one of the artists chosen to participate in the National Exhibition of French art held in the United States.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Le petit garcon au porte-plume (The Little Boy with the Pen), ca. 1910. Lithograph. Graphic Arts French Prints.

Renoir sketched his eldest son Claude as the boy was quietly writing in the artist’s studio one day. Drawing with a greasy crayon on special transfer paper, Renoir did not have to worry about the complex problems of lithography. When he was finished, he simply gave the drawing to the master printer Auguste Clot (1858-1936), who printed an unsigned edition of fifty.

See entry no. 55 in: Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), The Graphic Work of Renoir, catalogue raisonné́ compiled by Joseph G. Stella (Bradford: Lund Humphries, between 1971 and 1975). Marquand Library (SA) ND553.R2 S74

Graphic Arts is the fortunate new owner of proof prints, blocks, and drawings by the Brothers Dalziel (pronounced De el, rhymes with Real), previously owned by the bookseller Nigel Williams (1962-2010). The collection includes eighty-five proof wood engravings for the Bible, ca. 1860s; forty-three proofs of illustrations of children; and an uncut pencil drawing pasted to a woodblock, depicting wrecked ships below a cliff face and titled “Coast scene by Thomas Dalziel 1872-3” on the label pasted underneath.

The collection also has an engraved woodblock depicting the Adoration of the Magi in a fitted case with two proofs of the image and an early reproduction of the drawing for “Sampson carrying the Gates” by Frederick, Lord Leighton, reproduced as a wood-engraving in the Dalziel Bible Gallery, framed and glazed.

One hundred forty-six proofs illustrate The Arabian Nights, prepared from drawings by Thomas Dalziel and first published in 1877. Many include the aritst’s annotations for reworking (we are lacking only no. 8, 24, and 65 from the series numbered 1-148 and tailpiece).

Finally, twenty-nine wood-engraved proofs are by William Harvey to illustrate The History of Ancient and Modern Wines by Alexander Henderson (1824), one of the first books illustrated by Harvey. The proofs were formerly to property of Thomas Dalziel

This block gives us direct proof of the wood engraving process used by the Brothers Dalziel and others. A linear sketch was delivered by one of the artists, the drawing was pasted to a woodblock of the same size, and the engraver cut directly through the paper into the block, cutting away the white areas and leaving the black lines standing in relief.

Although this print was never cut and so, never published, the first long poem by Meg Blane in Robert Buchanan’s North Coast and Other Poems (1868) is set in a similar landscape. It’s possible that the drawing was designed for that publication.

Many of the proofs include handwritten comments indicating changes or correction still needed. Above on the right, there is a question about the intention of the artist. The man’s hand might be holding a torch or it might be handing food to a bird. Hopefully, the engraver clarified the image for the publication.

See also, Dalziel’s Illustrated Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (1865). EX 2263.2864
and
Dalziels’ Bible Gallery (1881). Graphic Arts GAX 203-0010F